I like telling stories, so here is a story I think you might find pretty interesting on several different levels.
It was 1998. I was working at an ad agency in the DC metro area. One of our clients was a large hospital, which also had their own health plan. It was a plan that was part of the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) program.
I don't think a lot of people realize this, but if you are Federal employee you have a whole list of health plans to choose from. I mean literally a couple dozen. If you are a single, 22 year old dude you can pick a basic plan that is pretty "cheap." But if you are married with a large family with a lot of medical needs, you can choose another plan that more meets your needs.
What is really "neat" about FEHB is each year they have what is called "open enrollment." Meaning that once a year you can choose to change your plan, to whatever you want.
As you might expect there is a lot of money to be made, so around "open enrollment" all the plans start a heavy advertising blitz in the DC metro area. This wasn't my account, but whenever a client gave us thousands of pages of research, well it usually hit my desk.
This is where the story about preventive care starts .....
When all these documents hit my desk I was told I needed to figure out a way to differentiate this health plan from all the others. Just saying, "hey we have a good health plan" wasn't enough. Everybody said that.
As I was looking at how they spent around $5M a year in advertising/marketing I came across this line item in their budget I didn't understand. It said "Shower Card" and cost them $218,000/year.
We made some phone calls and found out it was like a door hanger, but laminated and meant to hang in a shower. It was sent out to each women in their plan and outlined, visually, how a women could conduct a self-breast exam.
Now I should have just left it at that. But what I loved about working at this firm, and it was the best job I ever had, was we were empowered to be curious and ask questions.
So I started to ask questions.
What I learned made complete sense in hindsight, but honestly something I'd never really thought about. A lot of women get breast cancer. The earlier you catch it the better. Clearly the sooner it is found the better for the women, cause it is much easier to successfully treat.
But to be blunt, this hospital was for-profit and the earlier you catch breast cancer, the less it costs to treat. So successfully treating a problem sooner rather than later means more money for the hospital.
As I started to dig I found that this $218,000 line item was more than just the card, but an entire educational program, including weekly seminars women could attend at the hospital to educate them about breast cancer.
Now I am a dude, but generally speaking advertising is a profession dominated by women. I think our office of 45 people was about 70% women, including the owner who was a breast cancer surviror. As I walked around the office telling people about this program the women seemed to think it was about the coolest thing they'd ever heard.
Note: Just to add a little humor, a few of the men in the office said they'd go to work for the hospital as "breast inspectors" if possible :).
It was at this point I got an idea. We kind of already had an idea of how we were going to market the plan. I mean just retool what we did last year basically, since that had worked well. They were a huge, huge hospital, but they also had satellite clinics throughout the metro area. Most other plans didn't. This was a huge benefit and one we promoted 24/7. Just ease of access if you live in DC, Northern Virginia, or Maryland.
I might have screamed, "STOP THE PRESSES!" I said I thought we should do at least one ad, if not our entire campaign on preventive care and breast cancer. I have to admit a few people thought I was crazy.
But the nice thing about being the guy that reads through thousands of pages of market research is that I usually have the statistics on my side. I noted that well over 50% of Federal workers are female (not including the DoD of course). That in 76% of married couples, well the women makes the health care decisions for the family.
But the clincher was that since they had started this program they saw a 9% increase in cases where the cancer was caught at Stage One, where the success rate for treatment is almost 100%.
It was a slam dunk. Of the four ads we did, two were about this. The primary ad, which ran everywhere, was of this stunningly attractive African America women. 100% nude. Shot from the side with her arm and hand covering her breasts .... with copy that went to the plans preventive care for breast cancer.
It became maybe the most successful ad campaign I have ever been involved with. The client saw enrollment increase more than 30%. I like to think maybe I saved a few lives. I know I made my client a shit load of money!
It is this experience, I mean directly why I am for single payer. Why I am for Planned Parenthood. For preventative care across the board. I could literally see the numbers in black and white, that this program increased by 9% the number of women that caught a problem in Stage One. It saved lives. And all of that was done with $218,000. A laminated thing you hang in your shower, a few direct mailers, and a weekly seminars. Not rocket science here folks!