(07:12) The return of conferences and recent trends observed in the exhibit hall.

(11:22) Maximize your conference presence.

(16:19) Tips for companies with smaller booth sizes and strategies for lead generation.

(20:26) Connecting with media at conferences: How PR and marketing professionals should pitch media.

(22:14) Additional strategies to earn attention from media, including personalization and matching pitches to the recipient’s coverage areas.

(26:59) Notable changes observed at conferences post-pandemic.

(28:36) What’s hot and what’s not: Trends in swag at conferences. 

(34:49) What differentiates the Swaay.Health event from other conferences.

(40:53) What makes a good conference and what are our favorites

(45:41) Colin Hung shares his favorite form of media (Spoiler alert: It’s not pitches)

(49:05) Predictions for what the big discussions are going to be centered around at this year’s events.

[00:00:00.930] – Kriste Goad

Hello, curious marketers. I am super stoked about today’s guest, the ubiquitous Colin Hung with Swaay.Health. Welcome, Colin.

[00:00:27.390] – Colin Hung

Hey, thank you. I’m excited to be here.

[00:00:31.190] – Kriste Goad

Well, I’m excited to have you here. It’s that time of year. It’s healthcare conference season. Really, who better to have on the show than the man making the healthcare conference rounds, bringing us great coverage. I’m so, so many of them. I know our listeners are curious. They want to know how to get attention for their brands and their thought leaders at all these trade shows, specifically how to grab the attention of the media and how to make the most of their time. And of course, all that swag. Pink socks.

[00:01:07.000] – Colin Hung

Pink socks, indeed.

[00:01:08.340] – Kriste Goad

Pink socks. So, Colin, once again, thank you for making the time in between all these shows to be here with me on the How It’s Done podcast.

[00:01:17.840] – Colin Hung

Yeah, I’m truly excited to be here. I listen to the show. It’s fantastic. You have great guests.

[00:01:23.030] – Kriste Goad

Thank you.

[00:01:24.280] – Colin Hung

So I’m honored to be here.

[00:01:25.740] – Kriste Goad

Well, you are now among one of those great guests. So I’ll give a little background for our listeners, and then I’ll let you tell your own story here in a minute. But yeah, Colin is an award-winning healthcare marketer with more than 25 years of experience. He has led marketing efforts of several HIT companies, all of which have gone on to be acquired. Congratulations. Colin is currently the Chief Editor at Swaay.Health, a publication dedicated to healthcare marketing. He’s an editor at Healthcare IT Today. Doing a great job, I might add. Colin attends over 40 conferences a year, so that definitely makes you an expert, Colin. But I would love it if you would just dive in and tell us a little bit more about yourself. What’s the story of Colin?

[00:02:20.760] – Colin Hung

Wow, I don’t think we have enough time for that.

[00:02:23.560] – Kriste Goad

Loaded question.

[00:02:23.770] – Colin Hung

Or maybe your listeners might be bored, but I usually say that I am a recovering salesperson, so it’s been 25 years since I’ve last sold something. But 25 years, I’ve been in the marketing side of the house and love it. I love health care. I love marketing. It’s such an exciting field to be in. I truly do feel lucky to be working in it every day because the people are just amazing. You know it.

[00:02:53.710] – Kriste Goad

A lot of great people, a lot of smart people. Yeah.

[00:02:56.600] – Colin Hung

Yeah, I know. It’s phenomenal. I mean, everyone in healthcare is just so genuine, so warm, so caring. It’s great to be part of this industry. If you had told me I would be part of the media five years ago, I probably would have laughed at you. I’d never be part of the media. I’m not a trained journalist. I’m a marketer. I just write content for companies. But after the last company I was with was acquired, I found myself in between, and I thought I was going to take a break for six months and find myself, finally, maybe go to Europe and that European tour that I never got a chance to. My friend John Lynn called up and said, Hey, well, if you’re not doing anything, do you want to help me organize the conference that you keep coming to all the time? I was like, Oh, sure. That was five years ago.

[00:03:42.290] – Kriste Goad

That was the predecessor to the Swaay.Health conference.

[00:03:44.980] – Colin Hung

Absolutely. That’s right. It used to be called the HITMC conference, and we rebranded last year to Sway. That’s the conference that I helped my friend John to organize. Then one thing led to another, and here I I am now on the media side. I also joke with people to say I am now a professional conference goer because that feels like my job.

