Five Ways Cardiovascular Marketers Can Use Pinterest

January 17, 2012

The surprise social networking success of 2011 may be exactly what your brand needs to boost engagement in 2012.

Pinterest is hot. It came out of virtual obscurity last year to become one of the top ten social networks, and it shows no signs of slowing down.

Pinterest is an image-based platform that focuses on lifestyle issues. It almost looks like an upscale women’s magazine. The basic premise is this: users create and name boards about any subject they like (Places I’d Like to Visit, Healthy Meals, Hobbies, etc.). People post (“pin”) relevant photos and articles on the boards and follow one another based on interests. Photos are displayed in a pin board-type feed that is simple, yet visually appealing.

Today, the audience is heavily female, and there are many topics that are relevant to cardiovascular marketing: diet, exercise, almost every aspect of health and even a Go Red For Women board.

So, how can you take advantage of this community? This article from Mashable offers five ideas.

1. Host Contests

Contests can range from creating the “Best Board” to earning the most Repins. Users could post photos of their best heart healthy meals, best ideas for exercise motivation, or photos of themselves in a red dress to support heart health and awareness. Similar to photo contests on Facebook or Twitter, Pinterest offers a way to build visual between your brand and target audience.

2. Conduct Social Media Focus Groups

You can use boards to get reactions to new developments in your heart and vascular institute. For example, are you adding items to your cafeteria menu, redecorating a waiting room or adding a community workout facility? Because of Pinterest’s commenting ability, it’s an ideal platform on which to introduce new ideas and gather firsthand opinions. As users Repin a photo, you can gather more intelligence, and ultimately decide whether you should move forward with an idea.

3. Showcase Brand Personality

Pinterest’s photos offer unlimited possibilities to showcase your brand’s personality. For instance, you could have a Pinterest Board of photos that features your philanthropic outreach and community events. You can post past and present photos that showcase new construction, past milestones, employee honors, etc. Each Pin allows for a description and a link to the original story. Therefore, you can quickly connect an audience with stories, mission and future plans, all via photo Pin.

4. Display Various Sectors of Your Organization

Larger operations can use Pinterest to nicely organize areas of focus and relay them to the public. For instance, you might host several individually themed boards. One board might showcase physician and staff interests, while a specialty board displays ideas related to specific procedures or areas or expertise. Another board might show photos of employees in action.

5. Showcase Communication Between Brands and Customers

Using Pinterest, brands can create Pins and boards that feature customer feedback and product interpretations, and then showcase them for entire audiences. Customers can further relate to products and services, and brands have a way to thank their supporters by integrating them into their communities. For example, grateful patient stories could be featured or patients who want to share stories of how they lost weight, got in shape, etc. could be featured.  Patients and prospective patients could be inspired to return, and you are creating content that keeps fans constantly involved.

It seems that Pinterest holds immense potential to interact with various audiences. Using the power of image, brands can create buzz around products and services, display more in-depth aspects of their businesses, and ultimately create more personal and visually pleasing social experiences for their audiences.

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Posted by Julie Robinson

New Cardiovascular Marketing Sensation: Know Your Numbers Video

November 4, 2011

A video from Mayo Clinic takes viewers back to the ‘80s with a spoof of the 1982 hit “867-5309/Jenny”. It features actual Mayo Clinic staff and cardiologists.

Check out some of the lyrics:

You need to know your numbers,

Don’t let ‘em get too high

Jenny please watch your numbers

Blood pressure, lipids and BMI

It’s a fun way to encourage people to pay attention to important numbers, blood pressure, lipids and BMI, that can potentially reduce their risk of heart disease.

It also has high hopes of going viral. To see the video on Mayo’s site, it asks you to create a personal profile, which I did. By spreading the video to your family and friends, you then have a chance to win prizes as part of a related contest.

Here’s the body of the email I got after registering:

Dear julieseifertrobinson,

Thank you for registering for Know Your Numbers! Please find your account details and some tips for promoting your profile below.

Profile URL: http://knowyournumbers.me/profile/julieseifertrobinson

Username: julieseifertrobinson
You can login to the site on: http://knowyournumbers.me.

Some Helpful Tips For Promoting Your Profile

All of these steps can be accomplished on your profile.

1.Share your profile URL via Facebook, Twitter and Google+ (http://knowyournumbers.me/profile/julieseifertrobinson).

2.Send email invitations to your friends and family.

3.Include your profile URL in your email signature.

Best wishes and good luck!

Know Your Numbers Team

Interesting approach. I like it. To watch the video on the Mayo Clinic site, click here.

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Posted by Julie Robinson

How Design Thinking Can Transform Cardiovascular Marketing – Part Two

November 1, 2011

Fostering a culture of innovation can lead to higher engagement and better results.

