Clever, creative thinking: the stuff that Awards are made of.

Back in May when I began this blog I decided in addition to using it as a tool for connecting with top marketers, I would also use it as a channel to honor great thinking--or at least what I thought was great.

This is nothing out of the ordinary since we all celebrate and critique programs everyday through our posts. But sometimes innovation and ingenuity deserve a bit more recognition. And that's how the Smart Marketing Award came into being. I think of it like so:

Hollywood hails Oscar. Broadway guns for Tony. Mad Ave covets Clio. This blog boasts the smart guy on the right.

It's more recognition than reward--there's no door prize, glitzy ceremony or fancy statuette--but the award makes it special. I can't tell you how often I'll recognize an entity with an award because I can't predict how often brilliance will strike. But looking back on this past year, there's one initiative in particular that continues to impress upon me since I covered it back in September.

Before I get into the "who' let me elaborate on "why" this entity is award-worthy:

• Changing Behavior: The most challenging goal in existence is change, be it prodding your audience to adopt a new practice, knocking an old habit or switching brands.
• Show vs. Tell: The program is based on "show" not "tell": As you'll learn below, people are more likely to act when you show them the problem vs. when you merely tell them the ramifications (especially if the issue is invisible to the naked eye).
• Meaningful Difference: This program saves lives...money is great folks, but saving lives is the supreme ROI.
• Personal Favorite: The program was created by non-marketers. My money was on some non-marketers winning the awards (we're hardly the only people with marketing savvy).

Sans further ado, I present to you the first recipient of a Smart Marketing Award: Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California for their hand-hygiene program...

Let me start with the challenge. Our hospitals have a real problem on their hands. Literally. The problem is the spreading of bacteria, much of it due to the simple fact that doctors aren't washing their hands enough when caring for many patients. Too many people are dying from infections acquired from inside the hospital--not due to the illnesses that landed them there in the first place.

It's not that doctors are intentionally careless, it's that they're juggling a lot of patients and non-stop emergencies during the course of a marathon shift. The numbers are startling: according to the Institute of Medicine up to 98,000 Americans fall victim to medical errors each year--that's more deaths than from motor-vehicle crashes or breast cancer. It's the equivalent of losing a commercial-size plane full of passengers. Every single day of the year.

Even Cedars-Sinai in L.A., decidedly one of the country's most prominent hospitals, was grappling with this issue. Their hand-hygiene scores were hovering at 65%. But regulations required they be at 90%.

The administration's first tactic was an awareness campaign distributed via e-mail, faxes and posters. While it increased awareness, it didn't change behavior. As we marketers know, awareness sans action is a BIG waste of budget and bandwidth.

Then the administration handed out bottles of Purell to doctors in the parking lot, arming them with a disinfectant that was always handy even if a sink was not. They also leveraged an incentive-based strategy that spotlighted positive role models: the administration would catch doctors who were scrubbing up and reward them with a $10 Starbucks gift card. Oh how we love caffeinated incentives.

The strategy upped compliance rates to 80%...dramatically better...but still falling 10% short of compliance levels.

That's when Rekha Murthy, the hospital's epidemiologist, decided on a "show vs. tell" approach letting the germs themselves tell the tale rather than the administration. Murthy asked doctors to press their hands on a petri-dish sponge then cultured and scanned the findings. See the image on the left? See the hand imprint in the petri dish teeming with all that icky bacteria? Those are the actual findings, Cedars-Sinai was kind enough to send it to me (just click on it to see it larger).

Admit it, it makes you wonder what's on your hands, mouse and keyboard, doesn't it? Indeed a picture is worth a thousand germs.

The photograph was made into a screen saver and posted to the common work-station computers in the hospital in August of 2005 and is still in rotation today. The result? Compliance scores shot up to between 95% to 100%. And stayed there. Remember, those numbers don't just represent better behavior they represent diseases contained--and lives saved.

According to Paul A. Silka, MD, FACEP, Chief of Staff, "The visual of seeing what bacterial colonies grew from the hands of medical staff members was a tipping point for our medical staff to execute appropriate hand hygiene....a dramatic reminder to drive our performance to the goal."

I asked Silka the single most important lesson learned from this program which he explained, "We learned that in addition to assuring that we educate our medical staff about best practice based on scientific evidence, we need to set performance goals, and train and re-train our staff (even for, especially for, the simple things). The "burning platform", in this case, the potential for our hands to carry disease that may get our patients sick was helpful in changing the behavior of the few holdouts."

That's Silka pictured on the right, in the white lab coat, featured at a meet and greet with physicians where they held "Reach out and sanitize a colleague" gatherings. Dr. Gerry Whitman is also pictured who was a strong advocate of the initiative. The sessions included sanitizers and the famed "hand" image in which they literally pressed palms and showed colleagues how to apply sanitizers and how much bacteria was present without preventive measures. And naturally, they provided attendees with Starbucks coffee and food--let us never forget how far little incentives like java and bagles can go!

So marketers, next time you aim to change behavior--be it for the greater good or greater returns--leverage show vs. tell tactics, as seeing truly is believing. And let's be keen to remember just how much we stand to learn from professionals outside our profession, too.

Special thanks to: The "Freakonomics Guys" (authors of Freakonomics, a must read for all marketers) for covering "Selling Soap/The Petri-Dish Screen Saver" in their weekly NYT piece as that's how I learned of it -- and for pointing me to Cedars-Sinai's Chief of Staff Paul Silka, who was very responsive to my requests amid a very busy hospital to run. You guys are all award-worthy in my book.

Hand Illustration Art: Paul Sahre and Loren Flaherty (from NYT)

Comments

[Mario Vellandi]

The initial incentive approach was a great idea, but how they took it a step further is what I call extreme awareness. Naturally with good intentions though: Saving lives.

I see the great takeaway as this: If you're going to REALLY press an issue/action, tie it in with a strong value. Benefits will be secondary.
Basic Examples:
Teamwork, personal health, charity, happy customers, sportsmanship, integrity, family, compassion

[Mack Collier]

This was a great story, and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a great recipient of your Smart Marketing Award! BTW Merry Christmas!

[Drew McLellan]

This is marketing at its finest. It is not self-serving but instead, takes what really matters into account. Customer first.

Seems simple enough but oh so hard to find in our world.

The merriest of Christmas to you and yours!

Drew

[retro jordan 5]

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