Nones Notes

Marketing slogans: “New” isn’t necessarily “improved.”

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Pork. Be inspired.
Hardly inspiring: The National Pork Board's new marketing slogan has little chance of matching the effectiveness of the one it's replacing: "Pork: The Other White Meat."
When you decide to ditch a successful marketing slogan after nearly 25 years, you’d better have a very good reason. Because that’s what’s happening with the National Pork Board, which announced last week that it is retiring its promotional tagline Pork: The Other White Meat.

According to statistics reported by the industry organization, annual per capita pork consumption in the United States has remained essentially flat at ~50 pounds in recent years, while annual beef consumption has declined to ~61 pounds and chicken has risen to ~80 pounds.

The Pork Board determined that the best to way achieve new growth would be to convince people who already eat pork to consume more of it, rather than to continue trying to encourage other consumers to shift to pork.

Ceci Snyder, vice president of marketing for the National Pork Board, said this: “We want to increase pork sales by 10% by 2014. To do that, we needed to make a stronger connection – a more emotional connection to our product.”

This kind of strategy may make sense in that ~28% of American households represent nearly 70% of the total at-home consumption of fresh pork products. And it’s probably true that these people don’t need to be continually reminded of the “healthy” characteristics of pork via the “Other White Meat” slogan.

But retiring a marketing theme is one thing … and coming up with a compelling slogan to replace it is quite another.

And the one that is being debuted strikes me as a poor substitute. Are you ready to hear what it is? Drum-roll please …

“Pork. Be inspired.”

Excuse, me, but this is about as inspiring as reading the pages of the Des Moines telephone directory.

I have no doubt that the Pork Board focus group-tested this new message, and it probably came out with no posted negatives. After all, who could object to this innocuous little slogan?

But here’s a problem: It says almost nothing to anyone. If I’m a pork lover, how is this slogan supposed to make me any more inspired than I was before about preparing pork recipes? And it I’m someone who doesn’t eat pork – or eats it only infrequently – what does this tagline do to encourage me to take fresh look at this meat?

In my view, “The Other White Meat” positioning communicated so much more, not least in that there was a “health” component to the slogan. The message of healthy eating has become more important in recent years rather than less, and the beauty of that tagline is that it speaks strongly to pork consumers and non-consumers alike.

Any time your marketing slogan can speak powerfully to multiple audiences, you’ve got a winner.

And here’s another thing: All of the Pork Board’s energy and resources that have gone into publicizing “The Other White Meat” over the past two decades have resulted in a recognition of “health parity” between pork and chicken in the minds of consumers.

Consumer field research has shown that, thanks to the marketing efforts of the pork industry, ~80% of American consumers today associate “the other white meat” with pork. Retiring the slogan now will only mean a slow degradation of that association over time.

This seems like tossing a whole lot of goodwill into the trash can.

The National Pork Board reports that it will be plowing more than $11 million into an advertising campaign to roll out its new marketing slogan, beginning this month. I’m sure they have every intention of scoring the same success now as they achieved with “The Other White Meat” before.

Unfortunately, it may not matter how much money there is available to throw at the campaign. The best measure of how successful it’ll be is in the inherent compelling power of the theme.

“Pork. Be inspired.” doesn’t do it … on any level I can think of.

Memo to the marketing folks at the Pork Board: Forget the beaucoup bucks you’ve already expended developing this bowser of a slogan. Instead, troll around online and see some of the alternative taglines “Joe and Jane Consumer” have come up with. The Los Angeles Times, for one, invited their readers to submit alternative ideas. I particularly like one that came from Jacqueline Ochsner, a reader from Santa Monica, California: “Pork: The better white meat.”

Not only is that slogan a better one, it was offered up free of charge!

What Social Media is Teaching Us (Again)

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Social MediaSocial media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and all that – burst onto the scene only a few years ago. Because of this, we’re still learning daily how these tools are impacting and influencing attitudes about companies and brands … as well as the propensity for people to buy products and services as a result.

