Kaiser - Get Real

Busboards across Orange County have been displaying ads from Kaiser Permanente saying things like "Dance Partner First, Patient Second" and showing a woman and man dancing around the floor. This implies that Kaiser first cares about you as a person. We all know that most ads, especially for corporations, are created without any connection to what actually happens in the company. They're just marketing. Some group sitting around a table saying, "What can we do to make the customers feel like they're cared about?" Or even worse, some outside company sitting around a table and saying, "What can we do to make Kaiser's customers feel like they're cared about. But this one seems particularly disconnected because we all know that no doctor, let alone the HMO cares more about their customers as dance partners then as patients. We just know that isn't true. Say it all you want, anyone that has been to an HMO knows it just isn't true. But on top of that, do we even want that to be true? If you're choosing a doctor or health insurance plan, do you want the doctor that talks to you about your dance class or do you want the doctor that knows what they're doing and is competent as a doctor? Well, every study indicates that we want the doctor that asks us about our dance class. You might have expected me to say the opposite, but the reality is, that we want the doctor that cares about us and treats us like a real person. We want the good bedside manners. Kaiser or Kaiser's ad agency read those same studies. But ah, here's where they went wrong. Yes, we want that doctor. But no, we don't want those ads. We don't go to a doctor because the company tells us that they're doctors are really nice. We go to the doctor because other patients tell us that they're really nice. We want a doctor that advertises how competent s/he is and why s/he's a good doctor and then we want to find out from others that they are really nice, or even find out for ourselves. We're not going to choose a doctor simply based on them being nice unless the basis is already set that they are actually a good and competent doctor. There's a baseline that you have to meet before we start caring about you being nice. There is a place for marketing how friendly your doctors are. That can be inside of the office, once the people are already there. That can be after a massive campaign that establishes the credibility of your doctors. You have to meet our baseline first. Don't just create ads based on the same studies that we're reading. Actually be a good doctor and have good bedside manners. You can't create that on a busboard.

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