By Sarah Ellerman
February 4, 1999

It seems that every time you drive down a highway or flip on your TV, you’re bombarded by healthcare advertisements. In the stylized world of the ads, each provider proclaims itself the most competent, the most caring, and the most convenient. But is it enough to help people make choices about which facility to use?

A lot of money goes into ensuring that it is. The average hospital spent $206,000 on advertising in 1997, and the average healthcare system spent more than half a million dollars, according to Marketing by the Numbers, a study of trends in healthcare marketing put out by the American Hospital Association (AHA) Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development.

There are many reasons for providers to advertise. Mostly, the thinking is that you have to spend money to make money. "With the recent reimbursement cutbacks brought about by the Balanced Budget Amendment, it’s really putting pressure on all healthcare providers to increase their volume of business," said Joel English, senior vice president at Milwaukee-based BVK/McDonald, a national marketing communications firm that concentrates on healthcare accounts.

The situation is compounded by the fact it’s difficult to sell the entire healthcare experience in one little ad. "What you do is make people aware of options. You give them questions to ask," said Donald E. L. Johnson, CEO of The Business Word Inc., in Englewood, Colo., which publishes Profiles in Healthcare Marketing and Healthcare Advertising Review. Healthcare ads are often just enough to plant the idea in people’s heads that a hospital exists, Johnson said.

Two different worlds

According to the AHA study, the most popular types of hospital ads are service-line promotions, which hospitals use to promote specific programs, such as cardiology or obstetrics. However, even ads for specific products are really designed to serve the larger purpose of creating "top-of-mind awareness" in consumers about the hospital’s overall image, Johnson said.

Branding, another strategy, has recently become a powerful force in hospital advertising, said Steven Steiber, PhD, senior vice president of Opinion Research Corp. International in Skillman, N.J., which compiled the AHA survey. As provider organizations consolidate and get bigger, a major focus is helping consumers recognize a brand name, which is why names are often changed and facilities linked to flagships. "We want to give people something that is memorable," Steiber said.

Slightly distinct from hospital advertising is managed care promotion. "Growth in managed care is inexorable and we’ll continue to see that it moves and shakes," Steiber predicted. And it’s important to remember, said Johnson, that HMOs are essentially insurance companies that are trying to get enrollees. Their strategy? "They are selling their openness and their full coverage and the ease of doing business with them. A lot of their advertising is to build credibility, to build awareness, and to build demand for insurance," Johnson said.

The when, where, and how

Hospitals are advertising in the same places they have for years, according to the AHA survey. Print is still the primary medium (38.8 percent), mostly because it allows advertisers to target specific audiences, with television and the Yellow Pages tied for second place. Bringing up the rear are radio, direct mail, outdoor signs, and the Internet.

But what is changing is the feel of the ads. One surprising element in some new ads is humor. Poignant, warm, and informative ads are a mainstay of the industry, but how will "funny" fare? "People are experimenting, and I think that’s good," said Steiber, who predicted that ad techniques used in other fields will soon be brought to health care.

The primary technique used thus far, said English, is emphasizing compassion. In many cases, facilities are comparable—the human factor is the only thing that differentiates them. "If you have a product that tends to be rationally identical to other competitors, … what you may choose to sell is security," English said.

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