But some aspects are coming into pretty strong focus now. One of the interesting insights I’ve drawn from social media is that it spotlights the “disconnect” that exists between marketing and sales personnel.

This disconnect has existed for decades, of course. In my nearly 35 years in business, I’ve heard a common refrain from sales folks. It goes something like this: “I have no idea what those people in marketing do all day long!”

On the flip side, the marketing pros have a few choice words for the sales personnel as well: “All they ever think about is the next order. Unless it delivers instant hot prospects who are ready to buy immediately, they’re not interested in any of our marketing programs.”

This is why so many B-to-B companies have tried to cross-pollinate between marketing and sales by moving staff back and forth between the two areas.

But what company is inclined to gives up its star sales performers to marketing? What happens more often is that the underperforming sales people are the ones who end up in marketing … where they then achieve only middling success there as well.

Conversely, so many of the best sales performers aren’t “God’s gift to strategic thinking” at all … while the marketing people who are so creative and insightful when thinking about markets are woefully inadequate when it comes to keeping up with a Rolodex® full of dozens of sales contacts.

Another part of the problem is the approach to metrics. Marketing personnel have historically been focused on reaching wider audiences. To a salesperson, things like “creating awareness” and “building a brand” are frustratingly fuzzy. Instead, salespeople focus on individual customers, sales quotas and other quantifiable information – real “bottom line” figures.

Today, social media is bringing all of this into sharper relief. To be most effective, social media demand that marketing and sales personnel work together. It’s no longer possible for the two groups to employ different approaches, different interactions and different metrics for success.

To my view, it’s going to be harder for marketing and communications personnel to get their heads around new expectations for metrics and analyses when compared to the sales folks. There are many new analytical tools to be mastered – and that’s probably a source of fear for many a marketer.

For salespeople, who live and die by facts and figures, this is duck soup by comparison.

And if you really think about social media, it’s about audience (customer) engagement in a direct and personal manner. Who’s been doing that for years? The sales force, of course.

So does it make any sense to “silo” social media activity and content development within the marketing department? Generally speaking, no.

In fact, many sales personnel have already embraced social media activities because they see it as another useful tool to leverage customer engagement. This is an environment they already know well, because they’ve always been in the business of building relationships.

So the times demand that marketing and sales team up as never before. For marketers, that means opening up the social media initiative and structuring it to include sales personnel as well the marketing staff. Redlining these tasks won’t work.

And here’s another idea: Have the marketing staff hang around with the sales force. Put them out there at trade shows and other industry events where they are forced interact with customers and behave like … salespeople!

[This is especially true if a company’s marketing staff comes from collegiate or administrative backgrounds – a common weakness in many mid-sized B-to-B firms where the most lucrative upward career paths take employees through engineering, R&D or sales, not through marketing and communications.]

Social media reminds us, once again, that the key to success in business is “mixing it up” with customers and prospects. We need to make sure we do the same inside our own companies.

Marshall McLuhan: The Great Prognosticator

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Marshall McLuhan, scholar, writer and social theorist
Marshall McLuhan: The Great Prognosticator
I’ve been reading a new biography on Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian educator, scholar and social theorist who is notable for having predicted the rise of the Internet years before Al Gore or anyone else took credit for inventing it.

The succinct biography, Marshall McLuhan: You Know Nothing of My Work! by Douglas Coupland [ISBN-10: 1935633163 … also available in a Kindle edition], is quite interesting and I definitely recommend it for anyone interested in mass communications and popular culture.

Reading this biography, one gets the impression that McLuhan was a man who correctly predicted a good deal of the world of communications in which we live today. Not only did he forecast the rise of the web 30 years before it came about, he was the one who coined the expression “the medium is the message” … and who spoke about the “global village” long before Hilary Clinton came on the scene.

