Out of the Box

It’s All About Us

By Menachem Lubinsky on May 11 2007

If you are like me, you probably listen to the news while driving to your next destination. Intermingled with the news reports and other features are the obligatory commercials. Within a half hour, you may be able to hear 6-8 commercials, almost all of them health related. Drugs, hospitals with special programs, hospitals in general and clinics are just some of the subjects that are being advertised. If you weren’t depressed enough by the news, the commercials might do the trick.

Where have all of the other advertisers gone? Some of the categories that were fashionable years ago are taboo today, including cigarettes and alcohol. Others prefer alternate media where visuals are possible. So it’s been left to the world of health care to virtually dominate the airwaves. They are incidentally very heavily into other forms of media as well.

Marketers for health care know that they strike a raw nerve in people when they bombard them with messages on feeling better or making the right choices when they are ill. People are by nature very concerned about their health and wellbeing and even if they do not have a specific malady that is being addressed in the advertising, tend to pay attention to what is being said.

Health care has also become a very competitive field which is why hospitals feel the need to promote their virtues. They essentially are looking for a medium to inculcate the mind of the listener, or even the reader when it is a print ad, that they are a quality health care institution and when it comes to health everyone wants quality without any compromises. The results, say marketers, are extremely impressive. Institutions that track the source of their intake credit the media almost as much as they do physicians and word-of-mouth.

What does that say about us as consumers? What lessons can be applied to other forms of marketing that do not involve health? Essentially, what we as consumers want is to hear or read about products and services that will make our lives better. A half of a percent increase on a money market or CD means more money and a better life. A discount on an airline ticket may make the difference between a vacation and staying home.

The reason people play the lottery is not because they are anxious to support education, but because they may, just maybe, win and give them a ticket to a better life. You can probably add to this list, but the bottom line is that you are more likely to remember pitches that promise improvement in your life rather than those who tout their own excellence or other virtue that does not connect the dots to a better life.

The principle of relating to how a product or service can make life better for the target customer is often ignored. Many companies either ignore or forget to tell the customer why their life will be better with their product. Browsing through an in-flight magazine,

I noticed several ads for luggage, an ideal medium to advertise such products. One of the ads spoke of their history, tradition, and durability of their products, while the other spoke of airline weight limits and their selection of lighter luggage, and even a newly introduced section for the Zip-Loc bag in their carry-on luggage for liquids to be taken on board. In this day and age of security other airline restrictions, I immediately bonded with the “practical” ad. This luggage will make travel easier for me and that’s what counts.

The health care marketers know that you are in perfect health and that most of what you hear or read does not apply, but they also know that you come in contact with many people and that you may at some point in your life have to make a decision that will include them. By saturating your mind with their attributes, the hope is that you will be a good ambassador, becomes an instant customer, or perhaps will recall the ad when you do need the product or service.

Yes, good marketing and advertising means using psychology to reach the targeted customer. Many ads begin with the introduction “If you or someone you know (or love)…. The idea is that the marketer does not want you to tune out if the message has nothing to do with you. They want you to think of family members and friends who could benefit. Of course, there is the added benefit of having you store the information in your memory bank for your own use.

I always advise clients to consider the possible benefits of their product to their audience as the litmus test on whether the ad will be successful. If you can’t figure out why your product will make life better for the customer, you are at a disadvantage. Research shows time and again that those messages that are able to communicate the benefits to the customer do well, while those that don’t can still help develop a brand but the success might not be as immediate, just as we saw in the health care advertising.

There is one more lesson that the health care advertising brings to mind and which should not be ignored. Triggering an emotional response from the targeted consumer is a goal worth pursuing. Communication companies selling long distance phone calls might sell their cheap rates but they at some point will add in the emotional angle, like staying in touch with Mom and so forth.

If you are overwhelmed by the number of health care ads, you can at least be intellectually satisfied by understanding the hows and whys behind this type of marketing and apply them to your own business environment.

Out of the Box is a collection of strategic marketing articles that Lubicom has published on various topics, trends and ideas in the marketing world. The articles have been published in the Hamodia weekly newspaper circulated on three continents to a readership of well over 100,000.

The name, "Out of the Box" is a term used frequently in business nowadays to describe creative thinking that is not the norm. It is meant to help a business pull away from the pack or separate oneself from the competition. It is to some extent fraught with risk, simply because it is not the run of the mill thinking, but it is at the same time the key to reaching the next opportunity.