If you’re in marketing, or if your idea of a good time is following privacy issues beyond just those associated with Facebook and Instagram, you’ve certainly heard the phrase “remarketing” in 2012.  From a marketing perspective, remarketing is a dream.  It’s the web world’s automated equivalent of a salesperson getting the phone number of a prospect who visited the “store” in order to contact the person at a later date — except remarketing does not know anything about the person to whom the sales messages will be delivered, other than that the person had visited a coded website, and remarketing simply feeds ads to the prospects as they peruse various websites fed by Google ads.

In a nutshell, once someone visits your site, a code from your site is placed on the person’s browser that allows Google to feed your remarketing ads to the person at a schedule you create.  These can be pay-per-click ads, so it only cost you money if the person clicks on the ad.  Even better is that if, while on your site, the person does what you want him to do (ie purchases, signs up for a class, fills in a contact form, etc.), the remarketing code can be removed automatically.  The thought is, why spend money marketing to someone who just bought?  Then again, your remarketing dollars to that person can be spent on getting a testimonial from the buyer.  Pretty cool, huh?

Here’s Google’s webinar on remarketing.  It’s one hour long, but worth it if you want to understand how it works.

UPDATED 9/18/12:  IF YOU READ THE POST ALREADY, SKIP TO THE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM.

Many healthcare marketers like to throw things at the consumer wall to see what sticks. It’s not a bad practice, especially when you really analyze what sticks in order to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of your marketing. In fact, we do the same thing.

Let's see: Recipes. Hair styles. Inspiring quotes. And hospitals?

One marketing idea we threw at the wall was a video about the day in the life of a therapy dog. The question at the time, and this was a few years ago when Flip Cameras were just starting to gain in popularity, was whether videos drew people to our clients’ websites, and whether this subject matter had any traction. Well, this video stuck better than we expected, quickly turning into one of the more popular videos we produced at the time thanks to our posts in social media and our eblasts linking to the video, and drawing not only the local market to our client’s site, but people from around the country.

What we threw at the wall those many years ago took some time to coordinate, produce and market. It wasn’t easy, which made it important for us to know whether this activity drew a strong enough response to warrant future attention. But from the results, it was clear that videos needed to be a big part of our social media future. And to this day, they are.

And now we have Pinterest which is, like videos years ago, still in its infancy and still being analyzed to see if and where it fits into a marketer’s toolbox–regardless of what industry is being marketed. Some businesses seem to fit perfectly with Pinterest (like our client Seigles, who sells kitchen cabinets and has beautiful photos that are desirable to anyone looking to create a new kitchen), so it makes perfect sense to continue to throw their images on the Boards at Pinterest (even though it is very hard to tell if there’s any real success). But Pinterest for hospitals–who in the world thought this was a good tool for hospitals to use to promote their services?

Well, based on all the information I’m seeing, just about everyone thinks Pinterest is great. The site is so sexy, so trendy, so attractive, and so easy to work with, that it doesn’t matter to most if those Boards that healthcare marketers are throwing at the wall are actually sticking. Healthcare marketers are creating Pinterest accounts in droves, joining webinars to learn how to capitalize on it, and pinning whatever seems to fit both the site and the hospital’s purpose. Clearly, nobody fears their jobs will be in jeopardy if they have a board on Pinterest.

While posting to Pinterest will almost certainly not harm a hospital’s brand, there’s no proof that anything hospital marketers pin is adhering to the wall strong enough and long enough to warrant the effort. My own professional opinion is that until they develop a geographic angle on the Pinterest site, or a way to track and work with users, it’s simply not worth the effort for healthcare marketers — even though their female, 25 years and up, demographic is highly desirable.

Right now, a Board on Pinterest is the equivalent of placing an ad in a national publication, but without the media cost. So although a hospital’s Pinterest board might be seen by thousands of (mostly) women and gain followers, the great majority of those followers likely are well outside the hospital’s service area. Quite simply, these pins are appealing to many people who almost certainly cannot be patients at the hospital. Hospital marketers are giving helpful recipes and exercise ideas to people who cannot impact their bottom line!

