Edited from The Washington Post article by Gene Weingarten

He emerged from the metro station at the L’Enfant Plaza Station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was 7:51 a.m. on a Friday in the middle of rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape.

Three minutes went by before something happened. A middle-aged man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something. A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.

After 10 minutes, a 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His name was Joshua Bell and his performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities.

Just days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston’s stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. The Stradivari violin he played at the metro station has been estimated to be worth $3.5 million.

The questions raised: in an ordinary place at an unbefitting hour, do we recognize beauty? Do we pause to appreciate it? Do we appreciate talent in an unexpected context?

In the fields of marketing and advertising, many studies have been conducted to analyze how context affects overall perception of quality. Weingarten’s findings are a great example of what PeakBiety is all about: the power of perception®.

The results of the Joshua Bell experiment aren’t too surprising to us. The nature of a presentation is closely linked with how it will be perceived. A client’s product or service could be the best available, but without relevant strategy, a strong branding platform and appropriate marketing—the product or service could be easily overlooked.

Part 5 of 5

Too often today, corporate marketing will look to “specialists” to solve problems. A design firm may be hired for logo development, a website company will be hired for an online presence, television may end up getting station-produced, and the list goes on. The risk with this approach is mainly waste and inconsistency. And too often, messages lack both strategy and integration. As a result, the organization finds itself having spent a lot of money only to end up with misdirected and mediocre communications.

How does this happen? Sometimes the problem is lack of or conflicting strategies. Without a clear, concise and written strategy that applies to all communications, efforts will flounder, be ineffective and could even send conflicting messages. Strategy is essential in developing a competitive position. It will provide a summation of the impression that you’re trying to leave your audience. It also provides good direction but doesn’t demand that you go only one specific executional route.

Working with a written strategy is also an important discipline because it requires the intense study of: product/service benefits, target market needs/wants and competitive positions in order to seek a solid foundation for creating difference. And importantly, it should be looked upon as a long-term document. What do you want your target audience to believe about your product/service after years of advertising?

Integration is important because a planned process will ensure that all brand contacts received by your customers or prospects are relevant and consistent over time. An integrated approach will consider every imaginable way your organization will interact with the audience. It may be traditional or non-traditional media, and it may be online or offline.

Not only is integration important to advertising messages, it extends to sales, customer service, direct marketing, social media and public relations. Integration becomes a unified force. If different companies and departments are working separately—independent of one another—the potential for brand alignment greatly decreases.

Traditional advertising agencies were once considered to be true marketing partners (a term that has since been beat to death and misused). Better agencies were involved in high level marketing strategy, new product development, market research, package design, media planning and buying, collateral material (yes… even that stuff), promotional programs and, oh yes, advertising that worked. In short, the agency was viewed as a business-building partner and expected to bring ideas to the table that could make a difference regardless of the medium. To achieve that, agencies had to have the marketing capability and passion to understand the client’s business as well as examine trends.

So, how does all this apply to marketing for the healthcare industry? Healthcare needs to be viewed as a unique business model. Not only is it complex, highly competitive and constantly changing, the virtues of a healthcare organization must be completely understood to be accurately reflected. And healthcare decisions for the consumer involve so many propositions on so many different levels—from the quality, to the value, to the emotional connection.

When searching for an agency, rather than seek out “specialists” in services, find an agency that has a proven track record in healthcare marketing communications. You may just find that broad range of services you need under one roof. And finding an agency that has a broad base of clients, not only in the healthcare industry, will help avoid a myopic view on communication solutions.

Part 4 of 5

Despite a down economy, online advertising in 2009 saw steady growth according to a survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers published in April 2010. “Search revenue accounted for 47 percent of 2009 revenues, up from the 45 percent reported in 2008. Display advertising also showed solid growth, accounting for 35 percent of 2009 revenue up from 33 percent in 2008. Digital video, which is a component of display advertising, increased 38 percent from 2008 to 2009.” (PWC 2010) But along with this phenomenal growth come phenomenal complexities.

Following and targeting consumers online is challenging in the healthcare industry. Consumers commonly search for information on heathcare sites such as WebMD. However, they are also increasingly turning to user-generated health content such as blogs, chat groups and physician and hospital rankings. Many user-generated sites contain health information that is incorrect or misleading.

Behavioral targeting becomes useful to track information about an individual’s web-browsing behavior by identifying pages visited and searches made. Select ads can then be specifically targeted to the individual and placed on reputable sites.