It turns out that this extraordinary thinker led a pretty conventional life, actually. Born in Edmonton, AB, he spent the better part of his career in Canada, although it was as a visiting professor at St. Louis University where he met his future wife, with whom he would have six children. (Born an Anglican, McLuhan was influenced by the writings of G. K. Chesterton and had converted to Roman Catholicism by his late 20s.)

Although trained as an academician in Canada and at Cambridge – and being on the faculty at prestigious educational institutions like the University of Toronto where he eventually had his own research center – the demands of raising a large family drove McLuhan to more financially lucrative work in the advertising field as well. He also had consulting stints at large corporations like AT&T and IBM.

Although passionate about and partial to his teaching and academic work, it was as an ad industry personality that McLuhan probably made his biggest mark.

As early as 1951, McLuhan published a book of essays called The Mechanical Bride, which analyzed various examples of “persuasion” in contemporary popular culture.

In his 1964 book Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message” as he wrote of the influence of communications media independent of their content. He contended that media affect society in which they play a role not by the content they deliver, but by the characteristics of the media themselves. True enough.

And how did McLuhan come to predict the rise of the Internet? It was right there in his 1962 book The Gutenberg Galaxy, which attempted to reveal how communications technology – alphabetic writing, printing presses, electronic media — affects cognitive organization and, in turn, social organization. Here’s what he had to say:

“The next medium, whatever it is – it may be the extension of consciousness – will include television as its environment, and it will transform television into an art form. A computer as a research and communication instrument could enhance retrieval, obsolesce mass library organization, retrieve the individual’s encyclopedic function and flip into a private line to speedily tailored data of a saleable kind.”

Remember, this was written in 1962!

McLuhan also used the term “surfing” in a way that seems uncannily similar to its meaning today – in his case, using the word “surfing” to refer to rapid, irregular and multidimensional movement through a body of knowledge.

More books would come from McLuhan’s pen in subsequent years, including:

 The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (McLuhan’s best seller)
War and Peace in the Global Village
From Cliché to Archetype

All of these volumes sound pretty fascinating – definitely ones to explore in the future, although the biography provides good synopses of their contents.

It is difficult to think of someone that has had more influence over the world of media and advertising than Marshall McLuhan. Sure, there are people like David Ogilvy, but his influence has been confined almost exclusively to the advertising industry alone.

By contrast, the McLuhan’s biographer contends that McLuhan influenced scads of writers and critical thinkers – I was pleased to see Camille Paglia among them – along with politicians like Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jerry Brown. McLuhan was even named a “patron saint” of Wired Magazine, and a quote of his appeared on the publication’s masthead during the first decade of its publication.

And finally, it’s nice to discover that McLuhan’s years in academia have been given their due as well: The University of Toronto has continued his work by running a center at the school named, appropriately, the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology.

3D Printing: Will it “change everything” in manufacturing?

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Objects and components made using 3D printingThe Economist magazine published an article earlier this month about an increasingly popular technology that may irretrievably alter the world of manufacturing. Known as “three-dimensional printing” or “additive manufacturing technology,” it’s expected to dramatically impact manufacturing industries.

The technology makes it possible to “print” three-dimensional objects, components or assemblies from a digital file, utilizing several different materials with differing mechanical and physical properties in a single-build process.

The way this is done is by building up the object gradually by depositing material from a nozzle, or by solidifying thin layers of plastic or metal particles using glue droplets or focused beam technology.

[If you’re having some difficulty wrapping your head around the concept, this short tutorial/demonstration using a Z Corporation 3D printer will serve as a good introduction.]

At present, the 3D process is possible using certain materials such as plastics, resins and metals, a precisions of ~0.1 millimeter. And while it’s been primarily the preserve of academicians and laboratories up until now, experts believe the technology is now poised for commercial success as 3D printing capabilities continue to improve and costs decline.

In fact, significant growth has already been observed over the past seven or eight years — and now a “race to the bottom” with pricing is beginning to pick up steam. To wit: A basic 3D printer-fabricator costs less today than a laser printer did in 1985.