Oh sure, it doesn’t take a lot of time for healthcare marketers to pin anything they want, so it might not be seen as a total waste. In fact, that’s the defense presented in this article from American Medical News.

“Holly Hosler, marketing coordinator for LifeBridge Health, a hospital system in Baltimore, said that when several people in the hospital’s marketing department found they were spending a lot of time on Pinterest, they decided to start some on-the-job experimentation. They launched a board in March.

Their activity has mostly consisted of re-pinning content from other places. The content that has done well — and in Pinterest-speak “well” means that several people re-pinned the content — has been educational information about breastfeeding, especially posts that feature a picture of a cute baby to lure users. Hosler said she hopes to add more original content if interest in the site continues.”

But pinning does take a mindset. It requires marketers to have this website in the front of their minds in order to find and pin interesting and relevant subject matter. The Pinterest mindset comes at the expense of other, likely more time-consuming strategies and tactics, that are much more worthy of a healthcare marketers attention. To Ms. Hosler’s credit, her hospital seems to have a very active social media program, including a well fed blog, so this minor effort might be worth the test because it doesn’t come at the expense of other, more important, activities. But most hospital marketing staffs are taxed for time, barely getting to the tasks that really deserve attention. For those professionals, Pinterest should be low on their lists.

Video interviews with specialists, pay per click campaigns, mobile websites, service-line oriented discussion groups, segmented and targeted eblasts, and even basic blogs have already shown that they are permanently stuck to the wall, as they provide excellent returns on the hospital’s investment. But these activities require more thought to conceptualize, more cooperation among staff to coordinate, and more diligence to produce. Sadly, we see very few healthcare marketers tackling these trickier activities with a level of energy and enthusiasm that is worthy of the return they produce. It’s easier to pin, or to look at the pins from others. And few people in the C-Suite have enough knowledge of the marketing value of the Pinterest website to overrule the time that the marketing staff is devoting to it.

Further into the same article, you’ll find this nice summary from Jessica Seilheimer, senior vice president of digital strategy and planning for Euro RSCG Life Metamax, a health care marketing firm:

“Because of this narrow focus, Pinterest isn’t to a point where people are using it to seek out physician practices, Seilheimer said. But others say potential patients could stumble upon a practice’s website because of something that caught their eye on Pinterest.”

“Potential patients could stumble upon a practice’s website”?  I don’t think any client of ours would like to read that statement as the goal in a Creative Brief.  Not while other marketing efforts exist that are proven to actually lead people directly to the site.

So healthcare marketers, skip the hype and skip Pinterest for now.  Instead, take a clear look at the marketing wall and focus your efforts on the things that are clearly glued to it–especially the things that you are currently not doing.

UPDATE:

Okay, I’ve heard from quite a few people who agree with the point of this post, but I also heard from a few who fully subscribe to the whole “we’re just trying it out” idea.  When I ask how many hours a week they devote, they say it’s very little, like 1-2.  When I ask about the results, they say it’s hard to measure. Soooo, I measured for them.  On average, the great majority of hospitals I know who have a Pinterest page have 5 boards with one to five pins in each with maybe 1 or 2 repins of a few pins in each board (and usually those repins are things the hospital has repinned).  Even worse, they average less than 15 followers.

Then along comes this gushing review of the potential of Pinterest when you simply add a human touch.

“Rex Healthcare has been on Pinterest since the first of the year. He said it’s something that everyone in his marketing department is paying attention to. Papagan pins a few times a week. .  .  .  The organization’s goal is to increase its followers, likes and repins. Its Pinterest page has been cross-promoted on Twitter and Facebook. The hospital’s website and blog have navigation buttons for Pinterest. In addition, a Pinterest button will be added to the company’s email signature, along with its other social media platforms.”

Phooey.