Further, retargeting offers a powerful tool to reach a consumer by displaying multiple impressions of the same ad to the same user, based on behavior. For example: a newly diagnosed patient comes home from the doctor and searches for “diabetes treatments.” After browsing through a few sites, the patient moves on to another site such as the New York Times to read the news. At this point, an ad for the diabetes treatment product (from the previous site visited) will appear.

According to a recent study by the Network Advertising Initiative, conversion rates for retargeted ads are 6.8% compared to 2.8% for non-targeted ads (NAI 2010). However, privacy is an issue.
In a post earlier this week, “Consumers Go Online For Healthcare Answers,” we discussed the growing trend of consumers becoming increasingly proactive online, with some not wishing to publicly identify with certain healthcare brands or social networks. Other consumers may be concerned about privacy online, and choose not to participate in the various health communities available.

While some consumer advocacy groups have expressed concern over behaviorally targeted ads, others point out that it is simply a means of displaying relevant content to users. Users are tracked via cookies on their computers, and no names or other personal information is collected. Additionally, most ad platforms don’t allow users to be targeted based on anything they have read relating to mental or sexual health.

So far, the FDA has been silent on the issue of guidelines for online advertising, referring questions to longstanding policies governing traditional forms of advertising and promotion. Pharmaceutical companies, in particular, are struggling with how to incorporate fair balance information into their online endeavors.

“Consumers’ demand is clear. We want the best health information possible to live healthier lives,” said John Bell, a Word of Mouth Marketing Association board member. “Thirty-six percent of people who gathered information about a health condition online subsequently spoke to their doctors as a result, and 21% made a change to their lifestyle because of the information they found. That information comes from professional health sources, healthcare companies and our peers. We need to protect consumers while making it easier for health care companies to use digital and social media to serve their patients and customers better.”

Sources:
PricewaterhouseCoopers. “IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report.” Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) April 2010

Smith, Kristen. “Word of Mouth Marketing Association Urges FDA to Provide Social Media Guidelines for Health Care and Pharma Companies.” Word of Mouth Marketing Association 9 March 2010.

Part 3 of 5

Security risks, privacy concerns, possible HIPAA violations… its easy to see why health care organizations might be frightened by social media. Then, there are those who just wonder if it is all a waste of time and resources.

In spite of these concerns, the number of hospitals and healthcare entities with an online social media presence is growing by leaps and bounds. In May 2010, an estimated 730 hospitals had social media accounts—compared to 370 eight months ago. Chris Boyer, Senior Manager of Digital Communications at Inova Health Systems says, “Social media is a way to develop mindshare. People don’t think about hospitals until they need one. Social media efforts get them to start caring and helps to build trust and to develop a personal relationship.” (Seegert 2010)

The rise of so-called “e-Patients” creates many opportunities for engagement. e-Patients are defined as those “who are equipped, enabled, empowered and engaged in their health and health care decisions” (Sharp 2010). E-Patients believe informed self-care is the starting point for good health, and want to be actively involved with doctors and medical centers in shaping health information and services. Many e-Patients are recording their medical conditions online in an effort to track and self-diagnose themselves, within online medical communities such as patientslikeme.com or curetogether.com.

“Social media is here to stay in health care, but it will evolve quickly.” says John Sharp, manager of Research Informatics in the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. He believes that patient engagement will continue to characterize this change. Customer service, community outreach, education, public relations, crisis communications, recruitment, brand monitoring and service recovery are just a few of the areas that can be addressed by a social media campaign.

The North Shore LIJ Health System (NSLIJ), one of the country’s largest healthcare providers, has had great success using social media to drive fundraising. Donors can text pledges to the foundation via cell phone, or click through from inspirational YouTube videos. Marisa Fedele, associate director of communications for NSLIJ, says her only regret is not integrating social media into the mix sooner.

The bottom line? There are a lot of patients out there looking for information and an opportunity to connect with their health care organizations. Reaching out to them will not only improve communication, it will help build trust and brand recognition. Just make sure you have a social media plan in place to guide the content and quality of information published under your brand’s name, and integrate the effort with other more traditional media for consistent communication.

Sources:
Sharp, John. “Social Media in Health Care: Barriers and Future Trends.” iHealthBeat. 6 May 2010.

Seegert, Liz. “Hospitals gain community mindshare through social media.” ThinkSocial 11 May 2010.

Part 2 of 5

Consumers of all ages are becoming increasingly proactive online when it comes to getting answers about their health. This includes choosing doctors, treatments and healthcare facilities. A study by the Pew Internet Project found that 75-80% of internet users have looked online for health information, and that the internet is ranked second only to physicians when it comes to gathering trustworthy information about health-related topics (Fox 2008).