[00:04:07.710] – Kriste Goad

No kidding. No formal media training. It’s just one of those things that just happened, and now this is your career. But I would argue that there’s a bit of selling that you’re still doing on a daily basis.

[00:04:19.920] – Colin Hung

I am selling ideas, not products and concepts. Yes.

[00:04:24.610] – Kriste Goad

Yes. I love that. I love that. Well, you have to tell us a little bit more about Swaay.Health. I would love to know a little bit about the rebrand and what you went through with that. I want to know why there are two A’s in Swaay.Health. For listeners, God forbid, they don’t know who you are, what you’re about. Tell us more about Swaay.Health and the brand and what you guys do.

[00:04:50.440] – Colin Hung

Yeah, absolutely. So Swaay.Health is, and that is Sway with two A’s. I think the reason why we picked two, everyone asked us, why are there two A’s? We’re like, well, we just wanted to be sophisticated. Having two dots above the A, we didn’t know how to pronounce that, so we just put two A’s in the name. So we said, It’s Swaay.Health. It’s very cool. I was joking with you earlier. I think we were channeling the Fonz for those that are of a certain age. I remember that show. But how the name came about was we wanted to pick a name that was related to health care, to marketing. We had been called the Hitmic Community, but it was very IT-centric. We found ourselves getting more and more onto the provider side, the medical devices, and payers. We were getting involved in the community. We said we needed a more comprehensive, more open name. The name that… We went through a whole bunch of names, but eventually, the one we… The word we kept coming back to was persuade. But persuade health sounds really weird. It didn’t really function as a publication name. We kept talking about it, and then basically, a derivation of that for swayed was sway, like to sway somebody.

[00:06:04.240] – Colin Hung

That’s how we ended up with the name Swaay.Health. It is a publication. It is 100% dedicated to healthcare marketing. We have stories from the marketing field, from people who work at provider organizations, people who work at health IT organizations, people who work at payer organizations. It really is all about the latest trends, tips, tactics, success stories from the world of healthcare marketing.

[00:06:29.640] – Kriste Goad

Okay. Okay. Would you call it, is it like an outgrowth of Health IT Today, or what’s the relationship there?

[00:06:36.730] – Colin Hung

Yeah. Health IT Today is a sister publication. It’s the one we started, and that’s the one that John started years and years ago. That publication is dedicated 100% to the technology side, the IT side of health IT. There we cover stories like cybersecurity, interoperability, all those kinds of things. Whereas on the Swaay side, it’s a sister publication, it is more around the marketing tactics and strategies and processes and so forth, and more around patient engagement on this side. The two are under the same umbrella company, but they’re very distinct publications.

[00:07:12.550] – Kriste Goad

That’s awesome. Thank you for that. I never put two and two together about Swaay being part of swaying some opinion or persuasion or persuade. That’s really interesting. I’ll never forget that. Thank you. Next question I have for you. Conferences, trade shows, they seem to be completely back in full swing post-pandemic, like finally. Would you agree? And then layering onto that, what trends are you seeing out there in the Exhibit Hall so far?

[00:07:45.850] – Colin Hung

Great question. Definitely 2024 feels like the year back from the pandemic. This is now we’re like, Okay, this feels like 2019. This feels like 2018 again. And just in terms of the number of attendees, the energy, the excitement. I think it took a long time, especially for healthcare, to recover financially, to have the wherewithal to actually go to a lot of events. I think now we’re used to getting back into bigger crowds, right? And I think if you follow the technology cycles, we’re four years after the pandemic, and now everyone’s like, well, it’s the time I got to replace certain technology or maybe looking for something new. And so people are coming back to the conferences again. And that seems to span across whether it’s an IT conference or whether it’s a clinical conference or whether it’s an association. Everyone I’ve been talking to is just saying, wow, 2024, this feels like the year that it feels full again. It may not be back to the numbers. Certainly, some people are still saying the numbers are still down from the 2019 highs, but just the feeling of the conference is good.

[00:09:01.830] – Kriste Goad

Yeah. I think a really interesting example of that is I heard you talk about it, and I heard a lot of other people talk about it as well, that this year’s HIMSS felt a lot more like the old HIMSS because there were some interesting few years there, and a lot of people, I’m just going to go ahead and say it. A lot of people thought that Vive was just going to put HIMSS out of business, and it wasn’t going to nail in the coffin of HIMSS, but it sounds like that is not the case. This year, there was a lot of energy and a lot of great engagement and conversations. I’m curious what you think about that in general. Are we going to continue to see that competition, like a Vive and a HIMSS. People who put on these shows, they stand to make a lot of money from it. I’m just curious about your thoughts on that.

