Health Care Marketing

Shawn commented on my previous post and lead me to this article - What Obama Could Learn from Apple... on Health Care

Most of the article, I completely agree, and most of it I could not have written even close to as well as he did. Marketing is a strategy that the liberals/Democrats/what ever I am, are horrible at and the conservatives/Republicans have mastered. People like me think other should be convinced of the truth through data and facts. Show me a chart with standard deviations and an explanation of where the numbers come from and I can decide whether your information is worth my time. We should all do a little research, or find and trust others that do, and come up with the best answer.

In reality most people are often swayed by emotional arguments much more often than by a pretty little graphs. This is why so much money is spent on commercials, product placement, etc. Can you imagine commercials for Pepsi full of results from double blinded scientific surveys (of course) showing how their product is preferred over another? You'd probably fall asleep - and so would I. I will admit to buying a specific tea just because I like the color of the box! So even I, the rational being that I am, change my behaviour due to non-rational inputs. Just sad, but so true. And looking at my previous blog,

The republicans are excellent at creating quick little catch phrases that people remember and use. Climate change? Guess how that got started? The Bush administration removed all reference to Global Warming and began using the much more innocuous sounding term of Climate Change. Come on, the climate changes all the time. Haven't you heard of the 4 seasons? And the funny thing is, we all use the term on a regular basis. They've made socialism a dirty word and liberal an insult. Have you heard of "No Child Left Behind?" Sounds great - doesn't it. Who wouldn't want to vote for something like that?

When you think about this health care plan - what terms and phrases come to mind? Death panels, socalism, rationing. What nice little phrases come to your head that will convince people that the new plan is good? Any thing? I can't think of a darn thing.

Yes, the dems need to work on how to market. Catchy phrases, good terms, etc. They need to learn how to affect the people and not assume they are going to listen to the rants and raves of intelligent people.


As to what I don't agree with in the article, I am not sure how serious the writer is about Obama copying the type of marketing Apple uses. To me this is silly. Marketing insurance in the same you would market a product that can be held, touched, played with, etc. will not work. Apple did not start doing well just because of their marketing, but they made (and make) quality products that look nice. I haven't seen a single mp3 player, or other portable device, that looks as nice as an ipod. If I buy tea because of the color of the box, you can be assured I am affected by the looks of a product. Health care is more surreal. The marketing needs to be better, a lot better, and lot, lot lot better. But it's going to be a different type of marketing than apple uses.