An even more recent study shows that 40% of hospital or urgent-care center patients report that social media influenced their healthcare choices, with the percentage jumping to over 50% in the 25-34 age bracket (Marketing Charts 2009).

A Nielsen study found that 39% of patients already use an online support group to discuss medications or treatments, and that “the anonymity of the internet affords a comfort level that encourages individuals to share details about their symptoms, treatment history, experiences with their doctors, the efficacy and side effects of medication, the impact of their condition on their own lives and more.” (Davies 2008)

However, depending on the nature and seriousness of various conditions, consumers may not wish to publicly identify with the brand on social networks such as Twitter or Facebook. To counteract stigma, some healthcare brands, such as GlaxoSmithKline’s weight loss product, Alli, have overcome stigma by creating their own community where consumers congregate, share personal stories and milestones.

Hospitals can facilitate consumer engagement by offering services and interactivity through their Web sites. A good example is Community Memorial Hospital in Menomonee Fall, WI. Their home page offerings include an “Ask Our Nurse” service, a baby gallery, a way to send patients e-cards, and a direct link to CarePages.

Some hospitals now post emergency room wait times online as a way to manage patients’ expectations for non life-threatening situations. Such is the case at Liking Memorial Hospital in Newark as reported in April, 2010. According to the chief executive officer of the hospital this effort not only helps the hospital be more transparent, “making this information available was another step in making the community see how we’re doing and how we’re taking care of them as a hospital system.” (Hoholik 2010)

Overall, creating a strong healthcare brand presence online can be challenging. A successful online initiative should integrate carefully with the overall brand strategy and offer new ways of listening, interacting and engaging with consumers. Gaining attention in the crowded electronic field takes special creativity in order to stand out.

Sources:
Fox, Susannah. “The Engaged E-patient Population.” PewInternet.org 26 Aug. 2008.

Hoholik, Suzanne. “Hosptial in Newark posts ER wait time on Web site.” The Columbus Dispatch 3 April 2010.

Part 1 of 5

In today’s tough economic climate, the wellness of a healthcare organization’s brand is more critical than ever. This can mainly be attributed to the complex and highly competitive nature of the industry. Awareness with strong identity and messaging are a good start. But aside from basic marketing, successful branding goes a lot further. It must start from inside a healthcare organization’s core. At its soul. From that point, everything that the organization does—from brand promise, to advertising, to employees working as brand ambassadors—complete brand alignment is essential. Why?

In the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer: An Annual Global Opinion Leaders Study, trust and credibility in brands exceeded all other corporate attributes. Where else is trust more important than in healthcare? Healthcare decisions are emotional. Personal. Sometimes it’s a matter of life and death. You may wonder, well, where does a brand come in? Brands sound like toothpaste or toilet paper. But that’s also the similarity. Studies show that people are most loyal to brands that are most personal. Brands that you feel, that you touch. Things that comfort you and make you feel better. This is where healthcare needs to see itself today.

So where does an organization start? A brand assessment is a good place. Not unlike a SWOP analysis, a brand assessment will uncover brand strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. However, it goes much deeper than that. With the right research, an effective brand assessment will help your organization uncover desired goals within the organization and contrast those with patient perceptions. The right discovery work will identify what makes your organization different from your competitors. From that key information, branding communication tools with creative signals are developed.

Once communication tools are in place, the following steps are helpful to the implementation process:

1. Launch the brand strategically. Explain to staff why branding is so essential. Take measures to ensure employee pride and ownership. Employee perceptions trickle down to patients. Customers can sense when there is lack of transparency and empathy. It is crucial for a holistic brand framework to be implemented consistently with genuine care for patients.

2. Make sure your organization is well-informed and consistent with the use of the brand’s identity. Provide detailed brand guidelines. After the launch, continue employee brand education with attention-getting, motivating and inspiring reminders.

3. Consider that your brand and the mediums by which you communicate are ever-evolving. Identify and implement on-gong measurement. Continually reinforce your brand infrastructure. Be consistent in messaging but stay fluid with changing technology.

4. Develop a social media plan to disseminate your brand message and stay connected to your customers. We’ll be talking more about social media on Wednesday.

Over time, strong branding will reap very tangible rewards. We know that people will pay more for a brand name than a generic alternative. This is especially true when it comes to one’s healthcare. People trust brands because of what those brands represent. Whatever the brand distinction in the eyes of consumers, a branded healthcare organization is worth more than a non-branded one. Successful branding will give an organization a big advantage over its competitors. Making a promise known to customers, then living up to it, is key.

