Gut-Grabbing Messages: What Makes an Impression?

 When the parents are deciding on where to take the child for care (a hospital, primary care doc, or a clinic), which marketing messages will they remember and act on – one that emphasizes the positive benefits of a particular provider (bright visuals and a welcoming message about pediatric specialists on-site around the clock), or one that emphasizes a more dramatic message (stark visuals accompanied by equally stark statistics on the consequences of not wearing a bicycle helmet)?

Healthcare is an industry that is heavily reliant on patient emotions. Major health decisions can be made based on whether a patient feels safe and happy or in danger. Marketers, in turn, can mirror these emotions in campaign messages to reach the core of an audience.

This week, I spoke with healthcare marketing leaders about whether they use the carrot or the stick technique in marketing messages.

Patients do not respond to fear or the loom and doom approach in marketing, says Tina Baiter, marketing director at HealthCare Express, a Texas-based group practice.

"Scare tactics are not memorable," Baiter says. "I feel like there is not enough truth in scare tactics anymore. Patients are educated and can see right through them, and are over-subjected to them in the media."

Baiter agrees that emotion plays a huge role in patient decision-making and should be the focus of healthcare marketing campaigns. HealthCare Express, a group practice specializing in urgent care and occupational medicine, is lesser known in the community compared to hospitals and primary care physicians.

To gain more patient volume, HealthCare Express aims its marketing messages at the emotions of mothers (or children) in the community. Most messages remain positive and uplifting with jingles the children can remember and a mascot in Youtube videos.

But HealthCare Express chose a more serious marketing message during the peak of the H1N1 swine flu outbreak in 2009 when it ran a campaign playing off the drama of the outbreak in the media. The ad featured a little boy scrunching up his face, looking angry, with the tag line: No child should wait for an appointment to be seen.

The response to the ad was overwhelming, Baiter says. Each patient who checks in at HealthCare Express is asked how he or she heard of the clinic. Here are the statistics of the typical response rate from newspaper and magazine advertising:

The following fall when the campaign ran for a second time, the patient response rate plateaued at around 6 %.

"Just prior to running the ad in November 2009, a [local] child had died from complications the local media related to H1N1," Baiter says. "We believe playing on the emotional hot button of 'sick today, seen today' helped, and parents with sick kids related to this ad better in 2009 than in 2010."

The seriousness of the campaign played to the advantage and helped boost awareness of the brand. Burl Stamp, president and founder of Stamp & Chase, Inc. and former CEO of Phoenix Children's Hospital, agrees.

"Generally, the tone of a promotional message has to mirror the character and tone of the underlying brand and product/service. So when we're talking about healthcare services, appealing to emotions in a bit more reverent, serious way is often most appropriate – and can be most memorable because people can relate the message to their own lives and situations," Stamp says.

Stamp also shared a case of how St. Louis Children's Hospital changed a marketing strategy from a lighthearted approach to a more serious tone, based on patient feedback. While expanding pediatric home care services, Stamp thought it would be appropriate to go with a lighter, more playful approach for the brand image and messaging.

"One mom persuasively pointed out, 'I know it's home care services, but you're still talking about my child being sick. That's serious to me. We're talking about medical care, and that approach looks like we're going to a party or a carnival,'" Stamp recalled.

Other services do lend themselves to a more lighthearted approach – such as wellness services and obstetrics care, Stamp says. Others warrant serious message in order to maintain credibility in the eyes of viewers.

"Fear is a very powerful emotion, but it is dangerous to use in healthcare advertising because it has the potential to cause people to just shut out the unpleasant message," he says. "Anti-smoking campaigns are an excellent example of where there is a fine-line between a compelling message and one that causes people to tune out."

"More positive approaches from smoking-cessation programs and pharmaceuticals that emphasize the message, 'We can help you kick this habit' generally have been more successful than ones that simply use scare tactics."

The most successful campaigns do play off the emotions of patients without crossing the line of being overly dramatic or trivializing the issue by being overly positive.