Niko Herzeg Marketing

My mums neighbour has knee problems. Yet every time she goes to doctor he says: “things are looking good”. She is in pain and gets angry when he tells her this.

A doctor friend explained to me, that the issue is this: most likely her condition has been classified as chronic. So for the doctor this changes the entire outlook of treatment. Control vs curing. The neigbours goals have not changed.

So when the doc says it is going well, for him it is, because he is comparing it to the last check up. if it is not worse, it is going well. Mums neighbour just evaluates against the pain. Anything other then less pain, is not good.

Of course it does not help matters that she is an immigrant women, whose command of the dutch language is not that good (she speak Dutch fine, but Doctor Dutch is another matter).

And everytime she visits, she diggs in deeper in her role “patient/victim” and he diggs in the role of “doctor/victim (this last point about the doc is based on stuff as told by the neighbour).

What if the doctor stopped calling the situation good, swallowed his pride and took the patient serious? How would she react? Could this get them out of their roles and on even playing field? Could that small shock to her system make the situation (not perse the condition) better? Given that the last thing she expects is to be taken serious? I wonder…

In our industry much of our time we try to convince others of our viewpoint, though sadly often from defensive positions, expecting the other to give in first (“he does not get it”, the bumpersticker of our industry, is the one thing digital, traditional agencies and clients truly agree on ).

In doing so we close down opportunities to show some true creativeness to achieve results that are both distinct, and resonating with our target group. And is that not what we are hired to do in the first place?