Did you watch the Super Bowl last Sunday evening? If so, did you happen to see the Coca-Cola “America the Beautiful” ad? If not, the ad features a wide range of diverse people all singing “America the Beautiful” with sweeping vistas from across the country playing across the background. At the end the epitomes Coca-Cola bottle spins onto the screen. While I’m not sure exactly what this has to do with Coca-Cola other than perhaps to demonstrate the breadth and diversity of the people that drink their products, the ad seems to have been very effective in generating a lot of attention. People all over Facebook, Twitter, and the news networks were talking about it both Sunday night and all day on Monday. Since the goal of advertising is to get people to remember your company’s name, product, or both, I’d say Coca-Cola and their ad agency scored a hit with this one.
Having the name of one’s dental practice “go viral” and be repeated over and over again by patients is the goal in designing an exceptional patient experience. I’m qualifying the experience as exceptional as I don’t believe any dental practice really wants the kind of word-of-mouth marketing that goes along with offering a poor experience. I’ve read that patients are ten times more likely to tell friends and family about a poor experience than they are a positive one, so one must be striving for excellence in the experience they offer if talk about the dental experience is going to “go viral” like Coke’s Super Bowl ad. The design of the dental office is one of the key foundations of crafting an exceptional patient experience. The colors, light, and texture all play together to set the stage for the human interaction and treatment that patients receive.
