As published in Strategic Health Care Marketing, by Andy Semons and Donna T. Walthall

How Dana-Farber Cancer Institute used neuroscience to transform its approach to underserved populations.

Any good marketer who has been on the receiving end of a DEI backlash can tell you that both strategically and in execution, fostering inclusivity isn’t as simple as saying “we care” or including visual representation of diverse groups in communications.

DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion] is truly complex. And between the current politicization of DEI and the failure to get it right, many organizations are asking themselves if it’s worth it.

Still, in health care, the benefits of a successful approach to DEI speak for themselves. For the community, it’s better care and a better patient experience. For health care organizations, it’s a happier, more loyal and productive workforce, innovation, and advocacy. And a deeper understanding of neuroscience — the science of the human brain and its impact on behavior — can help pave the way for a successful DEI approach.

Boston’s Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a cancer research and treatment center with over 75 years of experience, is a prime example of how an organization overcame bias with neuroscience.

Continue reading to learn how neuroscience helped Dana-Farber understand and more effectively reach underserved communities. We’ll share the organization’s “12 Everyday Acts of Inclusion” as well as an example of how inclusivity builds trust and paves the way for change.

Why Neuroscience?

Neuroscience teaches us that our brains are built for unconscious preferences. The brain makes memory-based predictions and naturally looks for patterns in experience, prioritizing the familiar. While that can be helpful in many ways, it can also create unconscious preference, or bias, if left unchecked.

Cognitive biases may be helpful in some ways, like keeping us out of danger. But they can also impede good decision making. Think about how many times, in the course of decision making, we overvalue data that supports our own personal beliefs, avoid doing research on too many choices, make snap decisions based on past experiences. That’s cognitive bias at work. In brief, each one of us brings our own biases to the table. And if they’re not managed on an institutional level, they can get in the way of sound DEI practice.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute: Lessons Learned on How to Overcome Bias

Bias against the Dana-Farber brand was an obstacle to its mission to improve public health in some underserved communities. So much so, that outreach workers viewed the brand as a hinderance and would remove it from efforts to promote the early detection and prevention of cancer.

Research within the target community revealed the reasons behind the bias. The findings showed two key areas of concern:

• Negative perceptions of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute name
  • The community had negative associations with the word “cancer” (i.e., a death sentence, fate, and something to be avoided).
  • The word “institute” brought up associations of experimental research and invoked the infamous Tuskegee Institute experiments.
• Perceptions that Dana-Farber, as a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate, was elitist and not welcoming to people of color

In neuroscience terms, these biases created a “threat response” among the local community which caused people to shut down and not listen to Dana-Farber’s messaging. Importantly, neuroscience suggests a number of actionable ways that communications can work to overcome a threat response and open up a productive dialogue:

• Create a narrative that is personal, not institutional: Avoid speaking as an institution and leveraging a human voice.
• Storytelling: Telling a story eliminates the threat of being lectured or belittled. It simply allows the target to project themselves into a narrative, which often is happening to someone else, and understand the point of view of the storyteller. Our brains enjoy participating in the stories of others and are intrigued by stories.
• Keep it familiar: Stories should be told from identifiable, relatable, and empathetic people with whom the target can easily establish a rapport.
• Feed the target’s sense of being in control: Spend more time talking about the positive steps a target can take as opposed to magnifying the extent of a problem or threat. And if they’re taking positive steps to do the right thing, acknowledge it.
• Highlight benefits: End benefits such as longer life, emotional well-being, more time with family and loved ones are compelling ways to keep the conversation going.

Dana-Farber’s new community work, still in market today, established a positive and optimistic tone while leveraging influencers and other members of the community to get its message across — that cancer can be conquered, and that screening is a powerful tool available to all of us. Campaign results have reflected considerable improvements among the target in brand awareness, preference, and consideration.

Dana-Farber’s Community Screening advertising keeps it personal, highlights benefits, and feeds the target’s sense of control.

Addressing DEI: A Practical Application

Dana-Farber’s commitment to DEI grew not just from the realization that it needed to better understand a community it served; it also grew from understanding that the organization needed to change.

Historically, Dana-Farber’s patient population has been homogeneous and it has lacked diversity in its faculty and staff.