With the manner in which this technology is developing, there’s really no end to the possible products that can be made. Small components, automotive parts and a host of other products will all be fair game in the coming years.

3D printing technology is even being studied by biotechnology companies for use in computer-aided tissue engineering applications wherein organs and body parts are created using 3D inkjet techniques. Living cells are deposited onto a gel and slowly built up to form 3D structures.

And what also makes all of this potentially revolutionary is that harnessing the technology does not have to happen only in a conventional “factory.”

Think about it. Small parts can be made by a machine that’s the size of a desktop printer. With such equipment available, no longer will manufacturers need to rely on OEM suppliers here or offshore to supply parts and accessories. And they can make as many or as few as they need, so the old notion of a large production line starts looking increasingly irrelevant.

There are additional benefits of this technology that industry watchers note. Product prototyping is expected to become easier, faster and cheaper than ever. Companies can “test and tweak” components with their best customers, making adjustments to the design until things are perfected – all in a finely controlled environment where there’s no such thing as wasted inventory or “wish and wait for” parts coming from outside or offshore.

Waste and scrap materials are slated to be far less, too, as 3D technology uses only just the amount of material needed to construct each part.

Thinking beyond the production-centric aspects, other implications for manufacturing businesses are big. Reducing barriers to entry for manufacturing, 3D printing may well promote more innovation than ever before. The ability to produce items without needing the full force of a factory behind them will be a huge benefit to inventors, entrepreneurs and start-up operations, because product development, beta testing and first-run production will cost less and present lower risks.

Will the flexibility to design and produce components that the 3D technology allows mean that there’ll be less need to look to offshore suppliers for cheaply manufactured products? We can’t know for sure, but the prospects that a shift in manufacturing activity from the Far East back home is certainly tantalizing.

As with any new innovation, there are potential downsides and possible “unintended consequences.” For one, intellectual property may become much harder to protect … after all, when an object can be described in a digital file, it becomes much easier to copy and distribute.

But one thing is definite: 3D printing is a topic that’ll be front-and-center in the coming years as we sort through the opportunities and the implications.

End-Game for Borders and Blockbuster?

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Blockbuster logoBorders logoTwo items reported this past week are yet more bad news for one of the most beleaguered sectors of the retail industry. Borders Books & Music will be filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and Blockbuster is preparing itself for sale.

Does this mean we’ve now reached the end-game for these iconic brands – and for the entire retail book/movie store segment?

Actually, we’ve seen this play out before. Less than 15 years ago, Tower Records and Sam Goody were two vibrant national chain store operations selling CDs and other recorded music. But these and most other music merchants are now history.

In fact, the only bricks-and-mortar music retail segment remaining is made up of used record and CD stores – typically one or two shoestring operations operating in major urban markets that manage to eke out a hand-to-mouth existence.

It appears that the same thing may now be happening to books. Consider Borders. It’s tried all sorts of ways to branch into other revenue-producing endeavors to make up for the consumers’ shift to buying books online or downloading to e-readers. Those endeavors have included coffee and juice bars, greeting card kiosks, giving customers the ability to download books and music, and even to explore genealogy and family history. Despite all that, Borders has been unable to stem the decline of its business.

Mike Shatzkin of consulting firm Idea Logical Company contends that the problem is bigger than Borders. He believes bookstores are going the way of music stores. “I think that there will be a 50% reduction in bricks-and-mortar shelf space for books within five years, and 90% within ten years,” he predicts.

The immediate question is whether Borders will be able to restructure its business, or in the end will be forced to liquidate. Borders’ debt is so high (it’s expected to report nearly $1 billion in liabilities when it files), the company is already committing to closing about a third of its ~675 Borders and Waldenbooks store outlets.

It’s possible that book superstore rival Barnes & Noble will see at least a short-term gain from Borders’ travails. It’s a larger entity and is doing better financially. Gary Balter, an analyst with Credit Suisse, believes Barnes & Noble could add as much as $1 billion in sales if Borders ultimately goes out of business.

