From guinea pigs to Guinness–how do we rise to the challenge of meaningful engagement?

by Diana Evans, SVP Strategy & Consulting, International Healthcare Communications, Precision AQ | March 10, 2021

When you say the word "engagement" everyone thinks about it a bit differently, probably because it is a totally subjective matter in the first place. I get immense joy from watching someone feeding 50 squealing guinea pigs on Facebook while my husband looks on emotionless… not even a flicker. However, there’s no denying that mass engagement is possible, and this can be seen in many guises on social media.

So, what is it? What makes something engaging and ultimately memorable? At Precision AQ, we run innovative and interactive strategy workshops. In planning for one of these, I thought about how to articulate this, and I was swiftly taken back to the Guinness "surfer" advert (some will remember). I was 19 at the time and utterly mesmerized–I think it was a mixture of powerful music, crazy creativity, and passion. I was young and full of energy, and it made me want to get out there and take on the world. Interestingly, the creative for that advert hadn’t done that well in focus groups, but the team had such a "profound belief" in what they had created that they took a leap of faith. It went on to win more awards than any other commercial in 1999, and in 2002 was voted the “Best ad of all time” in a poll conducted by Channel 4 and The Sunday Times.

What do the Guinness ad, guinea pigs, and engagement all have in common? It’s all about emotion. When we are engaged, we have an emotional response, be it happiness, sadness, frustration, or anything in between. It’s not just that, though—it’s also a clever balance of emotion and relevance, something that presses up against our own beliefs and experiences.

Therefore, we need to generate an emotional response and connection, but what then? Ultimately, as communications professionals, we are trying to effect change or action. When we consider engagement in the healthcare setting, we face even more challenges; the behavioral intricacies and beliefs that sit around our individual health are layered and complex. Look at medication adherence, a global issue that the World Health Organization (WHO) has claimed may "have a far greater impact on the health of the population than any improvement in specific medical treatments." Adherence is a hugely complex behavioral challenge–it’s not just about "forgetting to take a tablet", it is a highly individualized, multifaceted picture. Engaging a patient to create an environment for belief shift that could lead to a change in behavior involves a matrix approach that takes into account their own personal experience and beliefs as well as external influences. For example, being a working parent who suffers from migraines, I’m more likely to engage on an emotional level as a working parent than as a migraine sufferer because I feel most frustrated about suffering from migraines when it renders me unable to play with my children or finish some work. We recognize this and factor it into the approach we take at Precision AQ, taking the time to benchmark our audiences at a deeper level and using this to inform our craft.

The reality is, when it comes to healthcare, if we really want to effect change, we need to be a bit more honest. Are we really exploring deep enough to make a difference?