[00:09:53.680] – Colin Hung

I think, first of all, anybody who thought that HIMSS was just going to fade away is mistaken. It is the conference that has been going on for decades now. People still go there to find solutions. Vive is great and HIMSS is great. I think there’s room for both.

[00:10:13.360] – Kriste Goad

There’s room for both, it sounds like, right?

[00:10:14.970] – Colin Hung

Maybe not a week apart, but there’s room for both. I think they serve very different purposes. I think over time, we’ll see more and more of that distinction where each will move in different directions. I think that’ll be a good thing for the industry. But right now, there is a lot of overlap, and there is a lot of complaining about, should I go to one or the other? I think really it’s what you want to get out of the show that really would determine which one you’re going to find more value at. But certainly at HIMSS’s, this was the first year where I actually had to, once again, practice dodging around people in the main Exhibit Hall aisles because it was so crowded where there were so many people standing and talking that you couldn’t walk in a straight line. Whereas in the years past, post-pandemic, you could walk straight because the aisles were fairly clear. This was the first year where you couldn’t do that. So definitely that brought an energy, a buzz. I also think HIMSS was physically just a bit smaller than it had been in the past, but I think that helped make it feel more full.

[00:11:22.030] – Colin Hung

Because of the hall itself, no doubt, there was one hall missing. It used to go all the way down to the end of the Orlando Convention Center. There was one hall that wasn’t occupied. But because of that, it just made everything feel more tight and more like 2019.

[00:11:35.250] – Kriste Goad

Sometimes you have to scale back.

[00:11:37.620] – Colin Hung

Yeah, agreed.

[00:11:39.110] – Kriste Goad

That’s awesome. Well, you do a really cool thing where you really analyze booths and you give who had the best booth at the conference. And these brands spend so much money and so much time on these booths. I mean, some spend millions of dollars on their presence and on their booth. Others don’t have those dollars. When it comes to booth design, what do you think attracts attention and what is just a waste of time?

[00:12:10.670] – Colin Hung

See, that’s a loaded question because I think there are actually two very distinct things to answer that. To attract people to your booth, I think actually has almost nothing to do with the physical design of your booth anymore.

[00:12:28.660] – Kriste Goad

Tell me more.

[00:12:30.500] – Colin Hung

The reason why I say that is because when we talk to the CIOs that we talk to, when we interview the leaders of companies, when we talk to the people who are even VPs and directors at healthcare organizations, the very people that you’re trying to attract, very rarely do we hear them say, “Oh, I’m just going to tour through the Exhibit Hall and find something.” They’re all like, No, I’ve got five people I need to meet. We had set up meetings beforehand. I’m just going to go see those five. Then maybe if I see someone next to them, maybe I’ll stop by if it was interesting, but I’m just in here for these five vendors and I’m gone, I’m out. I haven’t got time to wander the HIMSS Exhibit Hall.

[00:13:12.640] – Kriste Goad

Great point.

[00:13:13.550] – Colin Hung

What I mean by that is to attract people to your booth, you have to do all the pre-work, which has nothing to do with the design of your booth. It has everything to do with getting to that right person and making sure that you have a good sales team and good sales follow-up process and all those kinds of things. It has nothing to do with whether or not you have a backlit panel or whether you have a spinning thing on top of your booth.

[00:13:39.530] – Colin Hung

To attract people to your booth, I think it requires all that legwork. When I talk to people and people ask me, What attracts people to your booth? I said, I will usually say, The fact that they’re in your funnel and you’re following up with them is what will bring people to your booth the most.

[00:13:54.110] – Kriste Goad

That is a really great point.

[00:13:56.270] – Colin Hung

That and also things like what I call booth attractors. A lot of booth styles now will have a small little theater area where you can sit down and listen to a talk, maybe get a demonstration live. Those are the types of things that attract people to the booth now as much as the spinning wheel where you can win a prize or the DeLorean that’s sitting in your booth or the race car. Those are still effective, too. But I think more and more people are pre-planning how they’re going to go through the Exhibit Hall. It’s less and less about just wondering and something catching your eye.

