I came across an excellent article over at Story Worldwide, which managed to weave together the intricacies of big data, patient safety issues and brand storytelling. Intrigued? So was I.
The premise of the blog post is both timely and relevant, since the marketing world is scrambling to understand the role of big data in delivering messages. Nobody would argue with the intelligence that technology has empowered marketers with. Armed with banks of data on consumers, advertisers now have the ability to target audiences with precision based on their online behaviour.
Yet however reassuringly precise numbers can be, any decision-making regarding reaching consumers on an emotional level has to apply the human touch, in the form of judgement, experience and last but not least – heart.
So how does patient safety tie in with these ideas of data, technology and improved storytelling? The primary finding of the recently published Berwick Report on patient care in the UK found fault not with staff so much as an NHS obsessed with “naïve or mechanistic” targets.
By prioritising quantitative over qualitative data such as the voices of the people concerned – that is, patients and also the staff serving them – the NHS had repeatedly missed the point while striving to hit numerical targets.
This clearly isn’t the time or place to dig more deeply into the NHS, its cultural challenges, struggles in the face of limited resources and so on, – yet the notion of employing a richer narrative is highly relevant to content marketing.
Also relevant is the fact that the healthcare industry, despite being equipped with a wealth of stories in the form of patient histories, staff testimony and case studies, doesn’t tend to use rich storytelling for marketing purposes.
The article, written by Benedict Johnson, goes on to suggest that by refocusing on people – patients, their staff and carers – over numbers, health care will be better positioned to emphasise its true purpose: healing people.
Johnson makes an emotive point, and indeed while brand storytelling won’t help solve the immediate gaping chasm in NHS resources, it may have a role to play in driving and challenging the health category.
It seems quite a leap from the healthcare agenda to the world of FMCG, yet the comments of Coca-Cola’s VP of advertising and creative Jonathan Mildenhall come to mind here:
“The conversation model…begins with brand stories. These brand stories provoke conversation; then we need to act and react to these conversations 365 days a year…Through the stories we tell, we will provoke conversations and earn a disproportionate share of popular culture”.
The narrative of the NHS and wider healthcare sector is of course incomparable to that of Coca-Cola, with the safety and wellbeing of a nation at its heart. Yet health marketing may have something to learn from content pioneers such as Coke. A move away from primarily message-based communications to a more engaging and empathic strategy, with people and their stories at its heart, may be just what the doctor ordered.
Photo: Army Medicine