But that kind of benefit may well turn out to be temporary. After all, Tower Records benefited from the closure of Sam Goody – for a time. But ultimately, Amazon and online sales were the big winners, and there’s every indication that they will be the main beneficiaries now as well.

In the movie rental business, things aren’t any better. I’ve blogged before about the challenges faced by Blockbuster, the nation’s leading movie-rental chain that went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September 2010. The company is now preparing itself for sale, but there are ominous signs that the initiative may be stillborn.

Some bondholders, led by investor Carl Icahn, are concerned that the company’s value is eroding in bankruptcy court, which has made it more difficult to take the steps necessary to compete with Netflix and other rivals that aren’t hobbled by the cost of running retail storefront operations.

According to business news reports, that is what’s behind the drive to try to sell the company now. Blockbuster’s holiday sales were lackluster at best, and the cost estimates for effecting a successful turnaround are going ever higher. The bondholders have essentially lost their appetite for plowing more money into the enterprise.

So who’s actually going to be interested in buying Blockbuster? That’s a very interesting question, because the company’s business model and financial situation don’t look like strong ingredients for business success. So if a buyer emerges, it may be from among the ranks of those who already have a financial stake in the business – like Mr. Icahn.

Will we look back on this week a few years from now and say that it was the beginning of a turnaround – or the final nails in the coffin? If you’re a betting person – or an investor – where would you place your money?

Valentine’s Day Spending: All Hearts and Flowers?

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Valentine's Day is hearts and dollarsWith the recession finally receding, are we now seeing an uptick in spending for Valentine’s Day — arguably the most romantic day on the calendar?

According to a January Consumer Intentions & Actions questionnaire conducted among ~8,900 participants for the National Retail Federation by survey firm BIGresearch, American adults over age 18 will spend an average of ~$115 on traditional Valentine’s Day merchandise this year. That’s up more than 11% over 2010, and collectively represents spending of nearly $17 billion.

But we have yet to return to the levels of Valentine’s Day spending that were reached in 2007 and 2008 – the highest on record.

Jewelry appears to be the big item on the Valentine’s Day shopping list. Approximately $3.5 billion is expected to be spent in this segment this year, which is up more than 15% from the ~$3.0 billion spent in 2010.

Dining out is another popular category, but its growth is not expected to be nearly as big as jewelry’s – just 3%. The six most popular categories as determined in the NRF study include:

 Jewelry: $3.5 billion
 Dining out: $3.3 billion
 Flowers: $1.7 billion
 Clothing: $1.6 billion
 Candy: $1.5 billion
 Greeting cards: $1.1 billion

[I was surprised at the greeting cards figure. True, cards are a lower-price item compared to the other categories, but the number still seemed pretty meager. It turns out that only about half of the consumers surveyed reported that they planned on purchasing a Valentine’s card, which was lower than I thought would be the case.]

Not surprisingly, younger adults (age 25-34) are expected to spend significantly more than their older counterparts. They’re projected to spend an average of nearly $190 on Valentine’s Day merchandise compared to only about $60 spent by adults over 65.

But it’s not just because of “sweet, fresh young love” versus “tired, worn-out old love.” It’s because young couples and young parents are often buying not only for each other, but also for their co-workers … their children … their children’s friends … and their children’s teachers as well.

And here’s another statistic that won’t surprise very many people: Women will receive Valentine’s Day gifts averaging around $160, which is double the value of gifts for men.

Now, that’s a dynamic that’s likely never changed … and probably never will!

Taking the Buzz-Saw to Corporate Buzzwords

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No buzzwordsBuzzwords – those stock words or phrases that have effectively become nonsense through their endless repetition – tend to find their penultimate manifestation in forgettable corporate vision and mission statements.