[00:14:31.940] – Kriste Goad

I got it. So are those things a waste of time or money? That’s the next question. One thing you talked about, I saw your report where a lot of people were having LED signs that were really eye-catching and then signs hanging from ceilings. Those were some of the new trends you were seeing out there. 

[00:14:55.560] – Colin Hung

Yeah, and I think it’s related to what we just were talking about. If you think about it, if I’m an executive, I have 10 meetings to get to, and I didn’t need to get to a certain person’s booth, well, I’m probably not going to remember the booth number. But I can look up and say, Oh, there’s the company. I can see it from across the hall. Now I know where to go, or I know generally what direction to go in. I think we’re going to see actually more and more effort being put into those hanging signs. I think in the past, all they were were simply the logo on a white backdrop, maybe lit, maybe not. Still so many of them are not lit, which I don’t understand why. But the ones that HIMSS and Vive that really stood out were the ones that had something else going on. They were brightly colored. They had some LED. They were almost like billboards. I think that’s actually going to be a new battleground for standing out if you have a sign like that. GE for years and IBM for years were the ones that had the biggest, brightest LED boards up there.

[00:15:53.640] – Colin Hung

And you could never mistake who it was that was underneath those because you can see them from across the hall. So that was definitely a trend I saw at HIMSS, there were way more hanging signs than ever before. They are expensive, so don’t get me wrong, this is not something you would do if you had a 10 by 10 booth. But for larger organizations, I think that’s going to be money well spent on attracting people and making sure people know, Oh, this is where we are.

[00:16:19.310] – Kriste Goad

That is awesome. Really great tips and observations. What other tips and strategies do you have for companies to really maximize their own investment at a conference? For example, if all you do have is a 10 by 10, which there’s a lot of companies that’s a big investment for them. And nothing says they can’t be just as successful on lead generation as the folks that are spending millions on their booth. So I’m curious what else maybe you have to share.

[00:16:50.130] – Colin Hung

Yeah, that’s a great question, one that we get asked a lot as well. I think with a 10 by 10, you can be very, very successful. You don’t have to have a large booth. In a 10 by 10, obviously, you can’t have a meeting space, you can’t have a theater and those kinds of booths, but you can do other really interesting things. First of all, you can make your 10 by 10 booth very welcoming. A lot of people make the mistake of putting the table right at the front of their 10 by 10 and the backdrop at the back, and basically, you have this 10 foot space where you’re standing. Only you can stand in, and everyone has to walk up to your table. Walking up to a table is very intimidating. Most hotels have realized this. If you’ve checked in the hotel recently, then they no longer have these giants. They have these little tiny kiosks, and the person comes out from behind the desks and welcomes you and greets you to check in you into the hotel. Even car dealerships are doing this now. I would take a cue from them.

[00:17:42.170] – Kriste Goad

Banks.

[00:17:42.430] – Colin Hung

Banks, right? Exactly. Retailers. Yeah. Do not put your table right at the front of your booth. Put it at the back or on the side and make it welcoming. I think that’s one very simple thing that you can do to have a more effective exhibit presence. Then the other thing is physically that you can do for your booth is just make sure it’s very simple and very to the point because you only have a 10 by 10. It’s not a lot of real estate. You can’t waste it with a lot of words because I’m not reading them all.

[00:18:13.670] – Kriste Goad

No, nobody’s reading those words.

[00:18:16.010] – Colin Hung

Exactly. I may be glancing at it. I may be walking past. So you really want to make sure that, like a billboard, it’s got max 10 words on it. And it tells me what you do, what you are, what problem you’re solving. And don’t waste any time on the best or number one in this. And that doesn’t tell me anything. We solve-

[00:18:39.280] – Kriste Goad

It’s like world’s best coffee. It’s meaningless.

[00:18:43.960] – Colin Hung

The most important of it is coffee. Use less words, get bold in terms of coloring and so forth. Those are all things that will attract people to that 10 by 10. But again, I think it really boils down to the pre-work, making sure that you’re picking up those meetings, making sure that if you can send out those social posts to say, Hey, we’re going to be here. Who else is going to be there? Look in your own funnel and just say, Hey, we’re going to be at this show. Are you going to be there? If you are, we’d love to see you. We’re going to be here at booth number 456, and we’d love for you to stop by and win this prize, or check out our new announcement, or whatever it is that you’re doing there. But you have to do all that work to really get a good return on your investment at any conference, whether it’s large or small.