So nine months, 18 boards and 358 pins later, Rex Healthcare’s Pinterest page has netted 91 followers.  But a video they posted on YouTube just one month ago already has 1,026 views, and they have a nice active blog and social media program (although I would push to get email addresses much harder on both the main site and the blog, and I wouldn’t allow someone to get an RSS feed of their blog since I cannot track readers through it).

I just don’t get the interest in Pinterest in the healthcare world.  And I’m not the only one.  Marissa Chachra, a a senior advisor with Jarrard Inc., has come to the same conclusion in this recent post, though she still holds out hope that there will be some value.  I do too, but I think it will be more in the area of consumer research rather than marketing to consumers.

Oh, and for the record, I truly enjoy Pinterest — personally.  Pinterest can be used to sell me watches, gardening tools, sports stuff, kitchen cabinets (which we do for Seigles), etc. easily.  But not healthcare.

Hiroshi Mikitani is a self-made billionaire in the world of online retail (he is CEO of Rakuten, which is often termed the Amazon of Japan), and he recently was a part of a $100 million round of funding for Pinterest, the growing social media sharing site.

Forbes has an in-depth interview with Mikitani that is filled with his perspective on Pinterest and why it’s was so attractive to him. A portion is excerpted below, but I’d encourage you to read the whole Forbes interview when you have some free time. It’s quite Pinteresting.

“Pinterest is not that popular in Japan yet, but through my network, from the early stages I knew about Pinterest. I have been following them, I use it, and started to realize this is a totally different social media. It’s difficult to generalize social media. Pinterest and Facebook are very different.”

Looking for more on Pinterest? The Spark Report has you covered. Also, my apologies for that terrible pun.

I’ve heard a lot of people talking about the massive impact Steve Jobs has had on the computing world since the news spread over Twitter and Facebook about his passing. I haven’t heard many talk about the quantum impact he’s had on our world as a whole. I’ll explain.

Steve Jobs is a rare individual — rare on a Jeffersonian scale. His push to make computers simpler, cleaner and more efficient began with a design that included a monitor and CPU all-in-one. The stout little original Macintosh Classic, with it’s unique graphical user interface (GUI), was a completely different way of looking at how we interacted with computers and how they fit into our lives. I learned design on a Mac Classic before there was anyone who could teach me about it.

Of course Jobs has had an impact on how computers function. I believe his impact extends beyond that into how we function. He’s impacted how we interact with each other. How we access information. How we learn. And that’s where his impact begins to compound on itself and grow exponentially — in a word, his impact becomes quantum.

Jobs heads up Apple, a company which creates tools that creative people use to create other things. Most creatives design, build, educate and inspire others from the the drawing table that is our Apple computers. From writers to designers to architects to chemists — so many of us start on a common platform which for so long seemed a little rogue — like an outsider’s alternative choice and even a physical identity (are you a Mac or a PC?).

It may sounds obvious, but to me it’s quite profound. For a creative, a computer is like a violin. It can be an object of beauty by itself, but in the right hands becomes a tool to create something amazing. A feeling. A desire. Something that can last a moment (like a website) or something that can last forever (a concept that takes hold of our collective imagination).

Many of us are remembering Steve Jobs today. For me, the best way I can remember Steve Jobs is to keep creating and inspiring others. That’s quantum.

The words “Facebook” and “Twitter” have been banned from being used on French television, Social Times reports.   The use of the social networking sites’ names on TV leads the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) to believe that smaller social networking sites and start ups have very little chance of competing with the networking giants.   The CSA, which is very similar to the FCC, asks that advertisers be more generic when directing consumers to their sites.

“Find us on social networking websites” is more appropriate than the “Follow us on Twitter” or “Find us on Facebook” taglines, according to CSA spokeswoman Christine Kelly.   She adds, “If we allow Facebook and Twitter to be cited on air, it’s opening a Pandora’s box…other social networks will complain to us saying, ‘Why not us?’”

France apparently has a soft spot for Friendster, Bebo, and Myspace, which remain unaffected by the ban.   This makes me wonder about the last time the words “Check out my Bebo!” were uttered by anyone at all.

