Intangibility. The absolute biggest challenge of advertising in the field of healthcare.
I feel for the marketing folks at healthcare technology companies. They’re consumers, they see the Coke ads, the Nike ads, all the slick auto advertising, and they want something cool too! And they deserve it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to start talking budgets. [...]
A few weeks ago, I was in Massachusetts visiting a sick family member. This is the area where I began my healthcare sales career back in 1983, and I had a great time remembering those early days. I was a sales manager at a ComputerLand, kind of an old version of BestBuy. One of my [...]
What is ambient advertising?
I first heard the term while working in New Zealand. The term started to appear in British media jargon quite a few years back but is now a standard term within the advertising industry. It refers to advertising that occurs in a non-traditional medium outside the home. For instance, printing a message [...]
When it comes to advertising, healthcare marketers have numerous options for spending their ad dollars, from print venues and banner ads to moving billboards and pay-per-click promotions. Ever wonder where the future is headed? Despite numerous predictions that print media is dying and will be replaced by the Web, the future is hardly that clear [...]
It was only a decade ago that technology insiders prophesized a change in the way that the Internet would be used. Darcy Dinucci’s 1999 article, “Fragmented Future,” predicted the emergence of an interactive Internet, where users would not just read published material, but would contribute to the content of the site. Deemed Web 2.0, these [...]
For environmentally friendly paperstocks for their print materials.
Everyone knows that corporations are globally warming up to the idea of going green. I’m no expert on this massive topic, but what I do know after many years in design and advertising is that clients are actually starting to request or at least act interested in things [...]
I was pleased to participate as a guest presenter in the Physicians Practice 2009 Podcast Series: Marketing to Physicians Today. Four great topics helping vendors zero in on the current state of the physician marketplace.
My podcast addressed ways to bolster advertising results through the use of PR. The basic premise is this: Even if you [...]
Screenshots that is. Just when you’ve presented a beautiful layout and everyone wants to roll with it, someone says, “Oh yeah, there’s one more thing, can we scatter a bunch of screenshots of our software throughout the copy?” And the beauty is lost.
There are obviously a few issues with screenshots. The first is that in [...]
Color is a funny thing. So is colour. Especially when it comes to branding healthcare organizations. OK, so admittedly blue says healthcare and probably always will. But I believe some new trends are on the horizon. So what is the new blue? NOT BLACK. There are lots of other colors out there, but I would [...]
OK, there will always be a place to show a happy doctor, nurse, or administrator. A smiling face is engaging – especially when all the doctors and nurses are in their mid-twenties and look like they stepped right off the set of ER. But let’s face it, if you’re flipping through a medical journal seeing [...]