[00:19:31.860] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, and those are like, that doesn’t really cost much of anything to do those things, right? That’s really the basics.

[00:19:38.170] – Colin Hung

Yeah, I think so. And I think that’s certainly what I’m seeing now is, pre-pandemic, I think there was some extra money floating around and you could do some fancy things with boosts and things like that. I think post-pandemic, people are realizing, Hey, let’s be smart with our dollars. And I think it’s really focusing on these basics that are really going to help you the most with smaller footprint boosts.

[00:19:59.920] – Kriste Goad

That’s great advice. What about shifting gears? What should PR and marketing pros consider when they’re pitching or attending a conference? Because, well, what should they consider? But also, is it your experience that there’s far fewer media that are really there on site for these trade shows, or are you seeing a change there, too?

[00:20:26.410] – Colin Hung

Well, I definitely… It’s been fun to go to the media rooms and see colleagues and things like that. But the number of colleagues that we see has started to decline. There aren’t as many outlets. A lot of us, there’s a consolidation happening as much in the media space as there is in any other. So there aren’t as many dedicated healthcare media outlets as there once were. So definitely there’s a smaller pool of media and therefore smaller numbers of media. But also some of the bigger outlets, the Forbes of the world, those types of outlets, they no longer have permanent health care writers or health care editors. They’ll hire a local freelance person and say, Hey, listen, HIMSS is going to be in Florida. You’re based in Orlando. Can you just go and cover the event? And find us four or five stories that we can then publish? It’s good that they’re still there, but they just don’t have the same wherewithal as they once did when they had a healthcare editor on staff. But also, very much like all the pre-work goes in to set up meetings, that’s the same thing that’s happening with press.

[00:21:35.410] – Colin Hung

A lot of times, these larger press organizations will have the 10 interviews already lined up before they even get to the show. They go in, they do the 10 interviews, and then they’re gone. They’re out. They’re not staying for the four days of the conference anymore.

[00:21:48.990] – Kriste Goad

And that being the case, how do you break through the noise? If you’re a PR professional and trying to get the attention for your client, how do you even do that? You must get hundreds. I know you do. I know you get hundreds of inbound and press releases and who knows what else you get over there. But how do you decide who to talk to or what to cover?

[00:22:14.680] – Colin Hung

I’ll make a plug for HIMSS on this one. Every year, HIMSS, the last couple of years, has asked us to present to their sponsors or to anybody in the exhibit hall how to attract press. One of the things we highlight to them, because we do the analysis every year, is how many pitches we get, what days we get them, and where they come from. It’s amazing to see everyone’s flabbergasted. We get about 700 to 1,000 pitches ahead of an event like HIMSS.

[00:22:43.710] – Kriste Goad

I believe it, and probably really far ahead all the way up to the day before.

[00:22:48.650] – Colin Hung

Exactly. So your question is very appropriate. How do you cut through the noise? And the answer to that is there’s actually very simple things you can do, but it’s still not going through the noise completely. And what I mean by that, since simple things you can do, obviously personalization is the far best thing you can do with your pitch. And what I mean by that is not just making sure that you put my name correctly in the hello line or the.

[00:23:13.540] – Kriste Goad

It does help.

[00:23:15.740] – Colin Hung

Don’t get me wrong, it does help. But it’s more like, “Hey, Colin, we met last year at HIMSS and we had an ice cream together”, or, “Hey, we stood in a line at Starbucks together. Maybe you might be interested in this company that I’m bringing forward to you.” So that one little line about some shared experience we had more than, “Hey, we were just at HIMSS together.” That will trigger a memory angle. Oh, yeah, I remember that person. And so now I’ll read your press release. I’ll read what you sent me because I feel obligated I have to do that. So that really works. So my advice, first of all, for any PR person out there, take the time to go and meet and try to meet the editors that you want to try and get earned placements with.

[00:24:01.980] – Colin Hung

That means hanging outside the media room, and as people are exiting the media room, introduce yourself, right? Or set up a meeting where it’s just coffee. There’s not a pitch. It’s just more, “Hey, I want to get to know you a little bit. I don’t have anything to pitch you right now, but down the road, I just want to make sure that what I do pitch matches what you cover.” And that’s the second key. I can’t tell you, I got 40 pitches for pharmaceutical companies. I’m like, I’ve never written a pharmaceutical article ever. But I got those. I’m not going to listen to them no matter how much personalization you do. So really spending the time to match the coverage, like what you’re pitching to how they cover the market is going to be, that’s really how you’re going to stand out. Realizing that, for example, myself, I cover a lot of patient experience stories. I talk a lot about rebrand stories. I talk a lot about improving the outcomes for patients. That’s what I tend to cover a lot on. If you got a story around that, I’m probably listening. If you have a study, I’m probably listening.

