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MONDAY RADIO COMMERCIAL SMACKDOWN: Kaiser-Permanente Makes A Shocking Discovery

First, the commercial…

They turned this 60-second radio commercial into a 37-second radio commercial by spending the first 23 seconds trying — without a hint of success — to be cute.

The Big Message? Kaiser-Permanente has discovered you can use the Internet to…do stuff!

Wow!

I mean, they must be the first business to realize its customers can do stuff online.

But….Is it wise for Kaiser-Permanente to run the risk of other health providers hear about this exciting new competitive advantage?

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  • John Pellegrini July 5, 2010, 8:07 am

    Wow! What a waste of 60 seconds! The usual criticisms of wasting 45 seconds of advertising on something that has nothing to do with the service being offered aside, I just have one question for everyone involved in this: How stupid do you think we are? Every so-called benefit you claim in this commercial can already be done by anyone who has a computer and a clue! Which means the service Kaiser-Permanente is advertising is completely worthless! We don’t need Kaiser-Permanente to do anything they advertise… therefore we don’t need Kaiser-Permanente.

    There is definite truth to the statement that advertising cannot help a business or service that has no reason to exist in the first place. This is one of them. Glad they’re wasting the money!

  • DC Goode July 5, 2010, 8:39 am

    To John’s point, They’re wasting MY money. This explains why my wife’s (and everyone else’s) coverage goes up every year. SOOOO Glad that Katy and KP are “Thriving”.
    TO Dan’s reason for posting. It confirms my belief that KP’s PR department has a very nice annual budget for Advert that probably needs to be spent or lost, so they can throw dribble like this on the air to tell us nothing.

  • Mitch Krayton July 6, 2010, 1:25 pm

    Sometimes you have to do something off the wall to attract an ear. Just like white space is a good thing to surround art, maybe, just maybe, non-sales message is a good thing to surround a sales message. You don’t always have to use every second selling. Sometimes you can have fun, or take me down a path I don’t expect.

    If this spot did not resolve to get back to the special use of the internet, it would have been a complete waste. But it did come back to it – to suggest that your doctor is online with a web tool you can use, too. Didn’t offend me and I got their point.

  • Duncan Minett September 12, 2010, 9:44 am

    I agree with Mitch. I can relate to the first part of the ad because my family watches endless hours of cat videos and the like and I too watch alot of videos posted on Facebook and Youtube. So it spoke to me. And the second part of the message was loud and clear. Good for the other posters that they already know about this service; you are not the intended audience. I think the spot does what it’s supposed to do: make you hear the message. This particular message is just not for the people posting here.

  • Peter Drew September 12, 2010, 5:47 pm

    I listened to the ad once, read the comments, and then went back and listened to the spot again. I thought about the spot for a second and then it hit me. Costs.

    This ad is trying to get KP members to use the KP web site instead of being pesky customers and actually calling a live human, which costs a heckuva lot more per transaction than on the ol’ InterWeb. The last stats I saw for the costs for handling a customer service inquiry across all industries was something like 30 cents for the customer service inquiry via the Web and about 5 bucks for a customer to call and talk with a live human being.

    A secondary goal of the ad is probably, as Mitch and Duncan mentioned, waking up the KP members who either aren’t aware of or have forgotten the KP site for routine health matters.

    I’m on the East Coast, where KP doesn’t have a presence, so I’m not aware of how savvy KP is about marketing, but maybe, just maybe, a focus group was conducted, or a survey was taken, or some genius just looked at their web stats and said, “Holy crap! Nobody’s using our site!” Word got to the bean counters, and lo and behold, a high-ranking suit said, “Drive routine stuff to the web site and we’ll save big bucks.”

    And so, once again, human contact is eliminated and the customer’s experience with the service they’re paying for is diminished, but the goal of saving a few bucks is accomplished. At least, because KP is non-profit, the goal of saving a few bucks might actually go providing better health care services. The key word in that sentence being “might.” Cheers.