Last year we celebrated the worst corporate Christmas and Holiday greetings. This year we’re celebrating the good ones. Got one? We’ve found one by Klick Health, and it deserves recognition. The sheer number of edits and costumes shows effort that is uncommon with end-of-year throw aways.
This one is interactive so you can win some loot for naming the characters.
I’ve seen YouTube’s power as a community, and occasionally it rallies on behalf of an individual or cause related to health. However I’ve yet to see a health community that’s truly powered by images and video (and involves patient-to-patient peer support leveraging webcams and the Internets).
In general, I like when the power of new-technology marketing is put toward a health cause.
Like imagine the video campaigns that can come out of the FDA’s imagery for cigarette packs! Graphic cigarette labels: Will they work? You damned straight they will… at least compared to text. The proof is in other countries.
They challenge, of course, will be to use these negative reinforcements the drive urgency, then positive-reinforcement and behavior change to help people. A scary imagine alone can have moderate effect, but people are generally more eager to change when you tell them how and try to go beyond scaring them into change.
Now on a happier but related note:
PatientsLikeMe is a health site where you can specify your illness(es), see how other people rated various treatments, and (if you wish) engage with other patients. The site jumped on my radar when it launched years ago, and I wrote the founder. It surfaced again when it surprisingly was able to publish findings on co-morbidities (if you have x illness, you may likely have y).
The site held a video contest answering the question “how has PatientsLikeMe helped you,” and here are the winners (see link for embedded videos).
Most Creative Presentation:
tiredoftired of New Jersey for Depression Feels Like
Most Inspiring Story:
tired old me of Delaware for Patients Like Me: Bonnie Tipton
Top Voted (by peers):
Roulette67 of New Jersey for I Am Not Alone
So a week or so ago I sent Chris Brogan a note. Asked him if he could get me a free pass to Blog World San Fran Los Vegas (thanks CB and SG), and offered to fill a last-minute speaking slot, be on a panel, or hand out drinks. I can’t let Steve Garfield get all the attention with Get Seen when I’ve got my book, Beyond Viral, coming out in the next weeks.
Yesterday Chris e-mailed me to confirm that I’m attending, and saying he mentioned me in a draft “9 Ways to Rock Blog World” on his wickedly popular Chris Brogan blog. My response: “if you say I’m going, Chris, then I’m going.”
So now I’m not only going (by plane, train or Greyhound bus), I’ll be giving away a card with top-10 secrets than can help you promote yourself and/or business via online video. But here’s the catch. I’ll be keeping these hidden, and giving them away to anyone that mentions Chris Brogan. I’d give away copies of the book, but I’m a little worried about carrying 500 books around inconspicuously.
Thanks, Chris. I want to be you when I grow up. And when are we going to work on your fledging YouTube persona? I can double your views in a week for one case of beer.
P.S. THIS JUST IN (3:00 pm): Marc Monseau invited me to the J&J sponsored healthcare round table (Social Health). I’m quite sure it wasn’t an inducement prompted by my giving him a free book… I didn’t even autograph it.
How many Dominos ads will it take to offset this? Kristy Lynn Hammonds videotapes Michael Anthony Setzer putting toppings in nose, then uploads it to YouTube where it goes nuts. They were both fired, and ended up with low ratings, bad comments, and felony charges.
Setzer is making sandwiches while a giggling Hammonds narrates and urges him to “do it again, do it again” in putting the cheese up his nose,” according to this report. “It appears he threw some of the cheese in the garbage but some went on a sandwich.” Setzer says: “This is Michael’s special Italian sandwich.”
“We got blindsided by two idiots with a video camera and an awful idea,” said a Domino’s spokesman, Tim McIntyre, who added that the company was preparing a civil lawsuit. “Even people who’ve been with us as loyal customers for 10, 15, 20 years, people are second-guessing their relationship with Domino’s, and that’s not fair.”
