Jon Bishop - Turning your target market into your audience

Jon Bishop, who helped Netcare tackle new media, is talking about turning your target markets into your audience. Some of the communication challenges in the group: Hospitals are flooded with posters Nurses are not PC based Nurses are overworked with little time to read posters, memos etc. Some of the marketing challenges in the group: Brand identity and disparity between subbrands and main brand Regulations No available helath talk show channels on traditional media Internal communciation channels Specific challenge to engage nurses Web 2.0 - the internet's effect on healthcare: Consumers want to be entertained Accessibility means consumers do a lof of research in a short space of time Brand messaging can no longer be pushed onto consumers, they must be invited Marketing leans more towards communication today Consumers choose when and where they want to interact with your brand Funny, interesting or controversial Interesting: "62% of the content consumed by people born after 1980 is created by someone they know" - Shel Holz. Most of these people are reading and viewing content created by friends, friends of friends, colleagues etc. Jon plays the "Will it blend" viral video, where a lab technician puts an iPhone into a blender and shreds it to pieces. The audience loves it. Wonder if it makes more people buy these blenders? Not so sure. But it's a good example of the viral potential of video. What Netcare did: They redesigned their website completely (to quote Jon, the old one was "a disgrace") Follow best practice and create new ones First do the basics well, to be able to prove the worth of new technologies to management The most popular feature on their site: Netcute babies. Auto refreshing baby pics of newborns at Netcare hospitals. This went viral. Human body procedure map: find out exactly what the surgery procedure will entail, if you're scheduled for an operation Online pre-admissions Making all relevant data available within 3 clicks Audio and image presentation archives available Consistent design across all brand sites Social bookmarking Digital screen networks - plasma screens across 100 facilities - including centralised and targeted messaging, entertainment and education MMS messaging to staff cellphones, with groupable messages and response SMS Doctors' wiki: doctors share and modify medical info and experiences privately on the Netcare intranet, only available to Netcare doctors Snap Comms: an internal communications platform; pop-up alerts, screensavers, quizzes and RSS feeds that operate across internal staff workstations only and can also deliver podcasts and videos. Jon is now a Snap Comms consultant, so it must be impressive :) What Netcare is planning to do: Netcare 911 video widget and online Netcare videos Intranet revamp with RSS feeds and podcast platforms Netcare 911 news alerts Twitter feed Netcare 911 story blog