In my last post, I talked about my recent trip to IDEO, an innovation and design firm that uses a human-centered, design-based approach to help organizations grow. I was so inspired by their thoughts about innovation that I decided a read the book, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, authored by CEO Tim Brown.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have a strong belief in the importance of innovation as we constantly strive to produce great results in our cardiovascular marketing programs.

Tim Brown talks a lot in the book about how to inspire innovation within teams. He asserts that it’s critical to develop an environment in which people know they can experiment, take risks and explore the full range of their faculties:

  • A culture that believes it is better to ask forgiveness rather than permission, that rewards people for success but gives them permission to fail, has removed one of the main obstacles to the formation of new ideas.
  • An important lesson about the challenge of shifting from a culture of hierarchy and efficiency to one of risk taking and exploration: Those who navigate the transition successfully are likely to become more deeply engaged, more highly motivated and more wildly productive than ever before.

How many of us truly encourage our teams to live by these tenets? If not, why not? What are we afraid of? One could argue that healthcare is in need of innovation more than ever before.

Brown goes on to say:

  • The most important counterpart to an attitude of experimentation is a climate of optimism.
  • Curiosity does not thrive in organizations that have grown cynical.
  • Project teams become nervous, suspicious and prone to second-guessing what management really wants.
  • To harvest the power of design thinking, individuals, teams and whole organizations have to cultivate optimism. People have to believe it’s within their power (or at least the power of their team) to create new ideas that will have a positive impact.
  • Optimism requires confidence, and confidence is built on trust. And, trust flows in both directions.

Do you think it’s hard to be optimistic in today’s environment? Have all of the looming changes in healthcare made you cynical? How can you motivate yourself and your team (and your agency) to regain optimism, reject cynicism and work together to find truly innovative solutions that will create better results than you had last year? These are questions we’ll be asking our team members and clients at Kuhn & Wittenborn in the coming months. We would welcome your stories on innovation too.

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Posted by Julie Robinson

How Design Thinking Can Transform Cardiovascular Marketing – Part One

October 27, 2011

“Don’t mock people’s ideas by discussing surface details. You’ll see more ideas, and people will spend less time polishing bad ideas.”  – Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO.

I recently returned from one of the most fascinating field trips I’ve ever taken: a visit to IDEO, an innovation and design firm that uses a human-centered, design-based approach to help organizations grow.

When our group first walked into the conference room, I was struck by a huge whiteboard with “rules” for brainstorming printed on the wall across the top:

  • Defer Judgment
  • Encourage Wild Ideas
  • Build on the Ideas of Others
  • Stay Focused on a Topic
  • One Conversation at a Time
  • Be Visual
  • Go for Quality

These “rules” seem pretty logical. Yet, I had to ask myself, how often do we really live by them?   We constantly ask people within our organizations to be innovative – on both the client side and the agency side.

Yet in today’s environment of tight budgets and tight timeframes, how often do we really give people permission to explore wild ideas, and how often do we truly defer judgment? It’s so easy to immediately identify the reasons why something won’t work.

Tom Kelley said at IDEO they ask people to develop skills around being “squinty,” — you know, that process of squinting to look at something to see if you might be able to see it more clearly.

If you can squint and see that there’s a kernel of an idea, take it one more step. But give people permission to show you ugly prototypes. Don’t make people feel like their ideas have to be fully finished before they show them to you. (For example, give your agency permission to show you rough ideas earlier on in the process.) It will probably end up being less expensive in the long run because they won’t go through multiple rounds of internal revisions before the account executive thinks it’s pretty enough to show to you, the client.

Kelley also told us that academic research shows people will always like a product better if they see it at the halfway point because they feel like they have an opportunity for collaboration and buy in. I’m encouraging the people in our agency to show ideas to clients sooner. And I’m encouraging my clients to show ideas to their administration and management sooner too.

At IDEO, they talk about a culture in which the whole organization has room to experiment and one in which ideas should not be favored based on who created them. (Repeat aloud.)

Makes me want to start a brainstorming session. Who wants to join me?

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Posted by Julie Robinson

A “Little Movie” for Cardiovascular Marketers

September 15, 2011

It’s just a “little heart attack.”

That’s the theme of this video from Go Red For Women.

As always, it’s a great message and a great reminder. I especially love the part toward the end when Super Mom is worried that her house is too messy for the EMTs to see. Can anyone out there besides me relate? Yeah, I thought so.

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Posted by Julie Robinson

Cardiovascular Marketing – There’s an App for That

June 15, 2011

Mobile health and fitness applications are exploding on the health care scene.

An estimated 500 million smartphone users will be accessing mHealth apps within the next five years according to mobile research consulting firm, research2guidance.

So, how do you make your app relevant and effective in a sea of competitors?

A wise creative director I know says all communications pieces – from ads to apps should do three things:

  • break through
  • ring true
  • make people like and trust you

To achieve those goals, you must define a focused message, wrap it in an interesting creative premise, produce it using a simple execution and ensure it makes a human connection.  To me, this is excellent advice.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve downloaded an app only to feel disappointed because it was too complicated, or the information just wasn’t relevant.

I don’t often use this space to brag about our own clients or push our agency’s services.  However, I’m going to make an exception.   We just produced a heart health app for one of our clients, Liberty Hospital, that in my humble opinion, meets all of the criteria for success I’ve outlined.

It includes realistic tips for achieving better heart health in 30 days, a nifty heart rate monitor and an easy-to-use BMI calculator.

This app is designed in a way that makes it easy to customize for use by other hospitals in non-competitive markets.

Check it out in the iTunes App Store under HeartHealth by Liberty Hospital.  Then, let me know if you’d like more information about how you can license this app for use in your cardiovascular marketing efforts.

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Posted by Julie Robinson

Top Designer Tips for Cardiovascular Marketers

August 17, 2010

Applying best practices from the design world can lead to better problem solving and more innovation in almost any business, including cardiovascular services.

My clients are constantly looking for ways to stand out from competitors though implementing innovative strategies in patient care and education.

A new book by Warren Berger examines the shared behaviors of top designers.

Here are four of the most important things successful designers do to achieve significant breakthroughs.  These habits seem intrinsically linked to the designer’s ability to bring forth original ideas and successful innovations.

I agree with the author that for those of us who are charged with innovation on a regular basis, these practices deserve a closer look:

  1. Question. Designers ask, and raise, a lot of questions.  They recognize the importance of challenging the existing realities and assumptions in a given industry or sector. The persistent tendency of designers to do this is captured in the joke designers tell about themselves. How many designers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer: Does it have to be a light bulb?In today’s highly competitive marketplace, the ability to question and rethink basic fundamentals — What business are we really in? What do patients and families actually need or expect from us? — has never been more important.
  2. Care. It’s easy to say that we care about our patients.  Of course we do.  But Berger asserts that to really empathize, you have to be willing to do what many of the best designers do: step out of your bubble and actually immerse yourself in the daily lives of people you’re trying to serve.Design researchers are dedicated to really observing and paying close attention to people — because this is usually the best way to ferret out their deep, unarticulated needs.  Focus groups and questionnaires don’t cut it; designers know that you must care enough to actually be present in people’s lives.
  3. Connect. Designers have a knack for synthesizing–for taking existing elements or ideas and combining them in fresh new ways. This can be a valuable shortcut to innovation because it means you don’t necessarily have to invent from scratch.By coming up with “smart recombinations” (to use a term coined by the designer John Thackara), Apple has produced some of its most successful hybrid products; and Nike smartly combined a running shoe with an iPod to produce its groundbreaking Nike Plus line (which enables users to program their runs.)

    In order to come up with combinations like these, you must be willing to try connecting ideas that might not seem to go together. This is a way of thinking that can also be embraced by non-designers.  I’m considering leading a brainstorming session for a client soon that is focused on “recombinations,” taking elements of an already successful program and thinking of ways to put some of those things together to develop systems that will be even more patient centric.

  4. Commit. It’s one thing to dream up original ideas. But designers quickly take those ideas beyond the realm of imagination by giving form to them.  When you give form to an idea, you begin to make it real.

But it’s also true that when you commit to an idea early — putting it out into the world while it’s still young and imperfect — you increase the possibility of short-term failure. Designers tend to be much more comfortable with this risk than most of us. They know that innovation often involves an iterative process with setbacks along the way — and those small failures are actually useful because they show the designer what works and what needs fixing.

If you work with an agency, I would encourage you to challenge your account team to practice these disciplines in your overall marketing communications planning process.  Set aside a small portion of your budget for innovation, in essence, creating a think tank that is made up of agency and client representatives.

Encourage this group to commit to ideas that might seem crazy at first.  By giving them permission to give some of these ideas form, you might be well on your way to discovering a truly innovative way to stand out from your competitors.

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Posted by Julie Robinson

What Cardiovascular Marketers Can Learn From a Heart Transplant Recipient

May 10, 2010

Making an emotional connection with your target audience should be a primary goal for marketers.

We talk with our clients all the time about the importance of reaching people on a human level, being authentic and writing copy that speaks to people “in their own words.”

