11 Jun The importance of personal stories in successful healthcare brand campaigns

Healthcare marketing experts rely on storytelling to increase brand awareness, build trust, and encourage brand advocacy among consumers and professionals.

In this article, we explore why authentic storytelling is so effective at helping brands connect with their target audiences. We also explore the meaning of authenticity in this context.

Making a heartfelt connection

In our 26 years of experience, Bryant Brown Healthcare has had the honor of helping many clients leverage good storytelling to differentiate medical products and services.

For example, we helped Amgen with a landmark in the use of storytelling for brand differentiation: the By My Side: Taking Charge of Cancer Treatment multimedia education campaign supporting the drug Neulasta^®. The campaign featured Rob Lowe. His father, Chuck, had developed a serious infection caused by chemotherapy and was forced to halt his cancer treatment. At the launch of the By My Side program, Rob stated, “I want to educate patients about the risk of infection so they don’t have to go through what my dad did.”

In this role, Rob Lowe was more than a celebrity, more than a spokesperson. He was a real person sharing his firsthand experience. Powerful.

We’ve also helped develop brand stories told by non-celebrities – for medical devices, academic medical centers, and other clients.

Especially in healthcare

Done well, storytelling can form the heart of an effective promotional campaign for virtually any type of product or service. But it is especially conducive to the healthcare sector.

Makes sense, right? When engaging with healthcare brands – through our own discovery or when acting on referrals from medical professionals or others – all consumers want more than just the facts, more than a litany of features and benefits, and we certainly don’t want hype or any other form of inauthenticity.

Particularly in cases where a person is ill and experiencing potentially the most stressful event of their life – authenticity matters. We want to know how the product feels, how easy it is to get and use, how it has changed people using it.

Same when the audience consists of healthcare professionals. HCPs detest phony sales pitches. They want to hear about products or services from their peers. They want to learn about not only the results of clinical studies but also about the real experiences of other HCPs and their patients.

Yes, they are data-driven. But HCPs are also moved by authentic personal stories, just like all other consumers

What makes a story authentic?

Two major criteria determine how authentic a story seems to its target audience:

1. The content of the story

Stories are at their most authentic when they are personal, detailed, and relatable. Of substance. True to life. Not overly polished. Not hard sell. Not clichéd.

Patient testimonials are common in medical advertising. That’s because they work. Just like physicians who want to hear from their peers, patients want to hear from other patients about their symptoms, diagnosis, treatment, and outcomes. Not just what they think and what they know but also what they feel.

2. The credibility of the storyteller

It can be nice to have a celebrity advocate for your brand. Research shows that celebrity endorsements positively influence consumer choices. And the reason is not so much fame as it is neuroscience and evolution. One study examining how celebrity endorsements affect people’s preference for a product or service found that people are more likely to choose products endorsed by a celebrity vs. a non-celebrity, and they choose faster when the product or service comes with a celebrity endorsement.

Evolution is a factor as well. Animals follow the alpha animal. Where he or she looks, the others look as well. Office workers are no different – people tend to follow the patterns of the successful: their coworkers in the corner office.

Other research found that younger consumers may place less trust in celebrity endorsements and, in fact, among this target audience, regular folks may instill more confidence.

A case study like that of Rob Lowe offers the best of both worlds: a good-looking celebrity speaking sincerely from firsthand experience as a caregiver for a parent.

Tell your brand’s story

Your brand is more than just an assemblage of features and benefits. It is at the heart of a relationship between your company and your customer.

It may address a critical need in a patient’s health journey, in the success of a physician’s practice, or in the ability of hospital or health system to fulfill its mission, vision, and commitment to the community.

As such, it can be a topic for authentic storytelling involving the people who have a positive experience with your brand.

We can help you tell authentic stories

Partner with Bryant Brown Healthcare to bring more authenticity to your brand stories – with or without celebrity endorsement. It’s what we do for clients throughout the industry: hospitals and health systems, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology, medical devices, health information technology, and patient and professional advocacy.

Be sure to see our article containing 10 simple steps to create brand storytelling.

Ready to tell the story of your brand? Let’s talk!