We recently developed a mixed media campaign for Memorial Physician Services (MPS), an affiliate of Springfield, IL-based Memorial Health System. The beautifully-shot 30 second spot conveys a clear message: that MPS doctors are more than just doctors; they’re personal guides to great health.

Several different scripts were presented to Memorial Health System. Their marketing department, physicians, and staff chose the script you see in the video. It was a complex shoot, but efficiency allowed us to both shoot and edit into a final polished spot within one week. At Demi & Cooper, we take pride in using technology to our advantage. It used to be producing a spot that looked half has good took twice as long. No longer!

Wondering what Demi & Cooper can do for you? Drop us a line!

Clockwise from Top Left: Walter, Josh, Luke, Mark

One month ago, Sherman Health announced a new Facebook contest: mustache-growing for men’s health awareness. Deanne wrote about the contest last week, and you can get contest details here, but for this post, I wanted to toot the horns of some mustache submitters who, because of their affiliation with Sherman, are not eligible to win prizes. All mustache scores below are out of a possible 10.

1. Walter

The Man: Walter is Web Art Director and the man we rely on at Demi & Cooper for all things technology. As far as we know, Walter controls the Internet. If you told someone besides Walter to go reset the modem, we’d stare at you with a blank face until you went elsewhere. We literally need Walter to function.

The Mustache: Luckily, Walter does not need his mustache to function. It’s nearly indistinguishable from his skin, which is not ideal. His lips are pursed in the photo above, implying he’s chewing something, he’s super creepy, or both. The hand on the chin tells us he’s thinking about something, most likely prunes.

Also, the name he gave the photo (“You stay classy, Chicago”) reveals a close affiliation to the movie Anchorman, a film whose protagonist was #1 on our Top 5 Movie Mustaches list.

Creepy Score: 7.5

2. Josh

The Man:Josh is Sherman’s Marketing Communications Manager, and a man with a quick wit and an open mind for any idea. His unmustachioed personality is one of the best we could hope to work with.

The Mustache: The smirk is unsettling, as is the black background. This photo may have been taken in an underground lair. Extra credit goes to Josh for going for a creepy look and nailing it (he titled it “Not at all creepy”, which just made my sarcasm detector explode).

Creepy Score: 9.99

3. Luke

The Man: Luke is me, and thus I will stop talking in the third person. I write things at Demi & Cooper, and I am newly married to a beautiful woman who is fully supportive outside of all things mustache.

The Mustache: It’s in black and white not for stylistic purposes, but because of necessity: my mustache in living color is one of the most horrifying things you will ever witness.

I said earlier Walter’s mustache is almost skin-colored, but that’s nothing compared to this. To properly explain, I recently described the mustache to a group of people who were wondering what it looked like as “fleshy”. Eww.

I titled my submission “1950s blog author”, which is funny because blogs did not exist back then, you see. And just like that, I ruined the joke.

Creepy Score: 4 in black and white, 12.5 in color

4. Mark

The Man: Mark is also recently married, to Michelle, Marketing Specialist at Sherman. He is ineligible to win because of his wife’s ties to the contest. Dealbreaker? Dealbreaker.

The Mustache: I cannot stress enough how much more awesome Mark’s mustache is than the previous three.

We’re all friends here, so I’ll shoot straight. I’ve creeped on some of Mark’s Facebook photos. In my defense, whatever, man. Creeping happens. I had no idea that beneath his seemingly clean-cut exterior lay the perfect Hulkamania trucker mustache.

Awesome Score: 10

Want to vote in the Sherman Health Movember Mustache Contest? All you need is a Facebook profile. Click here to get started, and remember not to vote for Walter, Josh, Luke, or Mark.

When you break our job as creatives down into specific functions, one of the most valuable things we do is to take things people see everyday and look at them differently. So when Wired magazine published the results of three designers who were commissioned to team up with physicians at the Dartmouth Medical School Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice to re-imagine lab reports, I must admit I swooned a little.

You’ve probably had labs done on your blood at one point in your life. But there is a good chance you’ve never seen the results (in many states it’s illegal for a lab to send results to a patient). But even if you had, you probably couldn’t understand them on your own. They’re largely indecipherable to a lay person, filled with abbreviations and numbers that reveal the secrets of your blood only to those few in-the-know. I think that is terrible. Lab results don’t have to be intimidating. Confusing lab reports are a wasted opportunity to provide an important and informative tool to patients.

These lab report re-imaginings are inspirational, not only from a design standpoint, but for the future of our own healthcare.

1. The Basic Workup

To put it simply, the basic workup checks for everything to make sure you don’t have anything. It’s a large dragnet that rounds up all the usual suspects so that a doctor can focus on specific areas if there are any concerns.