While the CSA certainly is correct in pointing out that Facebook and Twitter are at the top of the social networking pyramid, they fail to recognize that many companies use these platforms as a primary means of interaction with customers.

In today’s conventional advertising model, a TV ad refers to the company’s social network, which in turn refers back to the company’s website for purchases to be made.   Businesses are intentionally choosing the top two networks because they have the largest target audience. I personally think that the top social networks increase the bonds with customers much more than TV ads will.   Consumers in France, upon hearing “Find us on social networks” on TV will still probably check Twitter and Facebook first, as they are so widely established and universally accepted.

The CSA insists that the ruling was not an attempt to regulate the adoption of English words via France’s Toubon laws, either.

Some related data from Nielsen shows that consumers around the world spent 82% more time on social networks in December 2009 than in the previous year.   The average time per person in the same study for the month of December 2009 was four hours for France:

So is this decree really about fair competition, or is it a modern example of unnecessary micro-regulation?   It will be interesting to see if any petitions from Facebook, Twitter, and/or the people of France will help remove the ban in the near future. While I am not a citizen of France, I find the CSA’s decision to increase regulation on TV advertising to be redundant.   More and more individuals choose to remain on the computer rather than watch television as it is, so why is it necessary to create more red tape for the creators of ads for this form of declining media? I’d like to see what Twitter-reliant (read: obsessed) CNN would try to do in that country.

The inclusion of Facebook, Twitter, and other social network names in commercials is not intended to be advertising for these sites.   At its extreme, saying “Find us on Facebook” is a challenge directed at potential customers to try and remember the name of the brand the next time you are on a computer. Time will tell whether or not such a ban may upset more people than it benefits.   Laissez-faire will have to wait, for now.

We recently quoted on a video project and our client was surprised by how inexpensive it was. Why was it inexpensive? Partly because we’re smart about controlling costs. Secondly, it’s 2010.

Technology is progressing to the point where the barriers to entry are becoming increasingly low. Video equipment is continually decreasing in cost, video editing which used to need a bank of computers and a suite filled with editing equipment can now be done on a fast laptop. This morning Digital Inspiration posted this video from Nokia. It’s a short professional film – shot in only four days in high definition entirely on a Nokia N8. Yes, the Nokia N8 is a wireless phone. Take a look. It stars Dev Patel from Slumdog Millionaire and Pamela Anderson.

Now before you give up your career to shoot a sequel to Inception (or even Patch Adams for that matter) you should know that while this film was shot on the N8, over 50 people were involved in the creation including a professional director, lighting technicians, gaffers, art directors, electricians, stunt coordinators, sound engineers, special effects artists and a few bankers with some pretty wicked parkour skills.

Remember when seeing used to be believing? That time when photos never lied? When you could rely on an image to present the truth — in court, in the news or even with your friend’s vacation photos? Yeah, me neither.

The first photo manipulation happened in the early 1860s to a photo of Abraham Lincoln. Abe’s head was pasted onto the body of the 7th President of the United States (and Christopher Lloyd/Dr. Emmett Brown look-alike), John C. Calhoun. In fact, that photo served as the basis for the original Lincoln five-dollar bill.

Then along came more advanced tools like Adobe Photoshop that made it easy for just about any hack to doctor a photo. But thank goodness for video — especially live video. Praise the last holdout. You can’t doctor video easily — especially not live video. Until now.

The kids over at Germany’s Technische Universität Ilmenau have created a simple-to-use tool to remove objects from live video. You just draw a circle around the object you want removed with a stylus. There is no programming. No complex frame-by-frame edits. I’m not sure if this is frightening or super cool. But at least we can be reasonably sure this new superpower will only be used for good. (Right?)

You may have heard of augmented reality. That’s the process of altering live video to add elements, such as New York’s Twin Towers. Well, this is augmented reality’s evil twin. It’s called Diminished Reality and it takes only a fraction of a second to complete. Watch the video below.

Recently the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago ran a front page story exposing “the tactics” of one local candidate who used interns to post positive comments online.  I’m surprised that anyone is surprised.