Today, Dana-Farber’s commitment to DEI extends far beyond the chief diversity officer and touches every member of the staff. It has an active program training employees in inclusive behaviors, stressing 12 key everyday acts of inclusion and reinforcing the values of Commitment, Courage, Consciousness, Curiosity, Cultural Intelligence, and Collaboration. Dana-Farber’s example is a model for comprehensive DEI initiatives in health care.

Dana-Farber’s 12 Everyday Acts of Inclusion are a cornerstone of employee training in DEI.

While each organization may have its own challenges in implementing successful DEI policy, neuroscience strongly supports the following practical tools for challenging bias within an organization:

• Keep your team diverse to keep perspective as varied as possible.
• Standardize your process to keep it inclusive and open.
• Bring the community in — do your homework and make sure views are known and heard.
• Test your assumptions before building communication.
• Lead with empathy and curiosity in everything you do.

In summary, while bias is inherent in everyone and in every organization, how we manage it, on an individual or enterprise level, is up to us. Key to this is not just embracing inclusive behaviors but understanding that how we communicate matters.

Andy Semons is Founder, Strategic Planning Partner, IPNY. With 30+ years in advertising, including building and growing Ogilvy Healthcare, Andy is dedicated to driving results for clients while leveraging the power of consumer insights and neuroscience to build brands. He is a founding partner of IPNY, a brand positioning and messaging company. Clients include Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, City of Hope Medical Center, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Regeneron, Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Center, and WNET PBS THIRTEEN.

Donna Walthall is Senior Director, Marketing, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. During Donna’s 25-year tenure, she’s led the development and implementation of innovative strategies to grow Dana-Farber’s reputation and increase patient volume for Dana-Farber’s primary clinical collaborations with Boston Children’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. She’s also directed marketing outreach to communities of color.

As published on the Strategic Health Care Marketing site.

As published in MM&M

Testimonials have long been a staple of hospital marketing campaigns. But for its Miracle of Science with Soul campaign City Of Hope leveraged the power of the testimonial into a full omnichannel experience. While complete patient stories lived on the City Of Hope website, a variety of television, radio, outdoor, digital, social and print media featured these City of Hope cancer survivors in a “teaser” campaign and referenced tags or links that directed the target to the site for a complete story.

While seeing the full testimonial, the target learned about City of Hope’s innovation in the cancer field through the eyes of actual cancer survivors – and were given the ability to schedule an appointment and speak to a City of Hope physician.

All told, this approach helped drove outpatient visits up 13% and filled beds to capacity on the main campus, surpassing all prior single-channel acquisition initiatives.

As published in strategichcmarketing.com, by Peter Hochstein

Excerpts of article’s key points.

The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute treats 22,000 new patients every year and sees a total of about 76,500 patients annually, mostly on an outpatient basis. The advertising, more science-oriented than most of the hospital advertising you’ll see in general consumer media, talks about Dana-Farber’s role in discovering PD-L1, a protein that blocks the immune system from attacking cancer cells — which led to the subsequent growth of immunotherapy in treating cancer around the world.

“More than most academic medical centers, we have a very large research enterprise as well,” says Steven Singer, Dana-Farber’s senior vice president for communications. He added a bit later in the conversation, “Brand recognition and brand strength are the wind at our backs for all that we do. We think it will help to lead to more partnerships and collaborations all around the country. And it will help us recruit the best faculty and staff.”

The advertising is “trying to actively engage people who pay attention to the kinds of things we do,” says Singer. According to Donna Lee Ubertalli, Dana-Farber’s vice president of marketing, to reach these folks, the hospital works with “a fairly small budget.” (The specific amount is also proprietary.) Because of the small budget, she says, the media where the advertising appears is “highly targeted toward people interested in health care, biomedical research, public affairs, that sort of thing.”

“We knew that for our audience in particular, a formulaic doctor in a lab coat wasn’t going to break through,” says Andy Semons, founder and strategic planning partner of IPNY, the “brand positioning and messaging company” in New York City that created the advertising. “We needed to take a risk. We needed to say things a little bit differently. We found a narrative style where it was all the same story, but we had different people pick up where the other left off. It was that technique, plus a very tight narrative and really well-written copy that kind of made it sing in this case.”

