Not if you Google and read articles with titles like – “What makes a great advertising agency?” or “Why advertise?” or “What makes a great ad?”

The many long and detailed answers can be found by doing just that. Go to Google and ask those questions or similar ones. You’ll get a lot of answers, voluminous answers.

So just to satisfy my curiosity, I asked two old ladies – pretty sharp old ladies – “Why do companies advertise?”

Guess what their answer was? “To sell their stuff, stupid.” And one added, “So folks will remember you.”

So if you have lots of spare time and want a challenge, Google those questions – “What makes a great advertising agency?” or “Why do companies advertise?”

If you think the answers might be “sell more stuff” – well, you’re in for a surprise. And a lot of reading.

The Healthcare Advertising Awards is one of the largest and most widely respected healthcare advertising competitions, receiving nearly 4,000 entries every year from around the country. The awards are sponsored by Healthcare Marketing Report, the leading publication covering all aspects of healthcare marketing, advertising and strategic business development.

Louisville’s Kosair Children’s Hospital is the only free-standing children’s hospital in Kentucky and is ranked among the top children’s hospitals nationwide. We knew our message would be relatable, but we wanted to take it a step further by choosing a song that people would recognize and remember. “Coming Home,” a national Top 100 hit song written by Jay-Z and Skylar Grey, was the perfect fit. Its symbolic lyrics underscored the outcome every parent of a critically ill child wants most – their child coming home. And coming home well.

For more trends in traveling to the Caribbean (where Iberostar has the finest destinations you’ll find anywhere in the region!), check this out:

http://bit.ly/gjSsYl

So with a nod of respect to our brothers and sisters whose work is represented in this year’s coverage, here is a sneak peek at some of the stuff you can expect to see this Sunday:

http://www.thestreet.com/story/11392295/1/2012-super-bowl-commercials-sneak-preview.html?cm_ven=GOOGLEN

I did hear or read somewhere that magazines are on the way out. People of a certain age remember having many more magazines than they do now – good ones too – like Look, Life, Saturday Evening Post, and many others. But they went away and now it looks like more might go the way of all those great magazines that went before.

So I had decided I don’t need Travel and Leisure anymore when, of course, one arrived in the mail today. I picked it up and started leafing through, page by page. I was amazed at what I saw – as if it was the first time I’d really looked. The color photos – usually full page and often the ads themselves – were spectacular! Glorious hotels, white sandy beaches, beautiful people and gourmet foods spread out in vivid color. In short, really mouth-watering color photography. Now if that magazine goes away, how in the world will we get that kind of beauty and heart-stopping color out of electronic gadgets? The answer is: we won’t. We’ll get internet clutter and images limited by the quality of our computer monitor and nothing like the pictures in magazines like Travel and Leisure.

I’m not ready to give that up.  Travel and Leisure, keep it comin’!

How do you feel?  Are you going all-electronic or do you still like the idea of holding wonderful content and photography in your own two hands?

If you’d like to see the article from The New York Times, click on the link below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/business/media/2012-could-be-a-good-year-for-advertising.html?pagewanted=all

• Internet shopping and purchasing was at an all time high. Buyers shopped on the web like never before and many only visited stores to see specific selections.
• The retail store location used to be a hugely important factor to shoppers. Does store location matter anymore? How about store size?
• What does the sudden demise of the mailed holiday greeting card portend for the US Postal Service, and for direct mail in general? How many more holiday email messages did you receive this year, and how many fewer actually mailed cards?
• Are there some products and services that simply can’t be sold effectively on the internet? What strategies do marketers of these products need to adopt to survive in shopping’s new age?

Here is a not-too-far-fetched picture of the “new” retail environment:

• Housewife tells hubby, “Let’s go shopping this morning for a new widget.”
• Instead of grumbling, hubby leads the way into a room that used to be called the “TV Room” and is now called the “Media Center.”
• Once there, they fire up the flat screen monitor that covers one entire wall. The housewife turns to the wall and says, “We’re shopping for a widget today.”
• The 3D screen lights up and a nattily dressed salesperson walks into focus – “Do you have a specific widget or brand in mind?”
• “Yes, – the one that’s shown on the XYZ website.”
• “Found it.  Will there be anything else?”

