Monday, February 6, 2012

A Marketing Lesson in Bragging About Doctors


For my last birthday a health insurance provider mailed me a postcard that recommended a visit to one of the listed nearby doctors.  Thanks faceless corporation for using my birthday to remind me of my mortality!  Normally I would have tossed it directly in the recycling bin but a headline on the card caught my eye.  As a way of encouraging me to trust their suggested medical experts they referred to the list as their Two-Star Doctors.

Elsewhere on that card there was a sentence or two explaining how the physicians had earned these stars by offering quality care, or managing costs, or properly sanitizing their waiting room magazines.  But I didn’t care.  Because I already understood what a two-star rating meant, and it didn’t mean ‘hurry and make an appointment with these doctors.’

In my mind, and most likely yours, the star rating scale normally starts with “Very Poor” at 1 and goes up to “Excellent” at 5.  Or in the Netflix universe, “Hated It” to “Loved It”.  This is a pretty well established rating system and not really subject to debate, especially not within the limited space available on a double sided postcard.

So I was puzzled at how this group of professional marketers thought they could come along and arbitrarily make two stars worth bragging about.  That somehow people like me wouldn’t automatically think these doctors were only slightly better rated than a restaurant serving rats fighting on a platter, or a movie where Nicholas Cage stares mournfully at a pile of sand for 90 minutes.

Then I realized that maybe this idea was just better than the other alternatives they came up with.  I imagine the list they brainstormed up may have looked something like this:

Our doctors scored a C-
for Caring minus the hassle.

3 out of 10 patients liked our doctors
and 6 out of the 10 patients loved them.

Doctors who will rip you off
of your death bed and nurse you back to health.

Medical care that keeps you sick,
fly, and busting a move well into old age..

Our doctors have a 50% success rating
and a 50% very successful rating.

These doctors are highly dangerous
to any germs or viruses in your system.


I give these marketers two stars for their effort.