If you look online, you’ll find that the “about us” pages on corporate web sites are littered with the detritus of high-mannered phrases. We all know them — terms like:

 Best-in-class
 Best practices
 Commitment
 Customer-focused
 Cutting-edge
 Delighting customers
 Exceeding expectations
 Expertise
 Green
 Innovation
 Integrity
 Out-of-the-box thinking
 Proactive
 Quality
 Solutions
 Sustainability
 Synergy
 Trust
 Worldclass

Considering how frequently these terms show up in company positioning statements, is it any wonder they’ve become nothing but meaningless pablum?

Here’s an interesting exercise: Try to find a published corporate vision, mission or positioning statement that doesn’t contain any of the terms above. I spent the better part of an hour looking, only to come up empty handed.

This is not to denigrate the aims of businesses. We all want our companies to embody the laudable qualities these terms describe. And why not? They’re good principles that are worthy goals in how to interact with customers, with communities, and with the larger world.

But companies also want differentiation, not sameness.

Unfortunately, you’ll find none of that with these terms here. Just mealy-mouthed nothings and “yesterday’s vision for tomorrow” … conveyed with all the pizzazz of a cold mashed potato sandwich.

So it’s back to the drawing board, or it should be. But considering the birth pangs most of these mission / vision statements must have endured in the first place — committee assignments and all — that’s probably not going to happen.

“The Photo”

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Mother and soldier son at a checkpoint in Cairo, Egypt. (European Pressphoto Agency)
The European Pressphoto Agency image that has captivated the world: A mother kisses her soldier son at a Cairo checkpoint in early February 2011.
The world has watched events in Egypt unfold this past week with rapt attention as a 30-year regime stumbles to its inevitable end.

But a picture from the European Pressphoto Agency that appeared on the front page of The Wall Street Journal this past Tuesday transcends the political aspects of the events and speaks to us on a far more fundamental level.

The story told by the photo is simple enough: A mother kisses her soldier son at a Cairo checkpoint on a day when protesters are gearing up for a huge march on the Egyptian capital city.

But it’s an image that’s “gone viral” and has bounded about the worldwide web.

Why?

What is it about this picture that is so compelling? After all, it portrays a pretty mundane occurrence in the world of political events and regime change. But there’s something about the image that strikes right at the heart of our shared existence as human beings and our connections to family.

We don’t know these people at all. The location may be exotic … the culture and dress “foreign.” But the photo is about something much deeper – and it’s a connection that binds us all.

In this case, it’s a picture that’s worth a million words.

Witnessing the Birth of a Nation

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Sudan's political regions
Sudan's southern region (in blue) votes 98%+ for secession and is slated to become Africa's newest nation in July 2011.
Is Africa poised to be the home of a brand new country? It would seem so, as the results of a January referendum held in Sudan’s southern region were announced earlier this week.

And the results couldn’t be more definitive: More than 98% of the nearly 3.9 million ballots cast were in favor of separation.

While there were indications of voter irregularity – some provinces have fewer registered voters than votes cast – this is no sham election à la Iran or Cuba. International monitoring groups have determined that the overwhelming sentiment for separation and independence makes the pro-secession vote a valid result.

The final results will be certified in a few weeks, following which the wheels will start turning toward the formal creation of an independent state on a predetermined date of July 9, 2011. The new country will likely be called the Nile Republic or Azania.

If events continue as they are going, July 9 will be the culmination of a decades-long struggle that has produced more than its share of misery for the primarily Christian inhabitants of Sudan’s southern region. In this case, religious and tribal differences trumped the impractical and ultimately unworkable colonial-imposed boundaries set down by Britain in the late 1800s.

But despite the grim and grueling history of the conflict, the resolution of this struggle provides a happier ending compared to similar struggles on the continent – the secession attempt of Biafra from Nigeria being perhaps the best-known. That struggle had similar shades of tribal and religious differences, but the end result was reunification by force.

Contrast that with Sudan’s actions today. President Omar al-Bashir declared that the southern region had a right to choose whether to secede, and stated that his government would respect the outcome of the vote.