Buyer and seller have found one another in a way that couldn’t be imagined just a few years ago. The salesperson – who isn’t a person at all ­– makes the sale, accesses a credit card that is already on file, downloads shipping information to the buyer’s computer and the item is on its way. And before we even have time to adjust to this new reality, the entire transaction is now often taking place on the couple’s smartphone.

What do you think? Are you ready for this? Or are you that rare individual who still likes crowded malls, not enough sales personnel, calling stores that won’t answer to try to find an item and the occasional episode of road rage? I didn’t think so.

Happy Holidays from Frederick Swanston!

I’m not sure why the online advertisers aren’t doing more interactive ads now. It seems so natural. Isn’t that what makes the internet so great – the back and forth between users?

Maybe I’ve just been looking at the wrong sites or ads, but it seems to me that many of the internet advertisers could get more for their money if somewhere in their message they asked potential consumers – right then, in “real time” – to take a quiz about the ad they are seeing:

a)    I loved the ad

b)    I hated it

c)     I didn’t learn enough

d)    Here’s how I’d make it better

If they took the quiz they would get an immediate reward – isn’t that what everyone wants these days, “instant gratification?”  Maybe it would be a coupon or other offer to keep the dialogue going. If the reward was juicy enough, you could ask for demographic information and build a database.  Then, you can REALLY interact!

What do you think?  What advertisers are doing this now, and is what they are doing really interactive?  Why aren’t more advertisers taking better advantage of the interactive nature of the internet?

These institutions foreshadow our healthcare future. As they increasingly build elements of insurance risk into their business models, or partner with insurance companies to offer a packaged Accountable Care Organization (ACO), marketing will focus less on the acquisition of patients and more on enrolling and building healthy populations into their system. Marketing will exist to drive new patients into their organization’s primary care providers, where the patient’s health and wellness will be cared for by a Team of appropriate providers, based on clinical needs. The marketer will promote the system’s access/entry points that are convenient and accessible – highlighting the other benefits of the system such as technology, IT capabilities or sub-specialists that may differentiate them from the competitors. Audience segmentation and more effective targeting will become standard operating procedures for all systems; improved tools will be developed that track media usage by select target audiences – to more effectively reach the “ideal” new patient. CRM tools and the ability to dig deeper into a hospital’s database will be used by all viable systems.

The test of a good marketer has always been: is he/she able to measure and prove a positive Return on Investment (ROI)?  ROI in the past came from increased revenues, increased patient volumes, and increased market share. But, how we define positive ROI will change for the marketer of the future. In the future, as we look at Accountable Care Organizations, where caring for a patient will be less episodic and more based on longevity, ROI will need to be redefined.  ROI will be based more on loyalty and keeping that patient in the system, keeping the patient healthy by insuring that provider-to-patient communication has been clear and understood and that the patient maintains the “doctor’s orders and instructions” at home to prevent readmissions (i.e. insuring compliance with medical orders and advice). Loyalty will be a function of care expectations being surpassed, the ability to offer sub-specialty care and technology that others may not offer and continual communication at the patient’s request and within the patient’s timeframe.

And new opportunities for marketing professionals will emerge.  With a primary care shortage emerging, systems will be forced to use lower cost providers and marketers will be challenged initially to communicate their value and efficiencies over the beloved MD.

Use of technology by marketers of the future:

According to a survey of 100+ Chief Marketing Officers in the US by Acsys Interactive in 2010, the percentage of one’s budget spent on digital media by healthcare marketers will rise from 9.9% in 2010 to 36.6% in 2013. There will be more search engine optimization (SEO), patient portals, physician portals, video and social media. The skill set of the new marketer must include digital and telecommunications. For rural and smaller hospitals this is a challenge. If they are not aligned with a larger system, they will not be able to afford an FTE dedicated to digital marketing.

So marketers, does this match what you see from your perspective?  Are you ready for the future?