In my view, this video featuring Mr. Ron Murray, a transplant recipient, offers rare insight about the issues that are truly important to patients who are facing the biggest cardiovascular challenges.

He talks about anxiety:

“… if the transplant issue ever comes up for anyone listening, that’s almost the first thing they would think, too. If I had time to think about it over that year, I would have realized, oh my God, I would have apprehension all built up about how I would react to…I mean is it going to change my way of thinking? Is it going to alter my own thoughts? None of that holds up, ultimately.

He talks about the unexpected magnitude of emotions:

“When I realized that there was going to be, forever, an emotional component, and maybe a spiritual component to this thing that I hadn’t thought about, is when I became – God, I don’t even know if I can tell you about it – that I began to grieve for the donor, that brought be to tears several of those nights.

But they weren’t bad tears, they were were just, like tears you feel when you go to a funeral – someone you know – and I didn’t know Kevin but I did now, is the way I looked at it. And so, the rest of my time in the hospital was an alternating time between listening to music in my head and writing it and making it up, and thinking about Kevin and his family and what all of this really means to my future life.”

And, he talks about how the experience changed his view of his life’s purpose:

“So, I formulated a plan to try to reach a lot of people for the specific reason that I passed up so many deserving people on the Austin transplant waiting list. There were 12 people ahead of me who had been waiting for a heart, sometimes up to a year, and I had only been on the list three weeks and here I am jumping ahead to get the heart. (By the way, he saved four or five people that night – he was a donor of everything).

So I figured the reason that I jumped ahead of so many people was because there was such a severe shortage of donors, and ultimately that proved to be true. So anyway, my effort now is to reach as many people as possible, and this is part of that effort…”

If only we had input this powerful and this clear on a regular basis…

Thanks, Ron, and Dr. Wes for sharing.

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Posted by Julie Robinson

Should Cardiovascular Marketers Scale Back Their Efforts in a Tough Economy?

April 5, 2010

Despite a tough economy, cutting back on marketing spending may mean missing out on growth opportunities.

It seems to us you could draw a comparison to the concept of “dollar cost averaging” that is applied to investing in the stock market.

When you use that approach, you invest the same amount of money on a regular basis through all the ups and downs of the market.  That means you are buying more shares of stock when the prices are low, and fewer when the prices are high.

We think the same could be said of marketing.  If you commit to maintaining your efforts in a down economy, especially if many of your competitors are cutting back, you are getting more awareness and more share of mind for your money.

Those who fail to market during down times have to expend considerably more effort — and money — to regain what they lost in awareness by being less visible to their target audiences.

We all know that, historically, marketing has been one of the first areas to take a hit when organizations start making budget cuts.  But is that really in the best interests of the long-term health of a brand?

Years ago, one of our clients, an entrepreneur who was also a licensed pilot, said it best:  “When I’m flying my plane into a headwind, the last thing I want to do is cut back on the throttle.

For more on this topic, visit healthcaresuccess.com

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Posted by Julie Robinson

“Just the Facts” Won’t Get the Job Done for Cardiovascular Marketing

April 4, 2010

Today, more than ever, simply communicating the facts about your cardiovascular services won’t be enough to build awareness and gain credibility among your audiences.

To get noticed, you must package your message within an intriguing creative premise.  After all, people are exposed to hundreds of marketing messages every day.

Here’s an example.  A few years ago, we began working with a community hospital on the outskirts of Kansas City, Missouri.  We knew that, to build awareness and compete with some of the larger hospitals in the region, we would need to do something bold and differentiating.

We conducted some initial research in which we showed benefit statements and rough creative concepts to people in our targeted demographic group.

The concept that ranked highest in the research featured a photo of a doctor wearing a surgical mask, with the headline:  “Another masked superhero from Liberty Hospital.”

The positive response to this idea led us to pursue “doctors as superheroes” as a creative strategy.

One of the initial ads in the campaign showed an illustration of a superhero beside a photo of an actual doctor from Liberty Hospital.

The illustrated hero was labeled “Super Powers.”  The photo of the doctor said “Healing Powers.”

Later, when the hospital introduced its new Heart & Vascular Center, we built on the existing campaign with a slight variation.

Instead of showing illustrated superheroes, the ad for the Heart Center featured a child in a superhero costume, with the headline, “All kids dream of becoming superheroes. Some actually do.”

The copy in the ad positioned the cardiologists as “real-life superheroes,” giving the facts about their proven abilities, as well as information about the new state-of-the-art facility.

The campaign was extremely successful in building awareness for the hospital and the new heart center.

This is one example of how an interesting creative premise allowed us to connect with people on a human level and make them more receptive to the important facts we wanted to communicate.

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Posted by Julie Robinson

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