In stark contrast to their traditionally sober campaigns, health care providers are now injecting humor into their marketing messages
Did you hear the one about the doctor and the terminally ill patient?
Probably not. After, all health care is pretty serious business, and humor doesn’t mix easily with life-and-death choices and decisions. But some hospitals, clinics and other health care companies are defying that convention by adding a dose of jocularity to their marketing campaigns.
Take St. Mary’s Medical Center. Please! [Rimshot]
But seriously folks, St. Mary’s recently ran its multimedia “Get In. Get Better. Get Going” campaign in the San Francisco area. The campaign developed by the hospital’s agency, Mortar touted the facility’s faster service, adopting a blithe tone in an often dry marketing landscape. One image, promoting emergency care in under 30 minutes, features a bodybuilder and text from the famous-last-words department: “Spotter? Yeah, like I need a spotter.” Another showing a carton of milk and the query “The expiration date is just a guideline, right?” tells consumers that they can find a doctor and have an appointment within 48 hours.
The campaign was seen widely on billboards, and it also included a substantial direct mail component: More than 30,000 pieces were sent out to potential patients throughout the metropolitan area, all with the aim of drawing chuckles.
“Humor is tricky, but we thought if it was done in good taste that it would work well,” says Ken Steele, president of St. Mary’s Medical Center. “The humor also makes something that is very serious health care a little more lighthearted.” The St. Mary’s campaign is all about building brand awareness and keeping the hospital’s name in the marketplace, and it seems to have worked in at least one respect: St. Mary’s received 100 calls from new patients within six weeks of launching the campaign.
Put On a Happy Face
Why is marketing for something as serious as health care taking the leap from dull to droll? One important reason is that humor puts a human face on what’s usually seen as a cold and impersonal business, explains Kathy Klotz-Guest, owner of Powerfully Funny Marketing, which helps businesses improve their marketing and communications through humor.
“Health care ranks just above oil and tobacco in terms of consumer trust and confidence; it’s very low,” she says. “Health care is usually about being sick, HMOs, managed’ health care and a lot of red tape. What humor can do is put a human, relatable face on a brand. A big company is hard to navigate, so humor actually personalizes it and gives it a human touch. Humor can also take the sting out of talking about a scary, often daunting subject such as health care.”
Another reason for the tonal shift: Humor stands out. “Ninety percent of hospital advertising is [different facilities] saying, We really care.’ No, we care.’ We care more than you do,’” says Gary Michael, senior vice president of marketing at Mercy Medical Center in Baltimore. “After a while, I think the consumers’ eyes glaze over and they think, I don’t care.’”
To distinguish Mercy from the pack, Michael developed the “Dial a Downtown Doctor” radio campaign to persuade downtown Baltimore workers to visit Mercy rather than suburban doctors. One installment featured a fictive newsman, “Downtown” Dave DeBoy, who loves using alliteration.
“He’d (interview) one person who was depressed’ because his doctor’ was out in the suburbs and he had to get into his car and drive, drive, drive,’ and he was detained’ behind a diesel’ and then became dyspeptic,’” says Michael. “Then
Downtown Dave would say, Why didn’t he simply walk to Mercy Medical Center?’” The first year of the Downtown Dave spots, Mercy’s physician referrals doubled and the increase has stood.