[00:25:06.220] – Kriste Goad

Yes. I’m curious, what gets your attention about a rebrand story? What do you like to know most about a rebrand story?

[00:25:14.780] – Colin Hung

I like brand stories. Every brand is unique, every rebrand story is unique. Having gone through a few of them, I have a soft spot for how tough it is to pull off. I’m always curious to listen to and hear some of the challenges that a person going through a rebrand has had to overcome. I’m always curious to know how it’s been received by executives, by partners, by customers. I’m always interested in what was the spark? What caused the rebrand in the first place? Was it something else? I love those kinds of stories only because I’ve lived through them, so I’m always curious.

[00:25:52.540] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, well, it’s like understanding where Swaay.Health came from. There’s almost always a really good story behind a rebrand, even if it ends up being… Because this happens a lot, companies will spend an awful lot of money on a rebrand, and then it’s just a slight tweak, but it’s still a difference, and there’s still a story behind that. So that’s cool. I’m glad to know your perspective on that.

[00:26:20.750] – Colin Hung

Yeah. Now that people know it, hopefully I’ll get a few more of those pitches. 

[00:26:27.170] – Kriste Goad

You will. I guarantee it. Well, I’ll put money on it. I know. I’m going to pitch you a few more.

[00:26:32.100] – Colin Hung

I look forward to that.

[00:26:35.080] – Kriste Goad

We talked a little bit already about some of the biggest changes pre-pandemic to now. Does anything else stand out for you? Can I call that one thing that you did say you reported on? Nobody was wearing masks at HIMSS. There was no hand sanitizer in the public areas. I found that pretty interesting and a little surprising.

[00:26:59.770] – Colin Hung

You did your homework. Yeah. 

[00:27:03.580] – Colin Hung

So one of the strangest trends is that, yeah, at all the healthcare conferences I’ve gone to, there isn’t an over presence of hand sanitizer and masks because it’s a healthcare conference, right? It is just whatever the hotel, whatever the venue offers, right? And so they’re still there. I’m not saying there isn’t any, but much less prevalent than I would have thought being a healthcare-specific show, a healthcare-specific conference. It’s almost like we just don’t want to remember 2020 and 2021.

[00:27:36.490] – Kriste Goad

We don’t want to be reminded of- We already solved that problem.

[00:27:40.070] – Colin Hung

Exactly. I think there’s a little bit of that. That was just something that struck me as, wow, we went from masks every two feet, sanitizer every three feet, and everyone giving away sanitizer to nobody’s wearing a mask except on the airplane. Even that is sporadic.

[00:27:57.590] – Kriste Goad

Were people still giving away hand sanitizer?

[00:27:59.720] – Colin Hung

They are. There are a few, but not as nearly as many as the last few years where that was a hot ticket item.

[00:28:06.920] – Kriste Goad

It’s like a mask and sanitizer fatigue.

[00:28:09.540] – Colin Hung

Yeah. I think there’s a little bit of that setting in. It’s funny because I think also in health care, we do know the value and the power of the vaccinations and those kinds of things. I think people are much more comfortable going. Okay, well, I know that even if I get it, I’m probably not going to get hospitalized now. The vaccines are so good. I think there’s a reason why there isn’t as much, but it was just, again, surprising that given it’s a health care conference, I would have thought there would at least be a few more.

[00:28:36.290] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, no kidding. Well, I think that’s a great segue to swag. What are you seeing out there trends in swag or Do you think companies are tightening their budgets or should they be spending money on swag? I mean, it’s a cool thing and you almost have to have it. But then also, as a participant, you’re like, I’m not taking all this I have home. I don’t even have room in my bag and I don’t need more stuff. What do you think about that?

[00:29:06.180] – Colin Hung

Yeah. This, to me, is also an endlessly fascinating topic, right? Well, what’s the swag? And one of our favorite things to do at the end of a conference is to do that recap of who had the best booth, who had the best swag. And yeah, it is pretty interesting to see what companies give away, right? Most people will give away pens and those notebooks. That’s always pretty popular. The most popular item right now is socks. I think every other booth is giving away some branded socks or not even branded socks, just fun socks.

