Tag Archive for: logan

Make Demos and Documentaries

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Some recent advice from ad man Ben Malbon:

“Make demos and documentaries, not ads.”

This is vital advice for all companies to consider, including LASIK and cataract doctors and those in the vision industry. What does it mean to make demos and documentaries?

Demos

Don’t tell me about your product — show me your product. Show me how it works, how it makes my life better. Show me how clear vision will affect my daily life. Show me how you make surgery as safe as possible. Show me how you improve my outcomes. Show me how I can afford LASIK. Let me see the laser, the lens, the after-care shields. Show me, show me, show me. A demo allows me to become part of the decision-making process in a way that speeds up and increases my conversion.

Documentaries

Don‘t tell me about your product — tell me about your customers, your patients. Tell me why they chose you and how you made their life better. Tell me why you exist, what drives you to be the best. Testimonies. Narrative. Drama, climax, catharsis, meaning. I want LASIK or cataract surgery because of who I will be AFTER surgery, not what kind of ASC relationship you have. A good documentary changes the way we look at the world. Rather than creating an “ad,” tell stories about clearer vision and share those stories with the world.

Nobody trusts advertising. Demos and documentaries build trust and brands.

Experience Design Study: Pump It Up Birthday Party

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At MJM, we are strong believers in studying experience design across diverse industries to better our own work. All industries — health care, sports, music, kids, restaurant, hotel, retail — can learn from looking at ideas outside their own competitive space. The MJM blog is one place you are invited to intersect with new ideas and experiences.

Overview

This weekend, my son and I participated in a birthday party for my son’s classmate, who is turning 5 years old. The party was hosted by Pump It Up, a full-service party company for kids, featuring two rooms of inflatable gym toys and a party room for eating/presents. Here are some of the highs and lows of the experience, along with a brief discussion of what we can learn from each element.

High: Theme It

Pump It Up is the perfect venue to host a party for 20 5-year-olds. The environment is safe, engaging, and effective in allowing the kids space for controlled chaos, a variety of diversions, and opportunities for alone and group play. After 35 minutes in one room, the kids are sent to the next room. This ensures that nobody gets bored. After about 70 minutes of playtime, the kids are gathered and sent in to the party room for pizza, cake, and presents. From start to finish, the theme is controlled fun, and nothing detracts from that experience.

What You Can Learn

What is your theme? Does everything that happens in your interactions with your customer build on that theme? What do you need to cut away? What should you add?

High: Handle the Tough Logistics

The most appealing part of a Pump It Up Birthday party for parents is the full-service logistical management before and during the party by the on-site staff. Before the party, you can order your pizza, fruit plates, cake, ice cream, and decorations, which are delivered to the site and set up for you. As kids arrive, staff members collect presents, cards, and parent safety waivers. Kids are show where to find the bathrooms. Staff shuttle shoes and coats between rooms as the kids move. Before eating, kids and parents are offered hand sanitizer. A group photo is staged and taken by the staff. The staff team corral the kids and serve them juice boxes, pizza, fruit, and cake in a surprisingly orderly fashion. Plates, forks, cups, napkins, tablecloths – all provided. During present opening, staff members select the next present to open, throw away the wrapping paper, record who the gift was from, and load the opened presents on a rolling cart for easy transport to a car after the party. Parents literally need to do nothing on the day of the party.

Look at that list again. Truly, Pump It Up’s experience is not “fun birthday party.” Their experience is “logistics management.” And they are very, very effective.

What You Can Learn

Look at your product or service. Where are the most difficult, frustrating logistical moments for your customers? What can you do to make those moments as simple as possible? How can you change your industry by solving a logistical annoyance for your customer?

High: The “Throne”

The opening of presents is obviously the highlight of the party for the birthday child. At Pump It Up, the birthday child gets to sit on a large, inflatable throne, while all the kids sit at their feet to watch. Having talked to numerous parents, the “birthday throne” is the major reason kids want to have their party at Pump It Up.

What You Can Learn

The Birthday Throne is the signature moment of a Pump It Up party. What is your signature moment? How do people remember their experience of your product or service? If you don’t have a signature moment, what do you need to do to create one?

