Doctors spend a lot of time in school learning how to diagnose our ills. They run up big school debt. Then they are expected to start a business, usually with very little capital.

Even if they do have money- medical office marketing, as practiced by most physicians maybe one of the boringest categories of all. A picture, a name, a location and “now accepting new patients” makes up 90% of the ads. A few might say something like “specializing in smiles” or provide a laundry list of services or accreditations. Of course, comparative advertising is verboten by the medical society- because as my friend who failed the bar exam 7 times and is now driving a truck says: “what do you call the guy who graduated at the bottom of his class from Medical school? Doctor.”

So, if you do happen to have an exceptionally talented physician, who graduated near the top of his class, and you’ve known since he was just an Air Force captain working on bomb carrying model airplanes and was the kicker for the Air Force Academy, and is a really nice guy with a down home touch… and a small budget to create ads- what do you do?

Have fun!

Who wants to go to a doctor who is already going to bend you over- who runs an ad that looks like he has a stick in his ass before he’s even met you?

Meet Doctor Christopher Blasy, DO, who will not only be your favorite general practitioner if you live in Hinesville Ga, right outside Ft. Stewart and close to Savannah Ga. Besides giving Dr. McDreamy a run for his money- Chris will make you feel comfortable- even if he does have a rubber glove on and is coating it with KY. We had to make that come across in an ad- before he even had his formal “I’m a doctor” picture had shown in our e-mail:

No photo, no problem. Dr. Chris Blasy opening office ad.

The people at the publication got the ad- and offered to insert a bad photo that they had of him- they didn’t get the ad.

When the “official looking” photo came in- with the white lab coat- a standard medical ad didn’t seem right either:

Find the Doctor. This is your first exam.

While it doesn’t exactly say “now accepting new patients” this ad also serves as a social filter- making sure that his patients have a sense of humor (science had already proven that people with a sense of humor live longer) thereby guaranteeing his patients will live longer than the competition. Good marketing can even improve your patient mortality rates- but don’t tell that to the hospitals who still like to run ads inviting sick people in for the highly risky procedures as opposed to working on preventative medicine.

There will be more ads for Dr. Blasy- but we thought we’d share some of our ideas for medical advertising to help other doctors realize your ads don’t have to be as boring as your med school text books.