By Heather Rast, Director of Strategic Services
Have you read the book “Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are?” The book extends the notion about how closely intertwined brands have come with our personal identities. Author Rob Walker suggests that “. . .consumers interact with brands, defining and controlling them as companies struggle to keep up.”
By contrast, a recent ClickZ article by Pete Blackshaw, “We Marketers Still Have Control!” asserts that today marketers have more control over their audiences than ever before, due in part to technological advances allowing sophisticated data-gathering, precise targeting, message delivery, and on-the-fly modifications that just wasn’t possible for earlier generations of marketers.
Folks, we’ve evolved from the cigar and three martini lunch to the triple-shot skinny tall gulped down with a soy energy bar. We’re not in Kansas anymore.
I find these two positions intriguing, and not necessarily mutually exclusive. Case in point: a gal whose office is down the hall from mine used olive oil from the company kitchen to eliminate the squeak from her door. Consumers are creative, and solution-oriented. When faced with cereal but no milk, we resolve morning hunger with cold pizza instead. Likely not what Pizza Hut had in mind when developing the menu line (they’ve yet to introduce a breakfast pie, but with their flavor innovation track record, I’ll bet that’s going to roll out any day now), but hey, it works for a great number of us. Methinks Maslow fits in here somewhere.
I think the very nature of a consumer is to accept a product (or service), internalize it, shape it to fit our needs. If it works, we stick with it. If it works well, we herald it. If it’s great, we blog about it.
Which leads me to play devil’s advocate on this topic of brand control. The blog world is clearly a platform, a venue in which the brand has some inherent limited reach and efficacy. The Web is pervasive and the universe is vast; an audience for a negative (or a positive) comment can range from 1 to one million+ in numbers and the impetus for the original communiqué could be a single experience where the brand (or brand representative i.e., cashier, volunteer, customer service agent, etc.) failed to meet expectations. Hey, we all have bad days – maybe the volunteer was asked the location of the cafeteria for the thousandth time and had simply grown weary. But now the negative experience has been commented out for all the world to read. How does the brand contain that cat now let loose from the bag? Minimize casualties?
Fortunately this social forum {blog, Web site, etc.} allows reentry, and the brand could choose to address its faux pas publicly, and directly. Opening oneself up and proactively encouraging brand interaction – even allowing consumers to openly criticize, comment, or suggest paths not in keeping with your brand strategy – might seem somewhat counterintuitive. But Dell and a lot of other respected companies are doing it successfully. Maybe in that sense, they’re providing a forum for all, and letting the audiences moderate themselves. Sounds like there’s honor (not to mention good will) in being bold enough to expose vulnerabilities.
You’re marketing to regional hospitals. Your post did nothing to relate their challenges to the book you’re implicitly recommending.
Mr/Ms Fiegen – I appreciate you taking the time to write a comment. I would have liked to have you expound on your thoughts a little, to ensure I fully understand your perspective. I invite you to explain more.
I think there are a few points I can make. One, I’m not actually recommending the book. What I’m striving to do is discuss the positions of the two bodies of work for the purpose of encouraging discussion. They are seemingly opposed, and in my opinion each bear merit.
I also think hospital marketers can skew too insular on occasion. There’s a lot of value to be gained from looking outside of the healthcare vertical for trends and insights into consumer motivations and proclivities.
Wouldn’t you agree that its important for marketing to evolve to embrace the ways in which consumers look for, share, and evaluate information? Establishing credibility where they live, so to speak, will be a key to success in my opinion.
Just keep your posts relevant to your audience.
Hello again, T. Fiegen.
The post is relevant to our GeoVoices audience, although perhaps not interesting to all, and that’s likely to be expected. The relevance stems from the reality that while today’s consumers are demanding and expecting immediacy, they also crave intimacy. The more we want things “on demand,” the more we want to talk to a live operator, so to speak.
Healthcare consumers, in particular, are typified as information-seekers who like the element of control – one of the reasons they turn to the Web to find facts and a community of like-minded (or afflicted) people. In essence, consumers can affect the direction of the brand based on their perceptions and experiences, and the manner in which they propagate them.
I’m suggesting that brands – hospitals – be mindful of the element of control consumers possess and plan strategies to embrace them on authentic levels where real connections can be made. I believe the hospital blog below is quite successful at it.
Reference:
http://runningahospital.blogspot.com/2008/07/message-you-hope-never-to-send.html
Nice hospital blog. A client of Geo?
I am more familiar with the risk management side of healthcare. Too many hospitals and providers sanitize and hide their mistakes and shortfalls. I look forward to the day of full disclosure by all medical providers of not only their strengths, but also their mistakes: infection rate, complication/second corrective procedure rates and mortality rates. Good luck getting your hospital clients to disclose publicly, let alone post on their website these statistics.
To the extent you are advocating greater openness and disclosure, albeit to attract new patients, I say Bravo! However, if you are simply advocating “painting pretty pictures” to create a “brand” to lure new patients, it will not work in the long run because information seeking control type consumers look beyond “brand.” Unlike hairdos and designer clothes, “brand” fluff does not fool healthcare consumers or get their dollars.
Good luck with the real openness pitch. Based on what I know about healthcare institutions and their corporate culture, you are going to need to be more direct and forceful if you want real change. Your posts tend to wander or shotgun information. Most CEOs and physicians have a low tolerance for marketing types, especially when they are calling for a fundamental change in the corporate medical culture.