Low: The Treasure Chest

The overall theme of a Pump It Up party is perfect for the target audience. For this party, the parents and staff layered a second theme on top – a “Pirate Party.” Throughout the party, the staff tried unsuccessfully to gather all the kids to use a treasure map to find a lost key. As a parent who was trying to follow the story, I was totally lost. After cake was served, the staff brought out a treasure chest and the hidden key. This could have been good, because kids love lost keys and treasure chests. The chest was opened, and the prize for the kids was… a cheap eye patch and a flimsy plastic coin. About 90% of the kids already had eye patches, and the plastic coins were not even believable enough for imaginative 5-year-olds. It was an unfortunate let-down to a well-developed theme.

What You Can Learn

If you build an experience and have a signature moment, a prize, or anything else that raises the expectations of the customer, you need to meet or exceed those expectations. You need to deliver. If you fail to deliver, you lose the impact of your experience. So… are you delivering on your promise?

The Tragedy of the Commons

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The tragedy of the commons is an economic and ecologic dilemma in which individuals, acting in their own self-interest, collectively destroy the value of shared space through individual overuse, exploitation, and a lack of planning, even when it is obvious that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen.

The same thing may be happening to your website right now.

For many organizations, space on the “homepage” is seen as prime real estate, and everyone wants their individual share. “Make sure my program is listed there! This exciting new technology just has to be featured this month! This is our biggest event of the year for us!” With every new addition, the collective value and usability is hurt.

Instead, lead through good design and bold decisions. Consider the following:

  1. A prime role of leadership is to distill organizations down to key missions and messages. Tell the story — focus on the most important, valuable identity.  Website design needs focused leadership (as does all design).
  2. Consider Google’s homepage — this incredibly complex, robust organization has an incredibly simple, focused homepage. Good organizations with good leadership are always moving away from the tragedy of the commons in their webspace (and entire mission).
  3. Understand that the idea of “homepage” means less and less as search engines help people jump straight to content-specific pages, sometimes bypassing the homepage altogether. Build great content pages and maximize their search potential, and quit sticking everything on the homepage.

If your organization avoids the tragedy of the commons, you (and your customers) win.

The Power of a Name

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In healthcare, we have access to more information about a person than almost any other industry. Yet, something as simple as a person’s name may be the most powerful piece of information we have to improve the experience we provide. Learning a person’s name, and using it well, is a powerful thing.

Have you ever received a mailing that looks like it was created just for you, then turns out to be a mass mailing with your name thrown on top? For one moment, you feel special and chosen. Then you realize it’s just another piece of junk mail, and you throw it away.  But more than that — for a moment, you feel something valuable has been mistreated. Your name has been mistreated, tricked, and you lose trust in whoever sent the mailing.

Consider, on the other hand, the true wonder when someone from your past sees you at the mall and remembers your name. “Dave, is that you?” It feels wonderful to be recognized, to be known, to feel that someone remembers you, knows you, and can relate to you. This builds and reaffirms trust. Don’t underestimate the power of a name.

Building trust is key in healthcare. Consider some of these practical ideas you can implement today:

  1. Know (and use) every patient’s preferred name. I once followed a cataract consult where, in the course of 45 minutes, three different people asked the patient for his preferred name three different times. He was learning to distrust us each time someone had to ask the question again. Having this information placed prominently on the chart can avoid situations like this.
  2. Have front desk people look ahead at who’s coming in, and be prepared to greet patients by name whenever possible. For many clinics, it’s possible to create pretty accurate guesses about names simply based on age and appointment time. Other clinics we’ve worked with have photo capabilities to pair with their management software. Whatever the tool, imagine the trust that’s built when a front desk staff member can greet the patient by name!
  3. The waiting room “cattle call” is one of the most inhumane moments of our work. We can do better. Instead, have techs approach a person in the waiting room, lay a hand on their shoulder, and say “Sue, we‘re ready for you,” rather than stand near the front of the waiting room and cattle call “Sue!”

Matt Jensen Marketing has created multiple systems with clinics where it is possible to do this regularly, with little to no extra time from staff, and it makes a world of difference to the patient.