By Daniel Ghinn 
Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards 2010
Award: Best Engagement Through Video
Winner: Johnson & Johnson Health Channel on Youtube
Rob Halper, Director of Video Communication for Johnson & Johnson, knows just how important video is in engaging people about health.
“You Tube is the second largest search engine“, he says. And it’s true: You Tube has been the second largest search engine in the US – surpassed only by Google – for over a year now. So it’s no surprise that the Johnson & Johnson Health Channel has achieved almost 1.5 million video views since its launch in August 2008.
And it’s not simply the number of views that impressed us. The J&J Health Channel is used for proactive engagement – it follows others, and makes regular updates and comments. Now, it’s easy to use video for broadcasting messages – we see this all the time amongst healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations. But this channel is also open to comments, and some videos do have a lot of comments!
There are many in the world of healthcare who are still wary of engagement in the kind of open, two-way dialogue seen in the J&J Health Channel. And that’s understandable – the Channel includes some down-to-earth and blunt comments. Rob Halper says he reviews them all, and has had to remove some of the more offensive comments, but he says he does not necessarily delete comments that disagree with what the company is publishing:
“It’s an open forum, except for inappropriate or off-topic comments”, he says. “And what I’ve found is that the community corrects itself. If somebody says, ‘bipolar doesn’t exist, you’re all crazy!’ then somebody will say ‘yes it does, and if you had a loved one in this situation then you would understand'”.
Rob says that an important aspect of the Channel’s healthcare engagement is its ability to help patients and their caregivers know they are not alone.
“Based on the comments, some people are in a situation let’s say where they are a caregiver for someone with Alzheimer’s… there’s an appreciation just to know that there’s other support out there, as people are looking for other patients or people who have shared their experience.”
I asked Rob what advice he would give others embarking on a You Tube Channel healthcare engagement strategy. His response was to share the most useful lessons he he’s learned from his experience so far:
- Keep the content fresh
- Monitor comments every day, on a regular basis
- Be open and honest. If you make a mistake, or offend somebody, take responsibility for it.
- Don’t try to sneak in a commercial message without being transparent about it.
- Remember it’s a living organism – it’s not something that’s static. You have to get your hands dirty. And it’s fun!
Johnson & Johnson, we are delighted to award you Healthcare Engagement Strategy Award 2010 for Best Engagement Through Video.
View all Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards 2010 winners.
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