Boy, does the Starbucks fiasco remind me of how appropriately I named my agency. I personally had a similar experience – I went to a bank where the staff that had not been trained on how to handle customer questions about their current marketing campaign. Actually they were not even aware of it.

That episode struck a cord. It made me think of the irony, spending hundreds of thousands on a flashy promotion, and not spending the time to involve the people inside the company; the ones who make it all work, and the ones who face the public. Whether your product is a widget or a weekend away; free checking or the best cancer care in town, talk to your people before. Get their input regarding how solid the claims are and whether you can stand behind the offer; learn on time of any potential implementation weakness. And then, after you have reviewed, edited and polished your message, train, train, train.

In my opinion, if your client is a hospital, marketing to potential patients could be a waste of time and money. Patients are not any longer the ones who make the hospital-buying decision. That decision is made for them.

If/when you need surgery, do you choose the hospital? No. Within your insurance company’s guidelines, you choose a surgeon, or your primary care provider refers you to one and you go to the hospital where your surgeon has privileges. Or do you actually first choose a hospital and then, check the list of surgeons there, and go to a surgeon who works at the hospital of your choice? Maybe but I don’t think that’s the usual process.

Same thing happens if you need to be admitted for a non-surgical reason; do you decide where you’ll go? No. Your primary care and/or your specialist do. And if you have an accident and the ambulance takes you to an ER, do you get to tell them to which one you’d rather go? You can try.

Pretty much the only time YOU as a patient can choose a hospital is when you drive yourself to an ER for a non-life threatening injury. So, why bother marketing your hospital to the community? They are not your audience – unless your hospital is a non profit and you’re fundraising. I say, tell your hospital clients to spend their marketing budget on their admitting physicians instead. They are the ones who feed patients to the hospital. Tell them to treat them well. And to give them what they need to do their job in a stellar way.