Sources:

Edelman, Richard. “2010 Edelman Trust Barometer Executive Summary.” Edelman.com. 2010. 8 June 2010  http://www.scribd.com/full/26268655?access_key=key-1ovbgbpawooot3hnsz3u

By Donette Arcos, Media Director

With limited ad budgets, relevant and targeted advertising becomes essential.

Geotargeting
Geographic and demographic targeting on the internet serves web ads based on location, age, sex, income, education level, etc. This allows any size company to target a message to a tighter geography surrounding its location. It can also allow a company with an erratic footprint or service area to focus on sending a message to specific areas/zip codes it services. This affords an advertiser the luxury of building some frequency of message to a specific target audience, delivering a better ROI. An important note to remember is that many people work at a different location than they live and the bulk of internet traffic happens during the work day.

Retargeting
Retargeting is a form of internet targeted advertising by which online advertising is delivered to consumers based on their prior internet actions which did not result in a sale or conversion.

Retargeting is based on where the user “was.” Ads then follow users to subsequent sites to reinforce message, bring a user back or make a new offer.

Example: Kathy recently visited the Walmart website. With retargeting, Walmart ads follow Kathy to increase her likelihood of purchasing from Walmart.

Most likely, a company has spent marketing dollars to get a customer to their site in the first place, so the term retargeting is derived from the concept of marketing to them again.

Some studies suggest that a company needs to have seven different “contacts” with a customer (on average) before they make a purchase. Retargeting allows a company to continue its marketing conversation with a customer after leaving the website.

For more details, contact Donette Arcos, Media Director, at info@peakbiety.com.

Last month, over 250 marketers and small business owners gathered at the Social Fresh conference in Tampa to hear from 32 nationally recognized social media experts. Here’s some of the most common questions we heard.

What should my brand talk about?
Help your target audience find relevant information—not only about your brand, but about their passions. For Fiskars scissors, that passion is scrapbooking.

Maggie Fox from the Social Media Group in Ontario pointed out that “You can’t just aggregate, you must also curate. Help people find valuable information about your brand. Sites that [put lots of social media feeds about the brand on their homepage], but don’t filter them are useless… I have Google for that.”

How do you know when you’ve achieved social media success?
Its not just about having more followers than your competitors. A social media campaign, like any medium, needs a clearly defined strategy that fits in the overall brand strategy. What you are trying to accomplish with a campaign—sales, awareness, discussion or even just goodwill—should define the end goals of any social media effort. It’s more important to find and develop relationships with 5 people who are really passionate about your brand and what it has to offer than to have 5,000 fans who could really care less.

Whats the next big thing in social media?
Chris Barger, the Social Media Director for GM who is responsible for their early and active involvement in the social media realm had two predictions:

1. Combining SM with location awareness
This is mostly applicable to restaurants and other retail locations. Users “check in” on their mobile phones when they are at a location. The person who checks in to that location the most is named the “mayor”. Some stores are offering discounts, etc to the “mayor” of their stores. You can also leave reviews of the store, and discover where your friends are hanging out. The most popular sites for this are currently FourSquare and Gowalla.

2. Brand integration with SM gaming
Currently, lots of time is being spent on games like FarmVille and MafiaWars that are integrated into social media platforms like Facebook. Why not integrate your brand into these games or develop games around your brand that allow users to interact with their existing social media network?

Social Media isn’t everything.
One thing to remember—90% of word of mouth still happens offline. Use social media to help start conversations and engage with consumers—but don’t let it replace good old fashioned face-to-face interaction and other offline approaches.

by Glen Peak

In a recent blog article, What Kind of Agency Are You, an ad agency owner observed his struggle with how to “categorize” his agency, e.g. digital, creative, branding, etc. Lots of varied services and talent no doubt led him to describe such a struggle.

I was struck by the author’s observation that they never use the word “traditional” to describe the agency and wondered aloud if even “traditional” agencies use the word. Well…we don’t currently put the word “traditional” in the descriptors of our 4A’s advertising agency but this discussion prompts me to think that we should proudly include this word in our messaging. Perhaps someone would actually ask: what does the “traditional” descriptor mean?

I don’t believe that many of today’s clients understand that ad agencies were once considered to be true marketing partners (a term that has since been beat to death and misused). Better agencies were involved in high level marketing strategy, new product development, market research, package design, media planning and buying, collateral material (yes… even that stuff), promotional programs and, oh yes, advertising that worked. In short, the agency was viewed as a business-building partner and expected to bring ideas to the table that could make a difference regardless of the medium. To achieve that, agencies had to have the marketing capability and passion to understand the client’s business as well as examine trends.

