Ahhh, spring! When a young man’s thoughts turn to:
urinating at baseball Spring training
getting a vasectomy during basketball March Madness.
Am I right?
I am if I do marketing for urologists.
American Medical News reports that some urologists are trying to get men’s attention by marketing March Madness as a great time to get a vasectomy. Excerpt :
“After all, men, if you’re going to do something that requires you to sit around in a bathrobe, doing nothing for two days, why not do it when there’s wall-to-wall basketball on TV?
For a growing number of urology practices, tournament time has become key to marketing a procedure that many men put off or avoid out of — shall we say — sensitivity. And because many men meet a urologist for the first time through a vasectomy, the practices find it a great way to get their names out to new patients.”
They market under the labels “Rip City” or “Snip City” or with “I Got Chopped at the Urology Team” T-shirts. You can see the gory details at the link above.
But as basketball season winds to a dramatic close, baseball season fires up again.
Indefatigable Yankees fan Ivan Oransky followed his Bombers to Florida for Spring training last week, presumably imbibed, presumably relieved, and found this urinal screen in the process:
My wife made me block out the urologist’s name and phone number. She said, “You’re not going to give that guy any more free publicity.”
I can’t imagine anyone at a urinal writing down the urologist’s name and number. I can only imagine Ivan taking out his cell phone and taking a picture. I know he feared ending up on a post office wall for this. He may still.
Imagine the urologist deciding on the need for a marketing campaign and going to the
PeePeeFace.com site and choosing his personalized urinal screen.
Now that’s a fan. Or a urologist desperate for customers.
(Correction: Ivan Oransky advises that he saw the Cards play the Marlins. Not a Bronx Bomber in sight.)
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
Monday at #ADA2021, an infectious disease epidemiologist, a journalist, and a researcher shared perspectives on communication of risk in the era of COVID-19: http://ow.ly/ROfR30rMeE7 @AstleyCM @garyschwitzer @berthahidalgo @ADA_DiabetesPro
Shoutouts to @susan_bewley @drkevinknopf @MichaelBaum11 in this call for more than fawning coverage from press releases for these kinds of stories.
Also, linked history inside goes back 5 years just on Grail apparently trying to become Holy Grail. https://twitter.com/garyschwitzer/status/1408849696416841731
Comments
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Bob Finn
March 9, 2010 at 10:57 amIt’s amazingly easy–and quite satisfying–to make jokes about urologists. I’ve covered the American Urological Association meeting several times. Once, when it was in San Antonio, I was sitting in a restaurant at the crowded River Walk when I was struck by the sight of an unbroken parade of urologists (with convention badges) walking along the winding pathways. I realized then that the perfect collective name for these folks would be “a steady stream of urologists.”
That got me thinking about collective names for other medical specialists. I asked friends and colleagues and collected the suggestions in a blog post called “A Plethora of Specialists” at http://weirdmedicalnews.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/a-plethora-of-specialists/
Here are a few of my favorites:
A rash of dermatologists.
A fix of addiction specialists.
A breath of chest physicians.
An army of general practitioners.
A hug of pediatricians.
Gary Oftedahl
March 17, 2011 at 12:18 pmJust at Minnesota Twins spring training last week, and as I stood at the urinal and stared down (all the better to aim you know), the message staring back at me said “Urine in here again?” and then listed the Urology practice which I could contact…..
Never miss an opportunity, as opposed to the many who miss the target in the urinal.
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