dandunlop

[dandunlop]

Colin Hung's Recap of NESHCo 2025

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the 2025 NESHCo Conference. It was a great conference with quality sessions and wonderful networking events. On Thursday of the event, Lorraine McGrath (Signature Healthcare) and I presented the Brockton Hospital Fire Story. We shared how Brockton Hospital endured an 18-month closure while managing to improve access to care in the communities it…

[dandunlop]

Registration for 2025 NESHCo Conference Still Open

Don’t forget to register for the upcoming NESHCo Annual Meeting! The conference takes place in Springfield, Massachusetts, May 28-30. This year’s theme: Pioneering Healthcare Communications for Today’s Patients and Consumers — promises to bring together NESHCo’s collaborative community of leading professionals to identify, discuss, and tackle the daunting challenges, opportunities, and solutions…

[dandunlop]

See You at Swaay.Health LIVE 2025

I’m excited to reconnect with so many HITMC friends and colleagues at the 2025 Swaay.Health LIVE conference – April 15-17, 2025 in San Diego. This is one of my favorite events of the year. The speaker lineup is terrific – with representatives from a diverse array of healthcare organizations across the country: Nebraska Medicine Renown Health Intermountain Health The University of Miami Health…

[dandunlop]

Registration Open for NESHCo's 2025 Spring Conference

Once again, the NESHCo 2025 Conference is bringing together the brightest minds in healthcare marketing and communication for unparalleled insights and networking! This is absolutely one of my favorite events of the year. Register now for the May 28-30, 2025 NESHCo conference at the MGM Springfield, MA: https://lnkd.in/dyrvj2te. Early bird registration closes March 28, 2025! Four reasons to…

[dandunlop]

Visual Brand Identity in Pharma TV Spots

Have you noticed that many pharma commercials tend to go to the extreme with the use of brand colors? I wonder if there’s a marketing expert speaking at pharma marketing conferences and preaching the gospel of visual brand identity. Have you noticed this trend? What are your thoughts? I’ve included examples below from Ozempic, Jardiance, Dupixent, and Stelara. The other obvious trend in pharma…

[dandunlop]

Marketing Orthopedics and Sport Medicine

I recently compiled a top-line summary of my firm’s orthopedics and sports medicine experience. When I looked over the work, it struck me that the portfolio of orthopedics marketing work was substantial and might be worth sharing on my blog. So here it is. Perhaps our best-known Orthopedics client is the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery (ABOS). Every board certified orthopedic surgeon knows…

[dandunlop]

Book Review: Walking in the Woods by Yoshifumi Miyazaki

I remember a time early in my career when I realized that I hadn’t noticed the passing of the seasons in several years. At the time, I was driven with a singular focus on advancing my career. At that moment of realization, I promised myself that I would pause occasionally to take in the beauty around me and acknowledge that life is bigger than my professional life. Among other things, I started…

[dandunlop]

This Has To Be The Future

UNC Health and Duke Health are located approximately 10 miles from one another and for years they have duplicated services and competed for patients. From my perspective, having competitive world-class service offerings just down the road from one another doesn’t make sense. For at least the last 20 years, I have talked about the need for them to come together and offer joint care solutions in…

[dandunlop]

Encouragement from Grammarly

Three things I know about myself: I thrive on positive feedback; I love to quantify my performance/productivity; and I am always working to become a better writer. For the last few years, I’ve used Grammarly to monitor my writing. Grammarly is a writing assistant tool that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to help improve the grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style of a piece of writing. It…

[dandunlop]

2024 Year in Review

For me, 2024 was a rebound year. In 2023, my family faced all kinds of adversity: my wife had two surgeries; I was dealing with Afib which was getting progressively worse; I had a heart ablation in September; we both got covid; and we moved from North Carolina to the mountains of Virginia. Moving to the mountains was a dream come true but the process of moving (and selling our home in NC) was…

[dandunlop]

My Favorite Night of the Year

New Year’s Eve is my favorite night of the year. Not because of the celebration; Rather, New Year’s Eve is when my wife and I sit down and make donations to organizations that are making a difference in the world. These are organizations that support our philanthropic goals (as modest as our philanthropy is). We break up the gifts into categories: organizations making a difference in our…

[dandunlop]

SHSMD25 Connections Call For Speakers

If you’re looking for speaking opportunities in the new year, I’ve got one for you. I received an email today announcing the call for proposals for the SHSMD 2025 Connections Conference. The submission deadline is January 17, 2025. Here’s the link to access the call for proposals. Before filling out the online application, I recommend filling out their practice application. For SHSMD, filling…

[dandunlop]

CHPRMS 2024: A Look Back

Last week, I was fortunate to attend the 2024 Annual Conference of the Carolinas Healthcare Public Relations & Marketing Society (CHPRMS) in Charleston, SC. I’ve been attending CHPRMS conferences for over 20 years and first spoke at one of their conferences in 2006. This year I was invited to deliver the closing keynote presentation with my friend and colleague Lorraine McGrath from Signature…

[dandunlop]

New Article: Listening is Foundational

On October 1, 2024, Swaay.Health published my most recent article – “The Benefits of Listening.” It has always been my belief that marketing should be grounded in consumer/stakeholder insights, and those insights come from an intentional effort to listen to those audiences. One of the biggest mistakes any marketer can make is to assume that he or she already knows how the target audience feels…

[dandunlop]

See You at HCIC 2024

The Healthcare Internet Conference (HCIC) opens on Sunday, November 10, 2024, in Austin, Texas with an awards program and a networking dinner. It is followed by 3 days of educational sessions, inspiring keynotes, panel discussions, and so much networking. Although I love the educational sessions, reconnecting with colleagues from around the country is my favorite part of the event. This year,…

[dandunlop]

Ragan's Top Women In Marketing Award

Sometimes good things really do happen to good people. That was the case recently when my longtime client and good friend, Lorraine McGrath was named one of Ragan’s Top Women in Marketing – Class of 2024. Lorraine is the Associate Vice President of Marketing & Communications at Signature Healthcare – a health system just 20 minutes south of Boston. I’ve worked with Lorraine since 2011. My firm…

[dandunlop]

The Art & Necessity of Listening

At Jennings, listening has always been an important part of our marketing practice. Most engagements begin with an assessment phase that includes spending a significant amount of time gathering insights from key brand constituents (one-on-one interviews, focus groups, surveys). But recently it has occurred to me just how much of our work is built on a foundation of listening. It is not unusual…