While I think it is wrong for volunteers to post multiple comments as if they came from more than one person, or to lie in their comments, I don’t have any problem with supporters going online in droves to support their candidate.  The forums exist because the online sites created them.  So why complain when they’re used legitimately? Plus, I’d rather have them posting things than filling my mailbox.

I also think there are plenty of other things wrong with campaigning that makes complaining about this “tactic” seem silly.  Recorded calls come to mind first, but that’s only because if I take the time to get the phone, there better be someone real on the other end.  I don’t even like getting recorded notices that my photos are ready.  Send me an email!  Campaign advertising in general is extremely suspect, simply because they cannot cover all the issues.  Rather than try to clear the murky waters by telling us why the candidate is good, they instead use fear to try to convince us that the other candidate is bad.  They say it works, but I think that’s because no candidate has the guts to stick to a 100% positive campaign (if you’re out there, give us a call because we’d love to represent you!)

Basically, I’m always looking for a good, honest person who will stand by his/her convictions, especially in the face of some hard attacks.  But in today’s world fear seems to be the only clear catalyst for voters.

These online comments mean nothing to me, regardless of their quality or quantity.  Both sides have their supporters, and both sides can put their messages everywhere.  I’m not buying any of it.  After all, how do we know those supporters know anything about any of the issues? Indeed, nearly all of them demonstrate that they’re not like me (hopelessly adrift in the gray middle ground) simply by being such an ardent supporter of one side.  Their passion is a bit disturbing.

But when it comes to promoting businesses, online comments are very powerful.  Readers of those comments are not so jaded, likely because other than a few companies who’ve been caught paying people to promote them online, the comment section is somewhat innocent and often helpful.  Sure, some people are overly supportive while others are overly negative.  As reported in another post, those on the extremes tend to wipe themselves out, lending more credibility to the less passionate reviewers who tend to be specific in their reviews about what they liked or didn’t like.  In fact, if a comment seems helpful (whether positive or negative), the reader might soak it in, accept it, and maybe even spread it.  Plus, business reviews aren’t so complex.  You either like it or you don’t.  The less selling readers see, the more likely they are to accept it.  Maybe our trust of these straight-forward reviewers is based on the idea that they are like us — they were unsure of the product or service as well, took a chance and tried it, and are now telling us about their experience.

So go ahead and ask those satisfied customers to post their opinions online and tell them to be totally honest.  You can even recommend the sites that could help you the most.  I wouldn’t publish a list for all to see (no sense giving disgruntled customers a forum), but I wouldn’t hesitate to ask for help from those who like me.  Heck, I often ask clients to talk with potential clients about my work.  Why not ask them to do it online?  After all, it’s 2010.  Technology and information rule.

More important than having online reviews, however, is adding links back to your site in posts related to what you do.  If there’s a story about prostate cancer screening, why shouldn’t a hospital post a comment promoting their screening facility?  It’s helpful information, right there at the readers’ fingertips.  Don’t forget to track the link and send people to the right page, preferably one with an appointment scheduler.  If you’re writing these comments, be yourself.  There’s no need to be anonymous, nor is there any need to paint yourself as a happy patient — even if you are.  Instead, tell them you work there (it’s the ethical thing to do) and would like to invite them to your facility.  Simple as that.

I can assure you that this works — and it costs nothing compared to buying an ad on the same site or in the print version.  We do this all the time, with much success.  I think the value here is that our posts are directly associated with an unbiased report.  It’s a lot like having an ad for a mosquito repellent on the same page as a story about the upcoming attack of the little blood suckers — except you didn’t pay for the space.  What’s more, although you’re promoting your product or service, you also look helpful to the reader, so long as you’re honest about your intentions and don’t oversell.

So don’t hesitate to comment online to promote your business.  It’s not the bad thing political campaigns are making it out to be, and it is extremely cost effective.

You may know you’re old when after a morning of mountain biking, meeting for lunch with your financial adviser and then watching the sun set over a lake with your significant other while sitting (for some weird reason) in separate old claw-foot bathtubs that you dragged out on the lawn — you just want to relax in front of some good old-fashioned TV. That is if you believe the latest TV viewer median age data gives you the complete picture.

