2015 MarCom Award Winner

For the fourth consecutive year, Point Across Media has been recognized for outstanding healthcare video in the MarCom Awards competition. The MarCom Awards are one of the most prestigious honors for marketing and communication professionals. We're proud to have the work we do be so well received by a panel of our peers.

This year's winning entry was a video we produced for the Puget Sound Institute of Pathology. Pathologists are often the unseen members of the team in the fight against cancer. But their work comes at the very beginning. They are tasked with analyzing tissue samples to determine if a patient has cancer. Here is their story.

Marketing and the Reluctant Physician

“You know, I’m really nervous. I don’t think I’m going to be very good.”

“I don’t understand why the marketing department is asking me to do this.”

These are the kinds of objections we sometimes hear from physicians at video shoots. They are natural responses, especially when you are asking someone to do something that is outside of their comfort zone.

The nervous physician usually warms up when we start having a conversation. A good producer makes it easy for them to lose sight of the camera and lights. The physician discovers they don’t have to carry the show. We find most physicians actually enjoy talking about what they do and why they do it.

Explaining the purpose of the video to the physician is an important part of creating a successful interview. Once a physician understands where they fit in the overall hospital marketing strategy, they are more likely to buy in to the project.

Video profiles of individual physicians are an effective way to feature the wide range of medical services available to patients.

Video and the Content Conversation in Healthcare Marketing

When I talk with hospital marketing directors and managers, a lot of conversation steers around the word “content.” How can we create content, how do we place our content, etc. Since we specialize in producing visual content for healthcare companies, the “content conversation” is right up our alley.

Content marketing is all about providing the consumer with something they want or need. Stephen Moegling of Franklin Street wrote a detailed summary on the role of content marketing in healthcare. Read it here.

Video is the perfect solution for a hospital or physician group looking for content. It is unique. It belongs to you. It is engaging. It is memorable. But it has to be done right to be effective.

Here is a typical scenario. A consumer is trying to find a new primary care physician. After checking what is covered by their insurance plan, they end up on the “Find A Doctor” page of a local hospital or clinic website. There they see a list of potential physicians. Click on one and up comes the physician’s photo, resume and contact. Now the consumer is expected to use that limited information to select the medical professional who will treat them.

There are some hospitals that have realized adding video to a physician’s website profile can help prospective patients make a choice. Instead of the still photo, the consumer can hear from the physician and see the physician interact with other patients in a video. Video allows the consumer to make a more informed choice.

Understanding Vascular Surgery

Recently we started a series of videos on vascular care. Vascular surgeons treat diseases of the arteries and veins. It’s a rapidly advancing medical field where many of the procedures used to improve blood flow these days are minimally invasive.

Instead of open surgery, vascular surgeons can run catheters though small incisions to get balloons or stents into the arteries. Patients are often able to go home a few hours after their surgery.

It is fascinating and potentially life-saving medical work, but it can be complicated to explain. The vascular surgeon we interviewed was talking us through a unique procedure to treat abdominal aortic aneurysm. It’s called an endovascular stent graft.

In this procedure, the surgeon uses live x-ray pictures viewed on a video screen to guide a fabric and metal tube to the site of the aneurysm in the aorta. The tube takes the place of the weakened section of the aorta and allows blood to pass easily through it.

With the help of our surgeon and a little research, I was able to boil down an endovascular stent graft into a couple of sentences. But imagine how much easier it would be to understand if you could see it as opposed to only reading about it. And wait until you hear a passionate surgeon explain why he loves doing them.

Point Across Media Wins 2013 MarCom Awards

MILL CREEK, WA - November 7, 2013 - Point Across Media received two honors for outstanding healthcare video in the 2013 MarCom Awards competition. The MarCom Awards recognize creative achievement by marketing and communication professionals from all over the world.

 

 

Point Across Media won MarCom Gold Awards for the following videos in the Medical/Web Video category:

• Franciscan Health System: Joint Replacement
• South Sound Gamma Knife: Overview

This year's MarCom Award winners were selected from over 6,500 entries. The MarCom Awards are administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals.

Health Care One Story at a Time

Walk inside a hospital and there are a million stories waiting to be told. We get the privilege of turning many of them into videos, from stories on extraordinary surgeons to the latest uses of technology that can improve the lives of patients.

There is one theme we try keep in mind when producing our stories: health care is about people. The team at the Cleveland Clinic provided a great example with a video called “Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care.” It’s been viewed more than a million times on YouTube.

While it was made specifically for the employees of Cleveland Clinic, this video is about more than health care. There’s a powerful story here about how we see other people.

3 Things We Can Learn from Little League

My 10 year old son is playing Pony League baseball right now. It’s the fifth season in a row that I have coached his team. Having watched a ton of games, I’ve picked up on three lessons that translate from the field to our places of work.

1) Have fun.
The last thing I tell the kids before every game is to ‘have fun.’ Baseball is supposed to be fun, especially at this age. The kids that are having fun usually perform the best on the field. I don’t mean everyday at the office should be a party, but an atmosphere that encourages smiling and laughter often generates good results.

2) Use two hands.
We teach the kids that two hands are better than one when it comes to catching a fly ball or pop up. At work, we are prone to taking the easy way out sometimes. But to get the best results, you should use all of the resources at your disposal.

3) Don’t be afraid to sacrifice for the good of the team.
Kids have a hard time with this one. We tell them making an out that brings home a run or moves up a baserunner is a good thing. In the real world, we may have to do something we don’t like to create a better result for whole organization.

                                                                                                                                                              

I’ll bet you can think of a few more. It’s a long season, so keep the conversation going by adding what you’ve picked up on that can benefit all of us.