[00:29:39.210] – Kriste Goad

Who started that trend?

[00:29:41.360] – Colin Hung

I don’t know. I would love to say it was Nick Adkins with pink socks that he started it. But I think it was also a trend in other industries, in the gaming industry and other industries. It is a nice way to inconspicuously portray your brand because not everyone sees socks. You only can see the logos and the branding when you sit down and cross your legs. It’s subtle, right? It’s not like something that you wear and it’s in your face. I think for that reason, it’s a natural clothing item that lends itself well to health care, because in health care, we don’t want to be walking billboards.

[00:30:18.130] – Kriste Goad

Yeah. You know what I would say about that, though? Because I’ve gotten some of the socks and I’ve been like, Oh, this is great. I’m going to get those socks. But then they’re not quality socks. And then you’re like, That’s bad… They made me mad. This brand is making me mad. I’m going to have to throw these socks away because they suck. So if you’re going to do it, invest in some really quality socks. That’s my opinion.

[00:30:43.450] – Colin Hung

No, and you’ve hit the trend right on the head, the trend is towards quality giveaways, not the 10 cent items. I recently went to the PPPC show, the Promotional Products Industry show. And they basically were saying, a lot less 10 cent items, more $10 items are now being given away. People want quality because, yeah, they want something that lasts. They want something that’s useful, and they want something that is not going to break apart. Not only because that’s a bad quality and a bad reflection of your brand, but also because of the impact on the environment. We’re just going to throw that out. It’s just going to end up in a landfill, and that’s not good. There’s a lot more awareness of that. And so Some of the trends that we’ve been seeing and I’ve been seeing is that more use of recycled materials in whatever you’re giving away, more items that have a longer shelf life. Things like a steel thermos rather than those plastic ones, a really nice throw blanket that you can use to snuggle up in while you’re watching, while you’re binging Netflix. These aren’t items that you’re going to giveaway for everybody.

[00:31:56.180] – Colin Hung

But again, going back to what we talked about at the beginning, when you know it’s your high prospect coming or a really valuable customer coming, then you’re probably okay giving them a blanket.

[00:32:07.960] – Kriste Goad

Have something nice for them.

[00:32:09.230] – Colin Hung

Right. Because you’re not going to be handing out 100 of these. You’re going to be handing out 20, 25 of these. That’s a much better use of your swag budget than having 5,000 pens. We’re seeing a trend towards that. And food. There’s definitely a lot more food being given away as the swag item rather than an actual hard good item.

[00:32:31.440] – Kriste Goad

What food are we talking about, Colin?

[00:32:33.700] – Colin Hung

Oh, well, don’t get me started. So, cookies are always great. I mean, lots of people have fresh baked cookies, popcorn, which are always popular. We’ve seen a lot of churros recently. Pretzels have now made a resurgence. Macaroons. I’ve actually seen a lot of chocolate. So branded chocolate.

[00:32:53.840] – Kriste Goad

Oh, I like that. I like everything I’m hearing. The branded chocolate, that’s even better. Yeah.

[00:33:00.740] – Colin Hung

Exactly. And of course, coffee, right? Number one thing is probably coffee. Expresso, cappuccinos, lattes. Those are always really good giveaways.

[00:33:09.260] – Kriste Goad

Yeah. And again, the good stuff.

[00:33:11.390] – Colin Hung

Yeah. And I will say one thing. So coffee stations are very popular, and obviously it takes a few minutes to make an espresso and some of these more fancy drinks. And people do love them because it’s a nice decadent treat after a long day spent at the conference. But there’s a huge missed opportunity that I see over and over, and that is you got this lineup, and then there’s nobody talking to anybody in the line except the barista. To me, it’s like, Where are your salespeople? Where are your marketing people? Why are you not engaging these people, this captive audience?

[00:33:42.770] – Kriste Goad

That is such a great point. It’s the obvious thing. Oh, my goodness.

[00:33:48.930] – Colin Hung

So, yeah, missed opportunity. So if you’re going to have a coffee and you’re going to have a line, make sure you have enough people in your booth to actually engage people in that line. It’s such a miss. You spent all that money getting a barista there.