Print ads also appear in newspapers where readers “go to get information,” says Ubertalli. “Like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal,” Singer says. The advertising can also be heard during some “very focused podcasts” that Ubertalli says are targeted to the same audience as the broadcast and print advertising.

The campaign, which launched late in October 2019, is scheduled to run at least until the spring of 2020. The Dana-Farber marketing people have already done a benchmark attitude and awareness study, says Ubertalli, but results were not expected until well after this story’s deadline date. But Ubertalli says, “What we’re seeing is our web traffic has been increasing in these areas, so the signs are positive.”

AdForum.com recently interviewed Andy Semons, Founding and Strategic Planning Partner at IPNY, a brand-led digital and direct advertising agency

“LGBTQ+ marketing is a real need. We eat, shop, wash our clothes, brush our teeth and buy consumer durables just like everyone else.”

What is your opinion on the current state of LGBTQ+ representation in the advertising industry?

As a gay man who’s been part of the advertising industry for more years than I care to remember, I’m of mixed mind about this. Coming out of Pride month and Stonewall 50, I’m thrilled to see that so many brands have made the effort to acknowledge the LGBTQ+ community. Regardless of who the advertiser is, our money is part of what fuels their success, and it’s wonderful to be visible. On the other hand, I still think that the industry has far to go in how it represents our community. We’ve managed to mainstream the “L” and “G” folks pretty well. But we really haven’t done enough to familiarize the public with the BTQ+ components of our community.

Furthermore, most of the advertising I’ve seen is terribly ageist – it certainly seems that no one is interested in LGBTQ+ folks over age 35. Just google the category and you’ll see what I mean. That’s a shame. Early pioneers of the movement such as those that actually made Stonewall happen paved the way for younger generations to have the rights and protections they do. It didn’t just happen by itself. Where are the gay Gen Xers and Baby Boomers who so tirelessly fought for the rights we’re now celebrating? Advertising seems to have forgotten them.

Do you think LGBTQ marketing is seen as a trend or a real need for businesses?

No business that ignores its consumer base can realize its full potential. And kudos to the beverage alcohol and the travel and leisure industries for recognizing this so many years ago. But LGBTQ+ marketing is a real need. We eat, shop, wash our clothes, brush our teeth and buy consumer durables just like everyone else. Like all consumers, we want to be able to trust the brands we use. But how that’s communicated makes all the difference. It’s not all about brands being included in our stories – we need to be included in brands’ stories as well.

How can brands be more authentic in the way they engage the LGBTQ community?

OMG this is a question I could answer briefly or in 20 pages. First of all, stop depicting us like a bunch of young kids out to have a great time. We do a lot more than drink alcoholic beverages or go to trendy neighborhoods. And when we do, we’re not always hanging out with people in our own tribe. We go to PTA meetings. We sit on Town Boards. We run companies. We work in factories and gas stations. We’re everywhere – not just on urban rooftops. Secondly, remember that you’re a brand. We’re happy that you support our cause and believe in our rights, which by the way are HUMAN rights. But aside from all that, we still need to make informed choices about the products we buy.

Lester Wunderman once said, “Stop trying to pretend you know me when you only know some things about me.” In other words, it’s not enough to feature an LGBTQ+ person in your ad. We ask, what’s in it for me? And why should I care? We’re just people after all. Sometimes it’s just best to hit us with the messages you give everyone else.

Do brands risk damaging their perception in the eyes of the community if they don’t show support?

That’s a tough question. And I guess it depends on what you mean by “support.” Certainly if I know via a news item that a brand is not in favor of the community I won’t support them. I myself have boycotted a number of major brands because of things their key representatives, founders or CEOs have said. But in the absence of hostility I think there are many products and services out there that don’t have to go to the extremes of tailoring advertising to the community. A gay flag or a decal at my local hardware store makes me smile. I don’t expect a “Happy Pride” circular in the mail from them.

Outside of advertising/marketing where can brands look for inspiration on how to embrace the LGBTQ+ community?

