Back to the basics: Health Care Marketing Revisited

How to put lipstick on a pig.

Good ideas are hard to find. It’s hard work to develop objectives, strategies, and concepts that grow from an understanding of consumer perceptions and are sound enough to affect those attitudes and inspire action.

The difficulty of it all is obvious when you look—really look—at most of what passes for marketing communications. There’s too much stuff out there that’s shallow, misguided, and designed to appeal to the advertiser more than the consumer.

But you must admit that many marketers do a good job of hiding ugly strategies and concepts under layers of makeup.

Take television advertising, for instance. Too often they hire the most accomplished cinematographers, the most gifted actors, the most innovative editors, the most creative musicians. They step back and watch them make a beautiful little movie that ebbs and flows with emotion, swells with inspired artistry, and appeals to the sentiments of all and sundry.

And they hope all that talent and all that masterful manipulation will conceal a lame concept and still get results.

Sure, it looks good. But underneath all that lipstick—it’s still a pig.

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Next time: Why seven is an unlucky number.