The Basic Workup (Before)

The Basic Workup (After)

Results redesign: Mucca Design

2. The Heart Disease Test (CRP Test)

The CRP blood test measures vascular inflammation, and it’s a strong indicator of future cardiovascular problems. It is key to recommending what type of medical treatment you need and what you can do on your own to change your life. In other words, it’s really important — too bad you probably can’t understand it.

Heart Disease Test (Before)

Heart Disease Test (After)

Results redesign: David McCandless

3. The Prostate Test (PSA Test)

A PSA Test measures the amount of Prostate-specific antigen (a protein cooked up by the prostate gland) in your blood. PSA is sometimes called a biological marker or a tumor marker, though there is some controversy over this.

The Prostate Test (Before)

The Prostate Test (After)

Results redesign: Jung + Wenig

In Chicago, IL

Reports to: Director, Strategic Planning
Manage design and production of analyses to inform strategic planning efforts throughout the organization. Typical analyses include market / competitor assessments, clinical programming, volume and financial projection, and business development planning. Oversee preparation of standard reports, Board-level presentations, and additional ad-hoc analyses with particular focus on service line planning and development.
Requirements: Three to six years of relevant work experience and ability to demonstrate leadership abilities. Proficiency with database, presentation, and spreadsheet applications is required. Well-developed oral and written communication skills are a must. Advanced degree (e.g., MBA, MPH, MHA).

For more information and to apply, contact:
Anthony Bileddo
Partner
Management Recruiters of Elgin
472 N. McLean Blvd., 2nd Floor
Elgin, IL 60123-3274
Phone: 847.697.2210 x27
Fax: 274.697.0622
Anthony_billedo@mrelgin.com
www.mrelgin.com

Despite proven success, only 10% of U.S. hospitals and health systems are involved in social media (California HealthCare Foundation).   Even worse, few of the 10% really take advantage of the “social” side of this medium, instead preferring to simply push out messages about services, classes, and general news.  In fact, per the study, only 6% of all tweets (in the sample) were social interactions; therefore, 94% of all hospital and healthcare tweets were simply information.

This needs to change.

For social media to work, hospitals must be social.  Rather than just tweeting news, or uploading press releases to Facebook and LinkedIn (which, by the way, is still important), why not post discussion points, such as “how can we improve our Emergency Department?”, or “we’re redesigning our waiting rooms and would like your opinion regarding the furniture, carpets and wallpaper.”

This article has great information to help, so click the link below for a more thorough read:

Tactics for Achieving ‘Socialness’

According to an article by Kay Lazar published in the Boston Globe today, moms have banded together to stop Beverly Hospital from closing their birthing center.

Per Ms. Lazar, “in a four-sentence statement from Northeast Health System, which owns Beverly Hospital, officials noted that the intense grass-roots campaign to save the North Shore Birth Center had ‘not gone unnoticed.’ But the statement also made it clear that the center’s future is still very much in question.

‘The Board of Trustees is diligently weighing the impact that the closure of the Birth Center would have on the community,’ the statement read. ‘The board intends to leave the Birth Center services unchanged while it continues to examine and discuss this important issue.’ Officials declined to elaborate.

Last week, the hospital released a statement that said the birth center’s future was being scrutinized because the facility was ‘experiencing a significant rise in the cost of malpractice insurance premiums.’ That prompted a barrage of letters, fliers, pickets, and an Internet campaign to save the center. Organizers say they are very much continuing the fight.

‘It sounds like we have a stay of execution here,’ said Rebecca Hains, a 32-year-old Peabody mother who brought her 8-week-old son to join about 100 protesters outside Beverly Hospital during the trustees’ meeting.

Hains said campaign organizers would probably continue to push for a meeting with hospital officials and offer to work with them to revamp the state’s malpractice system.

The hospital’s dilemma is occurring amid a high-stakes debate across the country about soaring malpractice insurance and proposals to overhaul the system.

A survey released Monday by the state’s medical society found that obstetricians were among the most likely caregivers to say that fear of lawsuits prompted them to order medically unnecessary imaging tests and to reduce high-risk services.

North Shore Birth Center offers women with low-risk pregnancies an option of delivering their babies without drugs to induce labor and control pain or machines to monitor the process.

It is run out of a cottage on the grounds of Beverly Hospital and features a whirlpool bath or tub for labor and delivery and holistic approaches for pain management. The only other such facility in the state is at Cambridge Hospital.”

The grass-roots effort is really a campaign that used eblasts and social marketing to get the word out, and traditional media to spread the word to others in order to build their communication base.

So see? As I wrote in an earlier post about mom’s using blogs, social media is a great tool for building relationships and increasing your communication base.