Sometimes we need to figure out what's really going on. “A drill company thought it was
selling drills. Their customers were
actually buying holes”(25). I pulled this quote from
a mind-sharpening book Alan M. Webber put together, called “Rules of Thumb.” Webber describes
52 truths he picked up while hobnobbing with folks like those at the Harvard Business Review and Fast Company magazines.
Webber sums it up as Rule #6: “If You Want To See With Fresh Eyes, Reframe The Picture”(25). Most companies, he states, “don’t see what business they’re really in.” He draws from the classic article, “Marketing Myopia,” by Ted Levitt, who famously differentiated between marketing and selling. Levitt taught that selling was all about exchanging your product for cash. Marketing had to do with satisfying the actual needs of the customer through the product:
…a
truly marketing-minded firm tries to create value-satisfying goods and services
that consumers will want to buy. What it
offers for sale includes … how it is made available to the customer, in what
form, when, under what conditions, and at what terms of trade (Levitt 143).
I’m an activity professional. A good nursing program
can help keep our residents alive. A well-run
activity program will remind our residents of the reasons they have for wanting
to BE alive. Is that something they or
their families would be interested in buying?
So, how does my job in activities at a CCRC intersect with marketing? “KTR,” they tell us in our national certification classes, “Know Thy Resident.” We do our best to find out what makes each resident tick, what they used to like to do but can’t anymore, what they might enjoy doing now if they had the chance and didn’t talk themselves out of it, what they never really did before but might someday, at some precious moment, decide to give a try. We know that how we stage an activity, what we call it, what time and day we put it on the calendar, where we hold it, and what incentives go with it, will make a BIG difference in participation and satisfaction levels. We market to those with dementia as much as to those who are cognitively intact. Just because someone has dementia doesn’t mean they don’t want a life. So, yes, part of what makes for a well-run activity program is the marketing that we activity professionals do with the residents.
So, how does my job in activities at a CCRC intersect with marketing? “KTR,” they tell us in our national certification classes, “Know Thy Resident.” We do our best to find out what makes each resident tick, what they used to like to do but can’t anymore, what they might enjoy doing now if they had the chance and didn’t talk themselves out of it, what they never really did before but might someday, at some precious moment, decide to give a try. We know that how we stage an activity, what we call it, what time and day we put it on the calendar, where we hold it, and what incentives go with it, will make a BIG difference in participation and satisfaction levels. We market to those with dementia as much as to those who are cognitively intact. Just because someone has dementia doesn’t mean they don’t want a life. So, yes, part of what makes for a well-run activity program is the marketing that we activity professionals do with the residents.
Let’s say I have a resident who won’t come out for crafts, games, exercise, music, bingo, anything. But they are interested in joining a group of other residents for ice cream and conversation on the patio after supper, when the worst heat of the summer day is past. What are they buying? Ice cream? Nope. They tell me they are still full from supper. People and conversation? Just left that a few minutes ago in the dining room. Sweat and the occasional fly? Not so much. The chance to feel like what they consider to be a “normal adult" again. Absolutely.
Levitt said, “When people buy gas for their cars, they don’t really want the gasoline – they want the freedom to continue driving down the road” (145). That is so true it makes me laugh. I don’t want gasoline, do you? Activity Directors (by whatever title we’re called) are not selling activities – we’re marketing freedom from “boredom, helplessness and loneliness,” as The Eden Alternative suggests in their vision statement. Or maybe it’s freedom from meaninglessness and from anger about still being alive. How do the residents define what they’re buying? Some days it feels like we’re actually marketing an alternate reality where the residents are younger, more capable and controlling their own lives again. Your activity professionals are doing successful marketing all the time to your target demographic. If you want to increase your census numbers, maybe you should ask us how we do it.
©Donna Stuart, ADC July 21, 2017
Levitt,
Theodore. "Marketing Myopia." Best of HBR July-August 2004:
143, 145.
Webber, Alan M. Rules
of Thumb. New York: Harper-Collins Publishers, 2009.
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