Look to the relationships you know and have as individuals within your own families and social networks. We’re right here next to you. We’ve always been there. Be present. Talk to us. Engage with us. For the most part, understand that our sexuality is only one part of us. We’ve got a lot more in common with the rest of the world than you’re acknowledging. And again, make us part of YOUR story, don’t just try to be part of ours.

Where is the line between inclusion and “rainbow-washing” for a communication agency running a LGBTQ+ campaign for one of its clients?

Advertising is storytelling. And clients have many stories to tell. One might just be that you support us. And that’s great. But frankly, “be proud” doesn’t do it for me. I already am proud. And I can’t figure out why you’re giving me that nice encouraging message and then walking away. Michael Kors advertising for Pride this year mentions contributions to God’s Love We Deliver. Verizon’s “Love Calls Back” spots don’t just tell the story of LGBTQ+ youths who have been dismissed by their families and are reconnecting with them, it carries an endorsement from and contribution to PFLAG (an organization focused on uniting families with someone who is LGBTQ+). Find a real cause and make a difference. Authenticity is not just saying you support the community – Authenticity is SHOWING you support it.

As we reach the end of Pride Month, are there any brands that celebrated it well in your opinion?

I love Harry’s, which once again has proven that brands can truly embrace causes and have an impact in the world. Last year they won the gold Jay Chiat award for best campaign for their “Paint the World Orange” work. This campaign fearlessly challenged the accepted notions of masculinity and caused us to seriously rethink the way we turn our young boys into men. This year for Pride, they introduced the “Shave With Pride” set — an artist-designed shaving set with an iridescent, rainbow-like handle on the razor. It’s so gorgeous I bought one. And all proceeds from the sale go to the Trevor Project, which is the largest organization aimed at suicide prevention for LGBTQ+ youth.

As mentioned above, the Verizon “Love Calls Back” spots, combined with the PFLAG partnership and donation is really impressive. I first saw this spot at a conference a few months ago in Chicago and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. So many of our youth have been dismissed by their families and the notion of repairing the damage by creating a connection (something a Telcom company has done successfully) is not just impactful but on brand. I love this effort.

Finally, I really like the new Kind Pride bar in the rainbow wrapper. Kind’s done a lot to foster inclusion, generosity and understanding among folks in general. Remember the Kind Foundation’s “Pop Your Bubble” experiment from a few years back, which was aimed at getting groups of people with different political beliefs to talk to one another as friends? This is just as cool. This year 100% of the proceeds from Pride bar sales through the end of July will go to the Ali Forney Center, which helps homeless LGBTQ+ youth across the country.

As published at Philanthropy.com, by Andy Semons and Will Hajjar

It’s a slow but steady evolution: More and more marketers are migrating from companies to nonprofits. But most charities are still far from marketing-centric, and few have board members with expertise in the field. That can make it hard to get buy-in for a bigger marketing budget, and it may require you to defend or justify the cost of your work.

However, if you use data to back up your claims, and speak in terms your trustees understand, you’ll stand a much better chance of getting approval for a bigger investment in marketing and communications.

To help you make a strong case, here are several techniques marketers at nonprofits have employed successfully to win support for budget increases. You can adapt these approaches to fit your organization’s needs.

1. First, drop the marketing jargon. Terms like “brand positioning,” “core benefits,” and “brand imagery” may be unfamiliar to trustees. However, your board members should understand the notion that a higher profile for the institution can lead to more donations. So build your case on this premise ― and use data to demonstrate how money spent on raising your nonprofit’s profile and acquiring new donors will result in more revenue.

2. Figure out how much you need to spend on advertising to get positive results. A good data analyst can use basic metrics about the public’s awareness of your organization, combined with sector-wide spending on advertising and reported revenue, to determine the “breakthrough” cost; that is, the amount of money you should invest to produce a positive return for your organization. This estimate will enable you to set benchmarks and projections for specific time periods, which you can share with your board in your budget forecasts. This analytical rigor is rare among nonprofits, but it provides a level of clarity your trustees will appreciate.

