Consider positioning, body and soul

Earlier, we were talking about how you need to position against something. Too often people look at how they want to be perceived, but the audience needs to compartmentalize you as "something," so help them do that. Not just as the great car for anyone, for example, but as the luxury car or the affordable car, or the safe car.

This is particularly hard to do in health care marketing. Here's an example where it was done really well--and not just because my agency did it. One hospital in the market is running basically a scare campaign saying, "If you don't have one of our doctors, you're taking a risk."

We helped St. John Health, our client, on the other hand, position as more than fixing the health crisis, but fixing the person body and soul. This is supported in many ways, not the least of which is the fact that they are a faith based organization. The result has been getting a lot of praise, in newspapers, on radio talk shows and more.



Because when you position against something, you get interesting creative. When you position as everything in your field, you get plain vanilla marketing, even when you do it well. Because they didn't do vanilla, they ended up with a great ad--enough to make a Rocky Road for their competitors...

If you like that spot as much as I do, watch the complementary spot on cardiac care running in the same market: