As a recognized health care marketing expert, Susan Dubuque of ND&P helped several industry notables outline the benefits of radio in the current issue of Healthcare Marketing Report.

Some key points:

• Ratings measurability (thanks to passive electronic people meters)
• Excellent for cross-promotion (directing consumers to Websites, etc.)
• Supportive of other media (message reinforcement)

For more of Susan’s insights, and actual creative examples, read the full January 2010 article: “Its Demise Was Exaggerated: Radio Advertising Is Still Effective.”

(-Shaun Amanda)

Take “augmented reality” (or “AR” for short) and what it could mean for any number of industries.  An example of AR would be using your iPhone’s camera to view the world around you, with the iPhone displaying graphics overlayed on the “real” view of your surroundings.  A Parisian subway application gives us a hint of what such a capability could offer (see the Fast Company article).  In an industry like healthcare perhaps you could have distances to facilities and services mapped out before you.  For higher education and hospitals, virtual tours could provide all sorts of hotspots.  And obviously any history buff can envision a walking tour where content appeared based on your position and offer a view from another era.  Fast Company further points out it’s not just about smartphones, but kiosks as well such as in this Lego example. 

 AR is just one example of something with tremendous potential that could destroy predictions if it soars quickly. It could potentially make massive changes in the social spheres online—imagine an AR app that “shows” you the locations of virtual stores, complete with hanging-in-mid-air Tweeted reviews from moments before; or a series of AR “mirrors” that are just monitors with cameras, but allow you to “collect” items in a store for an outfit so you can see what it would look like on you without trying on a thing- and then send to friends on Facebook for instant feedback with a poke in the air of a logo.

Daydreaming about AR may be a geek’s passion, but the tools are in hands now and the avalanche of technology is coming. Keeping one eye on what audiences are doing and could be doing is exactly where this geek likes to be.

UPDATE: Think this is far off? Read this: Yelp just snuck in the first U.S. iPhone app with AR with their "Monocle" feature...

-Dean

That’s the line I often use before I show a particular example or two in my recent presentation on new media and generational differences. When I speak to healthcare audiences, typically that statement is followed by a dive into Sermo, the social network for physicians. However, if I’ve done my job, by the time I’ve gotten to that question there isn’t any question in anyone’s mind that social media, like it or not, is not the exclusive domain of young people.

In fact, in services like Twitter, it’s the older demographics that actually dominate, especially from a content creation standpoint.

Facebook has a stigma that many older demographics have trouble shaking. For many in the last few years, they only joined to keep tabs on kids or because younger and/or more savvy friends finally pushed them over the edge to join. In the last six months a pretty significant sea change has occurred behind Facebook walls, even if it hasn’t been terribly public. The interesting element to Facebook’s “walled garden” model is that little contextual worlds grow on their own, often without much overlap or notice. Sure you might occasionally see the Mom of a friend of yours up in the “suggested friends” corner, but even if you add them you can relegate them to the see-no-evil Friends List that makes your association with them as harmless as you aimed for in high school. Contrary to the popular belief of 2008 and prior (in many older demographics’ eyes) Facebook is increasingly becoming about privacy and careful associations, not as much Wild West as it may seem on the surface. Consider how many Gen X’ers now require their parents to have a Facebook account so they can see photos of the grandkids.

So today’s report in some ways is of no surprise on its face, but still makes for a very stark reality that would shock many people who don’t partake of social media. In short: there are more grandparents than grandkids. “There are more Facebook users over 55 years old today than there are high school students using the site.”

Webcast Your Brain Surgery? Hospitals See Marketing Tool (NYT) http://bit.ly/fSYR3

Microsoft, American Cancer Society team up to help people with cancer w/ new Circle of Sharing social portal...www.cancer.org/sharing

What the Wolfram Alpha search engine means for clinicians (medGadget) http://tinyurl.com/oheeul

New research from Pew's Susannah Fox on consumers using social media and mobile for health information...http://bit.ly/19FYE7

20 Aster Awards -- 10 Gold, 6 Silver and 4 Bronze

10 Virginia Society for Healthcare Marketing & Public Relations Measure of Excellence Awards -- 4 First Place, 4 Second Place and 2 Third place (we swept the TV and Outdoor categories)

2 Hermes Platinum Awards, both for VCU

That’s on top of the 34 Healthcare Advertising Awards!  And, by the way, it’s official – ND&P won more awards in that competition than any other agency!

Last week, while Danny and I were speaking at CPM’s Client Symposium, the schedule for this year’s Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival was released. Sure, on it’s face the two things don’t have much connection (except for an over-excited concert-go’er and new media speaker like myself) but a few tricks Bonnaroo employed made me think about how healthcare could apply them. Bonnaroo’s schedule was available for browsing in its plainest form, but there was also the option for using Facebook Connect.