The analyst will need to make a number of assumptions about your key competitors. These considerations include how likely it is that their spending will increase, decrease, or stay the same, along with external market factors (such as issues in the news, the state of the economy, changes to laws, etc.). The relevant factors may differ according to the particular mission of a nonprofit and the market it serves.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money; even small nonprofits can gather data on their competitors, such as the “ad spend” and the revenue raised. Find a data-analytics firm that will work with you to identify, for the purposes of the study, your key competitors and sources of data about them. The Data and Marketing Association offers a list of analytics companies that can help you.

If your organization doesn’t have current “awareness data,” analysts can interview your senior staff to make an educated guess about the relative position of your nonprofit compared with key competitors and help you set some rough benchmarks. Most analytics and advertising firms can access spending data from the research company Kantar Media. You also can purchase, at low cost, data from GuideStar, which tracks donations by organization.

For example, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society needed to establish a budget for the launch of its campaign “Someday Is Today,” which aimed to increase national awareness of the society by 10 percent and donations by 25 percent.

To estimate the right advertising budget, we used data from Kantar to analyze what the organization and its key competitors were spending. Then, based on awareness data the group had already gathered, our analyst used a forecasting formula to calculate the breakthrough cost, or the amount needed to meet the group’s communications goals of greater awareness and more revenue. While the forecasting model can’t be represented by a simple equation, it does take into account three key variables:

• Awareness, which depends on an organization’s advertising budget and other factors, such as media coverage and endorsements.
• Revenue from all types of donors, which is driven in part by awareness.
• Return on Investment, or the amount of revenue you must raise to exceed the marketing expenses.

Knowing the breakthrough cost allowed us to forecast how spending different amounts on marketing would affect giving. Then, with input from the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, we developed a budget for the campaign that increased spending on marketing and projected an increase in revenue.

Contributions for that year were nearly double the fundraising goal. The following year the society’s marketing staff got a further increase in its budget, with little resistance from the board.

3. Collect the data you’ll need to build a strong case for your budget. Numbers don’t lie. So it’s important to develop a consistent way to track metrics on brand awareness and perceptions of the brand (known as brand imagery).

Many nonprofits also like to monitor “claimed intent.” This entails comparing the public’s expressed intent to give money to a specific charity with the amount actually donated.

Using both of these metrics increases the accuracy of your forecasts over time and can give you a competitive advantage. Consider this: According to a Stanford Business School survey, 57 percent of charity boards don’t benchmark their groups’ performance against peer organizations. Those that do have a much better idea of what they’ll need to spend in the coming year to boost their revenue.

Before the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society launched its “Someday Is Today” campaign, we helped the group measure a number of factors, including brand awareness in comparison with that of key competitors; intent to donate in the future; and perceptions of the organization as a leader in science and discovery, which is a main theme in the organization’s communications strategy.

We pulled these data points, as well as overall donations, into a performance dashboard, an easy-to-follow spreadsheet that tracked key metrics and was updated twice a year at both the national and regional levels. This information helped the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society understand how to optimize its messages and allocate spending in pivotal markets.

4. Put your own data in the context of your competitors. Tracking data regularly can do much more than provide an ongoing barometer of campaign performance. It can help you make the connection between the amount spent on advertising and the competitive advantage you’ll gain or lose if you alter your spending. That’s the “holy grail” of budget planning.

Take another nonprofit, the City of Hope Medical Center in Los Angeles. After running its “Miracle of Science with Soul” awareness-campaign for several years, the nonprofit reached the highest level of brand recognition among its competitors. Yet, as too often happens, when the center increased its advertising budget, so did its key peers, which led to a decline in awareness of the City of Hope.

The organization wanted to understand, based on its competitors’ behavior, how much it needed to spend the next year to maintain the level of awareness, or better yet, boost it. To do so, we combined the group’s data from three consecutive years with Kantar’s data about spending on advertising by the center’s peers. In particular, we looked at yearly changes in “share of voice”: the amount City of Hope spent on advertising compared with the total spent on advertising by the center and its designated competitors. That provided a longer-term view of the relationship between spending and awareness.

Based on past spending patterns for each competitor, and assessing the market environment, we predicted how much each competitor was likely to spend in the future. Using this data and City of Hope’s expected budget for the next year, we forecast what would happen if the medical center reduced spending by 10 percent, maintained its present budget, or spent 10 percent more.