If “traditional” is about being generally recognized, customary and even long-standing, I really want to incorporate this label into the characterization of our agency.

by Amy Phillips

Good brand management is supported by a strong and strategic brand identity. For a brand to stand out in its field, a brand’s online identity is becoming increasingly important. One of the most essential support systems for strong online brand identity is good search engine optimization (SEO).

To examine a brand online, the obvious first place to start is the brand’s Web site. An optimized site, with page titles, clean URLs, good content, headers, descriptions, alt tags and navigation will help with SEO. A very comprehensive checklist can be found here. But is that enough?

For high search engine ranking, the answer is no.

Paid advertising with media such as Pay-Per-Click through services such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter, is helpful but can be expensive. Organic SEO costs nothing but the time to build and maintain it. Some knowledge of the ever-changing search engine criteria for ranking algorithms helps.

But are an optimized site and paid advertising enough?

Many organic (as opposed to paid) SEO strategies today call for only 25% of effort given to “on-page” (the website) as opposed to 75% for “off-page” efforts (in-bound links and social media).

Social Media, according to Wikipedia, is composed of three things:

• Concept (art, information, or meme).

• Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).

• Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).

If social media is to be used to help SEO, all “concepts” must be strategic and brand-reinforcing. Anything else could actually be damaging. So, a brand’s social media presence with outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube among others, needs to be carefully crafted, controlled and monitored. Never underestimate the power of perception.®

The social interface component of social media presents the most challenges. What does it entail? Meeting people and talking. Asking questions and answering them. Engaging to add value. So how does a “brand” do this successfully?

The first place to start is to create a voice. A company needs to decide whether to set up separate Twitter accounts or one company account. How do you determine the right voice? For the pros and cons of all to consider, check out “The Right Voice for Your Brand is…”

Once your company’s voice is established, make sure that it is consistent from brand image to brand experience. Make sure that expectations are aligned. Create a strategy. Have a plan. Make goals and create timelines. Involve your advertising agency. Outside consultants can give valuable advice from a “fresh” perspective. Consider an integrated advertising campaign. You can’t pay for the publicity of something that goes viral. The more publicity your brand receives, the higher its search engine ranking is, organically.

Does the look and feel of your email messaging effect the campaign results? You may have wondered whether an ordinary-looking email would get better results than a designed one, or vice versa.

We already knew that adding personalization would increase responses. But would people view a simple text email as more personable? Or would the color and design of a newsletter-type email help it stand out in crowded inboxes?

We divided our list in half, sending out a total of 1200 emails. We sent them out at the same time, with the same subject line and the same content—the only difference was the design of the email itself.

Designed email

Plain email

The results? We had more than twice as many people respond to the designed email, and 200% more forwarded it to a friend compared to the plain version.

Results

Overall, click-throughs from the eblast were responsible for a 387% increase in traffic to our site.

When advertising legend Leo Burnett died in 1971, a book simply titled, Leo, was privately printed and distributed by his associates. Those lucky enough to have worked with the man received a coveted copy. Glen Peak was among the fortunate few.

In Leo, a compilation of famous speeches, we find timeless words of wisdom, amazingly relevant today.  In about 1950, Burnett wrote about “the brand” in a speech called, “The power of frequency.” He almost sounds like a modern branding guru when he explains, “Whether it is an impulse purchase like a candy bar or a package of cigarettes or an infrequent and highly deliberated purchase like a washing machine, a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner or a mattress, the biggest single thing that advertising can contribute is a friendly predisposition toward the brand—a whole complex of thoughts and emotions which give the purchaser peace of mind in the choice he [or she] makes. We shun the unknown. We are naturally drawn to the familiar. You might call this simply ‘friendship for the product.’ Your best friends are people whose qualities you like and admire and whom you enjoy being with—but they are usually people you see frequently. The principle of frequency in advertising has long been recognized. Several great brands have been built around rigid adherence to this principle rather than through the content or power of any single advertisement.”

The idea of a “whole complex of thoughts and emotions” about a brand sounds like modern branding building, doesn’t it? And, Burnett’s emphasis on the power of “friends” seems almost prophetic in this era of social networking.

Although the concept of brand friendship and loyalty hasn’t changed much over the past 60 years, media choices dramatically have. As marketing experts today, we ask ourselves. how much advertising is too much? How much is too little? The battle between reach and frequency is going through seismic shifts in perspective and is altering everything we do.

In light of the changes occurring almost daily, it is beneficial to review some basic concepts in media strategy and examine how those concepts are evolving. To read more about our perspectives on media planning, click here to request our White Paper 3.