What Do The Medicare Cap, Toyota, And Physician Arrogance All Have In Common?

As a student of business strategy and marketing, I see common themes in events that most people don’t even associate. For example, from a business strategy standpoint, what do the recent Toyota recalls, Medicare therapy caps, and physician arrogance all have in common? Two things: They all have a dysfunctional process that shuts the customer out at critical points in the “need and want to know” communication process, and they all come from an era where public relations and marketing have been separate functions.

In the case of Toyota, we are now watching Toyota’s 40 plus year investment in American brand equity evaporate before our eyes. Sure, the brand may survive with aggressive promotions and PR, but the integrity and dominant power of the brand have been reset to 1968 when the American consumer reluctantly started experimenting with cheap Toyota Corollas while they still lusted for more expensive cars like the Ford Mustang or the Oldsmobile Cutlass.  Today, it is damage control run by PR, and the customer has been positioned as a part of the problem to manage, and not as part of the solution.

In the case of physicians, many complain that they are losing control over the patient. They describe the increasing frequency of patient probing and questions as a disruptive time-consuming annoyance. On the public relations side, they will tell you that’s not so – the patient’s questions and thirst for second opinions doesn’t really bother them. Their brochures portray friendly smiling patient doctor visits like fireside chats, but usually the reality is quite different – physicians do the talking and patients listen. What patients really want is EDUCATION about diagnosis and treatment OPTIONS, not brochures with smiling faces and a menu board of services. Could it be possible that fixing this patient-physician dynamic could have more impact on our healthcare crisis than anything our government can provide?

In the case of the physical therapy industry and the proposed Medicare cap, we have APTA leading the charge to inform Congress as to why the benefits of physical therapy are being misunderstood and undervalued. Here we go again – a primitive PR campaign born out of desperation because the PT industry has done a poor job of coordinating a strategic campaign to EDUCATE patients and physicians about the benefits of therapy and how to compare and choose good providers. If we can just get busier educating through thoughtful, strategic communications materials, then the rest should take care of itself.  

We applaud the APTA effort, but the question becomes how do we learn from this and lay the foundation to make sure it doesn’t happen again?

This will require a return to sound principle-based marketing communications that satisfy the consumer’s fundamental need to know, not drown them with platitudes, gimmicks, and spin. Our brand-builder business culture has trained us to accept tricks and techniques as state-of-the art marketing, so marketers spend too much effort and resources looking for the latest gimmick when they should be following fundamental principles. And PR executives look for ways to spin the delivery of information. In this new era of information and consumer control, that culture is crumbling around us. This is not good news for the PR industry. In this new world, good marketing will make PR irrelevant.