Steve Sternberg, a media analyst, just released some new data showing that TV’s audience — which should be no surprise to anyone — is getting older. ABC’s median viewership is now 51, one year older than last season. CBS is now 55, also a year older. NBC is up two years, to 49. Fox is still at the kid’s table at 44. Ten years ago  ABC was 43, CBS was 52, NBC was 45 and Fox was just 35. That means the same viewers haven’t changed their habits. They’re just putting more candles on their birthday cakes.

It’s not quite fair to point fingers at broadcast either. Cable is in the same boat (or is that a clawfoot bathtub?). In fact, Fox News is the oldest channel of all time at 65 — surprisingly older than the Hallmark Channel, Military Channel and the Golf Channel. CNN is 63, MSNBC 59 and CNBC (oddly enough) 52. What’s the youngest fully distributed channel? Oxygen. Then Bravo, VH1 Classic, Travel and TLC. Their median age is about 42.

So what’s happening here? Why are younger people not watching TV anymore? Are they all on the Internet? Do you know many people who don’t have cable, satellite or fiber optic TV in their homes? Of course not. I think the problem lies within how younger people consume media and the way we currently collect data.

Learning how to be less loyal

Not that long ago broadcast television was king. There were three major channels. And then Fox. I remember when Fox took over WFLD in Chicago. My father dismissed the station out of hand — thinking it wouldn’t be around long. After all, how could it compete with three big juggernauts. As far as I was concerned it was great — why wouldn’t I want another programming option. Especially one with cutting edge shows like The Tracy Ulman Show (the birthplace of The Simpsons) and In Living Color.

The introduction of Fox wasn’t merely an extra channel. It was the beginning of new way to consume media. We were being taught that we didn’t need to be loyal. That’s confusing to networks; television programming is designed around loyalty, airing certian shows after other popular shows to gain viewership. Television was quickly turning into dim sum. Younger viewers now consume media in tasty little bites by surfing around, bouncing from channel to channel, show to show. Older viewers are more inclined to tune into a station and leave it there. Want physical and anecdotal proof? Two words: Fox News.

In other words younger viewers are more splintered. Not only do we have 50 channels to surf, we have social networking sites, YouTube, blogs and streaming television options like Hulu (which has a cluelessly designed, extremely limited and underutilized advertising model) and Netflix (with absolutely no advertising model). The current ratings model isn’t only skewing older, it’s skewing older and because of a relatively unsophisticated interpretation and collection of data, dangerously ignoring younger viewers. There needs to be even more sophisticated methods of measuring data across multiple television channels and alternative media at the same time — and a way to compile all that data into one massive profile analysis.

Pulling back and looking at a more complete picture is vitally important. For example: yes — older people may be signing up for social media sites like Facebook — but they’re not using those tools to their full advantage or frequently enough (learn more at our free webinar, Tuesday, August 17th at 12pm CST, titled Reaching Boomers Via Social Media). TV is still the best way to reach consumers over 45, but the larger picture is that they’re not alone. Make no mistake. Younger viewers are still watching TV. They’re just consuming it differently.

As of this morning Facebook hit a major milestone. A whopping 500 million users.

It’s hard to imagine how big that number is, and personally it boggles my mind. I’ve written before about if Facebook were a country it would be the third largest in the world only after China and India. So much for all of you who say you’re giving up Facebook, huh? While that will eventually happen it’s probably not going to occur anytime soon.

Facebook also launched a pretty creative “thank you” from their employees. It serves as both a sweet and heartfelt appreciation for the support of their users — and no less important — a clever way to help humanize the company. This is especially important since the new, and possibly damaging, Facebook movie is coming out this fall.

In addition, Facebook has launched a new blog called Facebook Stories. It’s a way for those who have found Facebook to be an important tool in their lives to share their stories. You can also browse and read other’s stories, all categorized by unique themes and locations around the world with an interactive map.