Comment / Seeds of inspiration

‘Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.’

This is just one of many inspirational quotes from the late Steve Jobs, best known as the co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Apple. Following a power struggle with the board of directors, he left Apple in 1985, returning to bring it back from near bankruptcy. Overseeing the development of iMac, iTunes, iPod, iPhone, iPad and the Apple retail offering, Mr Jobs propelled Apple to become the most valuable public traded company by 2011. The reinvigoration of the company is regarded by many commentators as one of the greatest turnarounds in business history.

For the moment his success lives on, with thousands in the UK braving the cold and camping outside Apple stores overnight recently to get their hands on the new iPhone5 (perhaps you were one of them). This was not just a UK phenomenon; the scene was replicated across the world.

So what might NHS finance learn from Apple’s success? Mike Markkula was a young venture capitalist who became an investor in Apple and, later, company president. A father figure to Steve Jobs, he taught him about marketing and sales. Mr Jobs once remarked about him: ‘He emphasised that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something that you believe in and a company that will last.’

Apple’s marketing philosophy, devised by Mr Markkula, has three strands – empathy, focus and impute. It fleshes out as follows.

• Empathy We will truly understand [a customer’s] needs better than any other company
• Focus In order to do a good job of those things we decide to do, we must eliminate all the unimportant opportunities.
• Impute People do judge a book by the cover. You may have the best, highest quality and most useful products, but if presented in a slipshod way they will be perceived as slipshod; if presented in a creative professional manner the desired qualities will be imputed.

It is this strategy that is widely accepted for creating the loyal customer base that Apple enjoys. This  ‘loyalty beyond reason’ – a concept famously identified by advertising agency Saatchi – will no doubt  be explored further in December when Richard Hytner, vice chair of Saatchi Global addresses HFMA’s national conference.

The worlds of fashionable technology and advertising may seem light years away from what we do in the NHS. But there is much that we can learn. While the NHS at a national level may already be a cherished brand, local image is increasingly important as well. We, of course, want to deliver the best services possible in any case, but patient choice and any qualified provider polices will only underline the importance of service quality, local branding and image. It may be time for us to download an updated version of our approach to marketing.

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