I was very careful in my headline to NOT describe Kicesie (Kicesie’s Closet) – see her also on SexHealthGuru. Rather I’d just contrast her to Dr. Ruth, the pioneer of sex-talk on radio. Kicesie is now bringing this “no beating around the bush” sex advice to YouTube.
I discovered her just now when I was checking my ranking on YouTube… and noticed I’m on top of her at the moment. But I have a feeling she’ll be on top of me pretty soon. She’ll probably stay on top of me too.
Honestly how can I compete with sex advice from a young blond woman? This is enough to make an old, faithful married man blush. Geez- my mom hosted a PBS show called “How to Talk to Your Children About Sex,” back in the 1980s, but it sure wasn’t this kinda stuff!
To be fair, Kicesie isn’t the actual name of the host. According to the YouTube channel page, “Kicesie is science mixed with interpersonal exchange. As a brand, Kicesie is a video production company, a media relations team, a research group and an advertising venue.”
I’ve been saying for years that I’d trust 100 patients’ diagnosis and recommendations over one doctor’s. It’s the power of the masses: a large set of less educated opinions are more likely to be informative than one educated professional. As an example, I posted a video last night called “5Ks are brutal,” and described some symptoms I’ve had with my back and leg (fast forward to 1:50 to hear how I describe my pain and tingling in one leg).
Within 10 minutes of my hitting “upload,” someone suggested it might be Sciatica (see Wikipedia entry, which itself is a collective explanation and not necessarily informed by medical professionals). As of now, there are several hundred comments, and a few others agree it could be sciatica.
I found this comment fascinating because I think bohogirl1, a total stranger, helped save me weeks of misdiagnoses- and her response arrived almost instantly. I do find my doctor to be largely informed (she’s seen here in this parody, where she was good enough to pretend to diagnose me with “video virus.” But I’ve been experiencing these symptoms for more than a month, and haven’t felt compelled to visit her… it’s time off work, a co-payment and I’m likely to get the “HMO runaround.”
Clearly this wouldn’t work if nobody was watching my videos, and it’s not very sustainable. I doubt many would subscribe to a YouTube channel of random patients complaining about inexplicable medical symptoms — much less offer free diagnosis. But I do think that online-video will power health care communities. Already we’ve seen communities form around medical conditions — especially severe ones like breast cancer, Alzheimer’s, or mental illnesses (see crazymeds.us for some collective experiences related to pharmaceutical treatments related to depression, anxiety and other neurological ailments).
Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and now Revolution Health, has indicated that as co-pays rise and consumer-directed healthplans push costs to consumers, patients are likely to become more informed and seek out other patients for efficient coping with illnesses. When I had a family member diagnosed with cancer, the second thing I did (after surfing the credible sites about cancer) was look for people that had experienced his rare type of cancer… to find out what to expect in treatment and recovery.
I struggle with exactly how video and health community will collide. I would imagine that if community forms around medical illnesses, people will want to exchange stories and advice in a more personalized way… and video is the most visceral means for this. That said, most online-video consumption is related to news, humor and sex. So this will be long-tail stuff. Yet certainly more profound.
I launched that March 19 NaltsGetsFit video (yes, the shirtless one) before YouTube’s maintenance problem started minutes ago. Here’s the thumbnail, which populated on my channel page. But the video (despite having 150 views) isn’t appearing in classic YouTube fashion. So I made it, ChristopherMast. You?
I’m ready for a health/diet/fitness sponsor, now. Get me to visible improvement by May 12! Something credible that actually works, please. Maybe take it bigger than one person- get a bunch of us on board to journey our road to healthier living.
May 12 (my bday) is my new fitness milestone. I’m going to feel comfortable while shirtless at the pool this spring and summer… for the first time ever.
… Unlike the look of torture I showed tonight as I revealed my killer abs (buried beneath a remaining Stromboli of cottage cheese).
P.S. Hi, Marilyn.