What Your Agency Should Be Doing That It Isn’t
There are two kinds of healthcare agencies to avoid.
Let’s start with the Moldy Burger agency.
These are the shops that live for applause from other agencies. They want the awards. They want the case study sizzle reel. They want creatives across town whispering, “God, I wish we’d done that.”
The work is often gorgeous. Sometimes even brilliant. But sometimes it builds the wrong memory.
The Moldy Whopper is the cautionary tale. Burger King filmed one of their burgers rotting over 34 days to prove they’d ditched artificial preservatives. A shot at McDonald’s dressed up as a brand statement. The industry went nuts for it.
Consumers did not. Social media called it disgusting. Research found it clever but creepy. The takeaway wasn’t “clean ingredients.” It was rotten food. Sales dropped 5% after the campaign ran.
Look, I love great creative. Love it. But creative that exists to impress other creatives — detached from whether it actually grows the brand or the business — that’s not marketing. That’s a very expensive hobby.
Then there’s the Pete Campbell agency.
If you’ve watched Mad Men, you know Pete. Glad-handing. Back-slapping. Sign here.
These shops are very good at one thing: schmoozing clients happy enough to keep signing estimates. They tell you what you want to hear. They protect the retainer. They do not, under any circumstances, tell you your ask might be wrong. They exist to manage the transaction and get the “yes.” Every time. Without fail.
In healthcare, Pete Campbell is everywhere. And he is very, very expensive.
Here’s why.
A while back a health system called us with an urgent, simple ask: Build a consumer campaign to counter the impending nationally known cancer center’s entry into their market. A Pete Campbell agency would have been shooting video by Thursday. A Moldy Burger agency would have turned it into a short film about the soul of digital health.
We went digging first.
Turns out the opportunity had nothing to do with going head-to-head with the cancer behemoth. Patients and physicians were trying to work around a broken process. Referring docs were not big fans of the oncology team. And the health system was not leveraging its very own built-in referral pipeline.
The fix was a smarter growth strategy, plus removing product and experience barriers. Not a million-dollar ad campaign. And the fix worked. Like in the form of significant incremental volume worked. For a lot, lot less investment.
That’s not us patting ourselves on the back. That’s what should happen every single time an agency gets a call with a problem attached to it. Slow down before you speed up. Ask what’s really going on. The right problem — clearly named — is worth more than the best campaign — or solution — ever built on the wrong one.
The truth is almost always hiding somewhere nearby. You just have to go looking.
The best agency relationships don’t look like Pete Campbell or Moldy Burger. They look more like this.
The agency pushes back. Respectfully. In the room. Not in the parking lot after the meeting. Healthcare is a culture that often smooths everything over. A good agency doesn’t. If your agency has never told you your ask was off, you don’t have a partner. You have an order taker with a nice website.
The agency does the homework before the homework. Listening sessions. Real conversations. Data that doesn’t just confirm what everyone already suspects. Whatever it takes to find what’s actually going on before a single idea gets put on a board.
And the agency keeps one eye on the business at all times. Not awards. Not open rates. Not how the work makes the creative director feel. Market share. Share of mind. The stuff your CFO and CEO will actually sit still for.
None of this takes more time or money than what you’re already spending. It just takes an agency willing to ask the harder question first. And a client willing to sit with the answer.
If that’s not the relationship you’ve got, it’s worth a conversation. Sometimes it’s the agency. Sometimes it’s a dynamic that’s been quietly settling for years. Either way, paying for execution when you need thinking is a habit worth breaking.
The fix isn’t always a new agency.
Sometimes it’s just a new expectation.
Tell them you want the pushback. Ask them to tell you when your ask is wrong.
See what happens. The answer will tell you everything.
Jerry Hobbs is a marketing strategist and the president of Prairie Dog, a healthcare marketing group headquartered in Kansas City.
