Health campaigns save lives, and save money. So why cut them?

Unbelievable, isn’t it?

In response to a parliamentary question recently, Health Minister Simon Burns revealed that UK Government spend on health advertising this year has been cut from £60.3m to £4.2m. Not cut BY £4.2m, but cut TO £4.2m.

Even to my non-mathematical mind, that’s a cut of more than 90%. By any standards, it’s a hell of a cut.

That’s not surgery, that’s trauma. In fact, it’s sick. (And I don't mean sick as a good thing - "it's well sick, innit?"). 

Because if ever the argument “It’s not a cost, it’s an investment” applied, it is to health advertising. Health advertising works. It reduces illness. It saves lives.

Yes, we’re in a recession. A deep recession. So we should be looking for ways to save money.

But if you want to save money Mr Burns, you need to increase health advertising.

Health advertising isn’t a huge cost – but treating seriously ill patients is.

This came home to me at a Marketing Society event last year when I watched The Bridge advertising agency demonstrate the results of a small-scale, low-budget campaign to raise awareness of bowel cancer in (mostly) men over fifty.

The PowerPoint wasn’t great, but the results were. The NHS had sent out the usual self-testing kits, but in this case had also run an ad campaign designed to increase participation. And awareness had risen dramatically, both prompted and unprompted, all that marketing speak. And participation had increased dramatically too.

But most importantly, as more people had participated, many, many more instances of suspected cancer had been found. Pre-cancerous traces identified and treated – and therefore, lives saved.

But let’s forget about the lives saved. Let’s think like the Government think. Purely in financial terms.

Many of those people with pre-cancerous symptoms would have gone on to develop bowel cancer. These cancers are not only nasty, and potentially fatal, they are also expensive to treat. Very, very expensive.

It costs a lot more to treat someone once the cancer has developed than it does if it is caught at an early stage. Millions and millions of pounds. Certainly, a lot more than a few 48 sheet posters and TV commercials.

A 90% cut in the health advertising budget isn’t just short-sighted, it’s stupid.  It is saving a penny now to pay a pound later.

And in case you think this is a whine based on self interest, it isn’t. Well, not wholly. I don’t work in health advertising. I don’t work for an agency with health advertising business. But I do have an interest.

Because the presentation I saw last year finally convinced me to take my own testing kit out of the bottom drawer. No pun intended.

I fasted. I locked myself in the loo. Then I undertook the strangest sampling campaign I’ve ever been involved in.

And I sent it off. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually post my poo. Well, except to Piers Morgan.

Back came the response – “we have some concerns”. Within a few days they had me in hospital, for a full “investigation”. You don’t want to know the details. No, honestly.

I was clear. And clean, as it happens. But if I hadn’t been “clear”, they could probably have treated it there and then. They may well have saved a life – they very definitely would have saved money.

You see, Mr Burns? It’s not a cost. It’s an investment. 

Creativity tip: Laughter equals ideas equals laughter

In every group I've worked with, when people are having ideas there tends to be a lot of laughter around.

And conversely, when people are laughing and enjoying themselves, the ideas tend to flow.

If you think about it, humour is very like creativity.

There’s a set-up (two men walk into a pub…), and then a punch line. The punchline is an "answer" to the set up. It's something we don’t expect, but which makes some sort of sense.

Great ideas are similar – there’s a challenge (or problem, or brief). And then an "answer".

If the "answer" we come up with is the obvious one, the one that immediately makes sense, it’s like a punchline you’ve heard before. It’s boring, unimaginative, the same old same old.

A new idea - like an unexpected punchline - surprises us. It's new - but it makes sense when checked against the problem or brief.

And having a laugh helps us have ideas. The centres of the brain which process humour, and come up with ideas, are so close that one helps the other.

Bring humour into your ideas sessions, by putting up cartoons, sharing jokes, or turning the problem into a limerick.

Have a laugh, and have an idea!

Presentation tip - put some humour in your presentations

Ask a professional speaker (like me) if you should use humour in a presentation and they’ll say “Only if you want to get paid”.

People whose income depends on speaking at conferences – and getting asked back – know the truth of the Victor Borge line “The shortest distance between two people is a smile”.

Humour engages an audience with what you are saying. It helps them relax, builds rapport and sets you apart from other presenters.

I don’t mean you should turn into Jimmy Carr, with a 20 minute set of one-liners. For most business presentations, actual jokes may be inappropriate.

But self-deprecating humour, taking an alternative view of the issue – or even sharing a funny moment that the team had while coming up with the solution – all help you build a relationship with the people listening to your presentation.

With this in mind, think about how you can improve your ‘take’ on humour.

I was doing some presentation coaching for a senior exec recently, and he asked me to help put more humour into his speeches. “What kind of humour do you enjoy?” I asked. “I don’t, really”, he said. "I tend to spend my time watching and reading more serious stuff".

I suggested he might spend more time reading PG Wodehouse and Christopher Brookmyre and less on Chekhov and Tolstoy.