Facebook Connect, for the uninitiated, is a way for sites outside of Facebook to let you use your Facebook account to quickly log in and interface with a website. Think of the blog where you don’t have to fill out a lengthy registration process just to leave a comment, but rather just click a couple of times and link your Facebook account. Even more helpful and potentially cool, Facebook Connect can use some interesting integration with your friends and such.

How did Bonnaroo use Facebook Connect and what does it have to do with healthcare? When you chose to log in with Facebook Connect to plan your schedule, it sped you past any registration screens and Bonnaroo quickly gave you the option of telling all your friends via Facebook or Twitter that you were planning your schedule. Even better, the schedule was part of a dynamic interface showing you a grid or even a map view of where you’ll be when. Your Facebook friend’s profile pictures gathered at the bottom of the screen, indicating that they too were planning their Bonnaroo experience. One click let you browse their schedules and it was cool to see others as excited as I was about our impending vacation. There were only about 7 of my friends in that list, but hey- it was only the first two hours since the scheduled had been released.

A few minutes later I was sitting in a presentation about health screenings and I thought about how potent the peer and family influence is on medical decisions. What if your health screening registration system used Facebook Connect? What if you could encourage your peers to attend screenings with just a click? Or at the very least inform them that you were taking that step. Aside from screenings you could track walk-a-thon’s, promotions, class registrations… maybe in similar ways to what you already do, but all within the peer bubble of Facebook. A place many hospitals find themselves having a difficult time getting into.

What else was pretty cool?

When the hotly anticipated (by fans) schedule came out, Bonnaroo.com promoted it in one clear way: the use of a widget they developed to help you plan your Bonnaroo experience. It was based off the old carnival fortune-teller machines – think the movie “BIG”- and called “Zoltaroo”). This simple widget, combined with a contest for those who publicly share their schedule, had hundreds of people on Twitter and Facebook telling all of their friends they were excited about the upcoming festival.

The map feature is great too – as both an interactive map and as something that interacted with my schedule. Imagine interacting with a health fair map and where your various screenings, freebies and info sessions are… or a recruitment fair?

Point being, Facebook Connect can be used incredibly slyly, and help dovetail neatly into other initiatives. It gives a clue that you’re in the networks they are in and that you’re interested in saving time in helping them connect to you and interact with content (all the while helping you connect with them in a way that doesn’t have the sometimes high-brand barrier of being a “fan” of a hospital or healthcare entity). And be sure to add this to your Generation Authentic quiver, who won't bat an eye at being able to register and connect their social world(s) quickly.

More on Bonnaroo, I’m sure, later this summer. It’s my one time of year where I unplug from my job and yet it’s also a heavy new media experience. And hey, check out my schedule!

-Dean

Next Wednesday, April 15th at 5:30pm at 202 Market (upstairs) in Roanoke, VA I'll be giving an unusual combo talk entitled: "Boomers, Beer, Hospitals and Priests: tales of new media" hosted by AD2 where we'll look at a few different ideas, industries and generations.  It's free for AD2 members and only $3 for everyone else.

The event on Facebook...

-Dean

What's the other telltale sign Twitter is getting big?  Our largest rash of Fail Whales in months.  Twitter fell over so many times this week many people just took a break.

Surprisingly, the traffic story wasn't the only big Twitter story this week.  Last week we had speculation that Google was going to snatch up Twitter, and today we have the more likely scenario that Microsoft and Google may be sparring for Twitter's attention.

And Thursday brought the fiber/phone outage in Silicon Valley and parts of the Bay Area yesterday, where AT&T used Twitter to communicate with customers (and those watching the story unfold).

On a side note, it was interesting to see as I was researching my next speech that the number of hospitals on Twitter surpassed 130 recently.  (A further aside, it's interesting that a hospital is able to keep a Twitter account going but so few (only 23) have blogs- but I suspect that number is simply reported on this site much lower than it really is.)

-Dean

In the past 20 years Susan has directed hundreds of healthcare marketing initiatives, from comprehensive multi-year programs to smaller, targeted projects. Prior to founding Neathawk Dubuque, Susan served as the Director of Marketing and PR for Mary Immaculate Hospital in Newport News, VA, where she was awarded the Touchstone Award by the American Society for Healthcare Marketing and Public Relations. Susan´s client experience ranges from academic medical centers to integrated health care delivery systems, and includes healthcare leaders like Washington Hospital Center and Georgetown University Hospital. She has published extensively on a variety of topics, with an emphasis on healthcare and not-for-profit marketing. Awarded 2008 Woman of the Year by the YWCA, Susan serves on a number of local, regional and national boards, and is an adjunct faculty member for Virginia Commonwealth University.