This is not to say that Sudan will not continue to keep a close eye on its southern border. “The stability of the south is very important because any instability in the south will have an impact on the north,” al-Bashir says. “The south suffers from many problems. It’s been at war since 1959.”

One can only imagine the Herculean challenges the new Nile Republic will face – ranging from citizenship qualification to finances, infrastructure and security issues.

But to have come so far while suffering so much in the process, those are issues most people are probably looking forward to facing and solving. And those of us lucky enough to have been born into societies where self-determination is already an accepted ideal wish them nothing but success.

Online healthcare and virtual doctor visits: Are we there yet?

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Online Physician ConsultationsThe harsh realities of cost are driving healthcare providers, insurance carriers and government agencies to implement policies designed to encourage consumers to take better control over their own health.

More healthcare plans and programs than ever before are including incentives for making lifestyle changes, undergoing preventive care routines, “do-it-yourself” testing as well as online consultations with physicians.

In this regard, it seems everyone is completely on the bandwagon … except perhaps the consumer.

Why is that the case? One reason might be because of what we’ve trained people to expect in the delivery of healthcare services.

For decades, American consumers weren’t given any meaningful incentives for engaging in preventive care or in making lifestyle adjustments. Several generations of Americans were acclimatized to seek out healthcare services when they needed it – and that was when something was wrong. And the billing for those services was sent directly to the insurance company for payment.

In such an environment, preventive health or cost control was the last thing on people’s minds.

I recall being hospitalized for six days back in the early 1980s, along with being given a battery of medical tests conducted by health specialists of every stripe. I’m sure the invoicing associated with my hospitalization and treatment was astronomical … but I never saw a copy of the bill to really know.

My only out-of-pocket expense for the entire week? Thirty dollars for using the television set in the hospital room.

What was surprising to me, even at the time, was that I was kept in hospitalization far longer than I felt I needed to be – my symptoms of infection were gone after just a day or two. If I had been responsible for paying for even a portion of my hospitalization, I’m sure I would have been talking with anyone I could find about how quickly I could be discharged!

Today of course, people are far more aware of skyrocketing healthcare costs – not to mention their concerns about ever-rising health insurance premiums, higher deductibles, and bigger co-pays. Still, when asked about adopting new ways of interfacing with healthcare providers, American consumers seem somewhat ambivalent about them.

A recent online survey of ~1,000 Americans age 18 and over conducted by marketing and research firm Euro RSCG Worldwide found that only ~42% of respondents are comfortable with the idea of having online consultations in lieu of personal visits with their doctors.

[Men are more receptive to this idea (~58%) than women are (~37%) … but women are the ones more apt to make healthcare decisions for their families.]

On the other hand, here’s an interesting additional insight from the survey: When told that having an online consultation with their physician might result in lower expenses, ~77% of those same respondents reported that they’d be open to trying it.

What about the concept of “do-it-yourself” testing? Close to half of the respondents in the survey (~48%) reported that they’re receptive to the idea of using mobile apps to run their own tests and checkups at home. Checking blood pressure was the most popular DIY test, along with tracking and reporting on symptoms.

Of course, as time moves forward, technology is no longer the big obstacle it once was for turning “virtual visits” and “remote care” into a reality. Instead, it’s consumer attitudes and a willingness to adapt. And to accomplish that, the purveyors of modern healthcare must try to undo several generations of “learned” behavior that’s nearly the polar opposite.

Denise Murtagh, a planning director at Euro RSCG, mentions another factor as well: the doctors themselves. “A lot will depend on how facile physicians are with the technology, and how comfortable they are with it.”

And let’s not forget age demographics, too. The survey underscores that Gen-X and Gen-Y consumers are far more comfortable with the idea of physician remote care (47% – 52% positive) than Baby Boomers and those born earlier are (only 33% – 39% positive).

It looks like we’ll need to give this trend a bit more time to come into full flower.