Archive for the ‘Making Your Health Content Real’ Category
If January is always the time when people think about weight loss, it seems all the more so this year — the past six months or so have seen a sea change in how America thinks about obesity. There is less judgment and more urgency. It’s a national crisis (becoming a global one) and everyone knows what has to change. Americans need to get healthy and like it or not, for about half the population that means losing weight.
“Reshaping the Conversation on Health and Weight” is a great and important effort on behalf of The National Eating Disorders Association and the STOP Obesity Alliance to develop positive and helpful — not hurtful or harmful — ways of talking about being overweight. A panel of experts, including medical experts and people from the media among others, gathered to create a set of guidelines on how to discuss weight loss efforts in the healthiest ways. It’s aimed at the media (the “key source of public information about weight”) and implores those of us in a position to spread the message to change the message.
You can read the entire report here but here’s a quick preview:
The Media Should Convey That ...
Weight is about health, not a number on a scale or appearance expectations.
Incremental and sustained weight loss is safe, healthy and advisable. (suggestions include “discuss the health benefits of modest, incremental weight loss” and “place the emphasis on the weight-loss process rather than the ‘big reveal’ after large and rapid weight loss”)
Weight status doesn’t necessarily reflect health status. (“talk about health indicators, such as A1C, cholesterol and blood pressure and spread the message that good numbers for these health indicators are not tied to size …”)
It takes more than just willpower to lose weight — a strong support system is necessary.
BMI is one of many factors in determining a person’s weight as it relates to health.
Body size and shape are chiefly determined by inherited factors and strongly influenced by environmental factors. (“communicate more about the obesigenic environment in which we live …”)
It’s excellent advice … and advice that we here at Balance will be keeping in mind in our upcoming efforts in health messaging.
Meanwhile, happy new year!
My daughter and six of her friends went to school today dressed for Halloween as Snapple bottle caps–Real Facts and all. These are not little kids. They are Juniors in high school and they looked adorable.
What struck me however, was that my daughter and her friends were all able to recite fact after fact they had learned from these bottle caps over the years. Everything from “Honeybees have hair on their eyes” to “Ulysses S. Grant once got a $20 fine for speeding on his horse”. (There are thousands of these. Go to Real Facts on the Snapple web site.)
The range and breadth of their recall surprised me, since I had never heard them repeat what they learned in school or read in their books with nearly this level of enthusiasm or accuracy. And that got me thinking about why these nuggets were so easy for them to remember. While I realize that some of this has to do with the fun (and funny) nature of the information, I also think it has something to do with length–each of these facts is approximately 160 characters, give or take a few, or just about the length of a text message.
Now we could spend days, months… possibly years, discussing what this really means about the future of our society, this generation, and the generations to follow. The death of critical thought and analysis, the demise of narrative writing, how conducting entire lives in bite sized chunks may mean the death of civilization. But I also believe that there is something to be learned here about giving people of all ages information in a format and language that resonates and sticks.
So, if that means that diabetic kids are more likely to get the message about diet in a daily text rather than a pamphlet or a parental lecture, then let’s give it to them that way. If an employee wants an email reminder about health and wellness habits, rather than having to go to a table top display for a brochure, let’s send them that email on a regular basis. And if a parent wants up-to -date vaccine availability without having to call the doctor’s office, give them that information quickly, and for free, on Twitter.
Today’s technology gives us tremendous opportunities for communicating all kinds of health and wellness messages. It’s a matter of tailoring the message and medium to the audience, tweaking it till you get it right, and being flexible and responsive enough to react when it all changes again.
We’ve all had this happen. You are looking at a web page, billboard or brochure for a hospital and the model in the photo looks so familiar. Could it be someone you know? Your neighbor? A friend? A colleague? Then you realize…that’s the same model from the stock photo you used the week before in a web page update.
When this happens you know it is time to look for other sources for your stock photography. But you don’t want to spend a lot of money and the more selective houses are just too expensive.
Finding realistic stock photography that tells the story you want does not have to cost too much. You can find great and original looking images for as little as $2-$20, depending on the resolution you need. The key is picking shots that are as natural as a snapshot and as realistic and polished as on site photography.
Some hints on how to make the best of the stock options out there:
Find a stock photography house that offers a wide range of options. Put in some search words and see how many items come up. Too few means they don’t have a sufficient range of product. Too many may indicate their selection tool isn’t refined enough.
Use a stock house that includes some amateur photographers… (istock.com is perfect). Amateurs often have the most natural looking options.
Make sure the stock house you use can handle a number of key words at a time. It saves time and gives you flexibility in describing what you want.
Use your key words creatively to find the right image. Sometimes the most obvious will give you exactly that–a photo that is too obvious. Look for alternative descriptive terms–during a recent search for a spine center photo we found the perfect image by putting in the word “stretching” instead of spine or back.
Your subjects don’t have to be model perfect. In fact, it is better if they aren’t. You want attractive, real looking people that patients can identify with.
Look for images that seem less posed. Look for the unexpected expression or background, — you’ll know it when you see it!
Look for an unusual angle to the shot. For instance, over the shoulder works well when depicting a conversation between a patient and doctor.
Sometimes the best representation of your service is not a person at all. Close up shots of screens, technology and, even better, human hands working with technology, can be very effective.
Stay away from stock shot collections. Stock collections can be convenient but you run the risk of everyone else using them as well. Take the time to look for individual images–you have a better chance of finding something unique.
Aging patients, cancer survivors, men, parents of young children, athletes … in healthcare marketing, we often group people into these sorts of subsets and develop targeted marketing strategies to appeal specifically to them. We use their media, speak their language, choose photos that look like they do — and we call it good marketing. But take a look at this Wall Street Journal article about aging athletes, and who do you think they’re talking about? . Lance Armstrong! Who doesn’t look like, act like, walk like, talk like or think like an “aging athlete” as portrayed by any hospital marketing campaign I’ve ever seen!
Yes, we need to keep our customers front and center when we’re developing marketing materials – but we also need to remember that they are (as we are) complicated people with lives that don’t fit neatly in boxes. To the extent that we can tell real men and women compelling stories about how their actual, interesting, messy and multi-faceted lives will be better, we’ll be far more interesting and effective. It’s something to think about.