Because the center’s peers were increasing their investment, we advised City of Hope to do the same to maintain its current level of awareness. We also learned that a boost of 10 percent could yield a 1 to 2 percent increase in awareness. This data gave the center’s executive the information needed to argue for a bigger budget.

Going before your board to ask for more marketing dollars doesn’t have to be an untenable situation. Whether you gather basic metrics or conduct a more rigorous study that ties awareness to greater giving, a little data analysis, combined with a bit of preparation, goes a long way.

Andy Semons is founding and strategic-planning partner at the advertising agency IPNY. Will Hajjar is the global executive director of the management consulting firm Rivelare.

Interplanetary has a number of nonprofit clients on our roster. And every year we run a program to help organizations get ready to maximize the prime, end-of-year giving season (October/November). The 4th Quarterizer gets you organized, streamlines the process with internal groups, creates more emotionally compelling communications that drive better results, ensures consistent branding, and better equips your supporters to advocate for you. A turnkey program with discounted/package rates, The 4th Quarterizer is modular and customizable to your company’s specifications. Read more about it here.

If you’d like to maximize the opportunity your organization faces in the last two to three months of the year (including Giving Tuesday), contact Tom Steadman, Managing Director, at tom@IPNY.com

As published in Forbes.com

We’re talking advertising. And if ever there were a low-interest category in a highly regulated industry, it’s banking, closely followed by investment services.

Who even remembers the last financial-services ad they loved? I do. It was E*Trade: “He’s got money coming out the wazoo.”

But that was a decade ago. And in that same decade another highly regulated financial-services category, insurance, turned itself around by producing compelling, water-cooler advertising. Brands like Geico, State Farm and Allstate are often laugh-out-loud funny. And in our Millennial-seeking marketing environment, humor is proven to relieve the discomfort of being sold to.

If the insurance industry can get their advertising talked about, why can’t banking and investment brands?

They can.

Our commentary on holiday ads as posted in MediaPost’s MarketingDaily blog.

As 2016 begins, another season of warm and fuzzy ads has ended and we are no longer bombarded by smiling faces, weeping grandparents, holiday sweaters and sleigh bell music. And now that our focus is turning towards the upcoming onslaught of political ads, we’re almost nostalgic for holiday clutter. But we still wonder whether any holiday advertiser truly benefitted from all those ads?

Even the biggest of spenders can get lost in holiday noise. Years of seasonal tracking have shown us that even when marketers spend more during this period, they often get less: lower brand recall, lower advertising awareness, and less retention of key messages. Holiday spending numbers, although indicative of consumer confidence as well as response to advertising, also seem to support these findings. Early reports show that 2015 holiday sales rose only slightly over last year.

Yet not spending during the holiday period isn’t an option, particularly for retailers who need to boost sales, non-profits who rely heavily on charitable contributions or manufacturers of big-ticket items that are “considered decisions.”

It’s not too early to think about how to maximize impact during this coming year’s holiday season. And for 2016 we’d like to see advertisers draw more heavily on the values of their brand. In short, what is said matters as much as how much is spent — all year round.

Here are three suggestions for how to make your sales and fundraising work throughout 2016.

1. Never lose sight of what makes you different. Don’t forget why a consumer would be drawn to you in the first place. Mercedes Benz has always done a wonderful job of combining its heritage of performance and luxury and Santa. And Mercedes brand recall rates, according to Phoenix Marketing International, remain higher than other luxury cars.

2. Give people a compelling reason to engage with you. Compelling, positive proof points can help consumers make a connection and stick with you. TD Bank’s 2014 digital #MakeTodayMatter campaign showcased what 24 people in 24 communities could give back with $30,000, making positive statement for the bank while truly walking the talk of the holiday spirit.

3. Keep your momentum going. For retailers in particular, holidays are an easy time of year to focus on a one-time purchase. But what about reasons to stay engaged? Target’s 2015 “Journey Begins” spot kept consumers coming back during the entire holiday season by depicting an imagination-fueled world filled with Minions, Lego people, ninja turtles, Barbie and Elmo and more. The goodwill built will last well into the coming year.

Here’s to getting it right in 2016.