Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Marketing: The Sure Way

2004; Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Volume: 114; Issue: Supplement Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/00006534-200410001-00025

1529-4242

Robert M. Goldwyn,

Management and Marketing Education

Only a Rip Van Winkle would have failed to notice the marketing mania that has become epidemic in current health care. Like sex, almost everyone is doing it: hospitals, health maintenance organizations, practitioners, specialists, and specialties. Those who market manage to convince themselves and some of us that they are publicly pushing their wares for the good of patients, who, unless they heed the trumpeting, will surely come to disaster. I admit that I am too ignorant and too old to comprehend the true value to the public of doctors creating an instant reputation and a need for themselves. I had thought, obviously mistaken, that one built a reputation patient by patient just as one constructs a house brick by brick. I do understand the benefit to the hawker: money. Whereas a rare religious evangelist may shun the coin, not so the medical evangelist, whose commitment to himself or herself transcends all others. Whenever one thinks of marketing, either pro or con, one cannot dispute that it is costly. Marketing requires paying marketeers, and even more expensive are those who are supermarketeers, notables who will not accept without a meticulous screening a client unless his or her resources are sufficient to merit the guru’s time. Although I am somewhat reluctant to think like a marketeer, I, nevertheless, am realistic about the economic pressures with which we all have to contend. To demonstrate to myself and to others that I am equal to the times, I offer the following plan that came to me under totally unexpected circumstances. A few months ago, while attending a meeting, I stayed at the conventional convention hotel—the type that proclaimed itself special but resembles all others. This particular granite colossus did have an unusual feature—full-length mirrors in every room, something I had not noticed until one day when I stepped out of the shower and confronted myself. Now I know why people usually make love in the dark and why Tallulah Bankhead once remarked: “Darling, they aren’t making mirrors the way they used to.” The instant but unwanted vision of myself confirmed the fact that I have not become a Schwarzenegger despite my daily rigor of swimming. Not even intravenous steroids for a year could make me into a centerfold. When the initial shock receded and after I quickly (very quickly) dressed, the idea came to me that if every home and every dwelling, including condominiums and boarding houses, had a set of full-length mirrors in the bathroom, the demand for the services of plastic surgeons would be incessant. Who over the age of 20 can pass the Totally Naked Full-Length Mirror Test? Only a rare few, either perfect or blind. Instead of lobbying in Washington and running the risk of getting murdered in the street or robbed in an office, we should lobby the national organizations of home builders. We should enlist celebrities for their endorsements of the advantages of full-length mirrors. I am sure that Wade Boggs, Michael Jackson, Cheryl Tiegs, and Brooke Shields would be happy to help us get our message across. Soon, contractors would feel the mounting pressure of buyers insisting on full-length mirrors. Real estate agents would plead with architects and builders for this necessity as they experience buyer after buyer disdaining their offerings when they have been told that they are without full-length mirrors. The crass among us would probably insist that somewhere on the mirror there be a logo advertising plastic surgical organizations. I prefer a more subtle approach. Let the viewer just view! The horror, the terror of seeing oneself without a Yves St. Laurent garment, without even a Givenchy tie or a Nike sneaker, would be sufficient to launch somebody, even wet from the shower, to the phone to make an appointment with the ever-obliging plastic surgeon. However, there is another part to my master plan: Why wait for an office appointment? Mobile units equipped with phones would be ready to come to a person’s aid immediately. It is not fair that a patient pass a restless night in anxiety when a doctor can easily allay that worry and solve the problem. As plastic surgeons, we are soon to benefit from another development: the television-phone. Nobody will be safe from scrutiny even in his or her sanctum. At no time during the day or night will anyone be able to avoid being seen for what he or she is. While these devices will have an onoff switch, we physicians who know human nature understand that most people will from time to time forget, and there they will stand, sit, or whatever else, with the effects of merciless aging unhidden. As surgeons, we leave as little as possible to chance. Marketing is not only too costly, but it is too risky. Full-length mirrors are neither expensive nor unsure. “What you see is what you are and what you got.” Any body imperfection will remain until we plastic surgeons can correct it. Every aesthetic procedure we perform is an advance for the environment. Pollution is bad enough. Why add ugliness to it? “America, the Beautiful” is not just a song; it should be the clarion summons to our profession. And the way to go is through the looking glass.