[00:34:02.060] – Kriste Goad

This is a great point. I’m sitting here going, Wait, you have a little mini focus group right there. You could get a few people all talking at once. And that is a really great point and a great tip. Thank you for that. We are recording this. It is April 10th that we’re sitting here recording this. By the time this airs, your conference, the Swaay.Health Marketing Conference coming up in May potentially has already passed. However, I would love it if you would tell us a little bit about the Swaay.Health Marketing Conference. What can people expect there? It looks like you’ve got a great lineup, a great a lot of great topics. Tell us a little bit more about that and why people should attend.

[00:34:49.600] – Colin Hung

Yeah, thank you for that opportunity. The Swaay.Health Live event is our annual conference. This is the conference that we’ve been running for 12 years under the brand of HITMC, is the HITMC Conference from before or the HITMC conference. This is the first year under our rebranded banner that we’re calling it the Swaay.Health Live event. It’s basically a gathering of the community. It’s not meant to be pure education. It’s also not meant to be just a fun blend of the two. For a lot of us, marketing is a pretty lonely function.

[00:35:28.110] – Kriste Goad

No doubt.

[00:35:29.430] – Colin Hung

Especially out there, there’s a lot of solo marketers. This is really an opportunity to get together with your peers, to complain about the same things, and to realize you’re in the same boat as everyone else. The good news is there’s just solutions. There’s tips and tricks that you can pick up. This is really a community gathering rather than a traditional educational conference. It’s 100% focused on healthcare marketing, PR, and communications. The sessions that we have are all designed to offer the latest best practices and strategies and things to help you either attract more patients, improve your patient experience, or to build up your funnel and convert people better. So all of the really practical stuff. And the sessions and the speakers all come from the industry. They’re basically your peers that are presenting. One of the things that we are doing unique this year is we’re putting a lot less focus on lecturing. On purpose, we have very, very few lectures this year and have gone much more with panels, fireside chats, ask me anything, workshops. One of the new formats that we’re trying are debates.

[00:36:43.300] – Kriste Goad

Oh. How’s that going to work?

[00:36:46.180] – Colin Hung

Yeah. If you remember back to high school, the teacher handing you, dividing you up into two teams and giving you a topic, and you knew one side was arguing for it and the other side was arguing against it, that is exactly what we’re going to be doing on a couple of really interesting topics. For example, We have a set of debates for, Should you be using AI for content creation in health care?

[00:37:07.120] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, that’s a good one.

[00:37:08.130] – Colin Hung

Then we’re going to have one side arguing for it, and we’re going to have one side arguing against it. The topic you and I are talking about here on this podcast. We’re going to have people arguing, are conferences worth the squeeze in health care? Is it still worthwhile making in-person events part of your marketing mix? Is social media still viable as a channel for hospitals or for health IT companies? We’re going to have a series of these hot topics that we’re going to debate about. The idea of these debates is not so much to declare a winner. It’s really to explore the topic from both sides, to hear some good points, and then to hear some reasons why you might want to do it, not want to do it, and then make your own judgment at the end of it.

[00:37:48.700] – Kriste Goad

That’s the goal of these. I love that idea. I can’t wait to witness that. I’m going to get a lot of good information on that. It’s going to be a lot of fun. That reminds me, speaking of marketing and branding, several years ago, I had a friend, and he was with… Do you remember Louis Communications? They do a lot of branding, work with a lot of academic medical centers, and probably still do. But I remember they had this campaign that they were launching for Duke, and it was a series of what you’re talking about. They were going to bring two folks together to have a debate on a topic, and they were branding it Duke it out. It’s for Duke. I was like, That’s brilliant. I love that. They came up with some little docs and things. But anyway, you can have a lot of fun with that stuff. That’s a great idea. I can’t wait for that.

[00:38:44.900] – Colin Hung

Yeah. One of the things that our conferences have always been known for, and we’re continuing, is this concept called the unconference. We have baked into the agenda some unconferences. Basically, what this is, is an opportunity for the attendees to set the agenda. So it’s a discussion group. I think that would be the other name for it. We gather in small groups and talk about a particular topic. And this is a chance for attendees to have their questions answered or have their challenges brought forward. And people walk away from those sessions, those unconference sessions, going, wow, that alone made the whole conference worth it. I got the answer. I got 10 tips from my colleague over here in another company that’s done exactly what I was facing, and the other people chimed in. So it’s really great. We’ve had discussions on content marketing. We’ve had discussions on privacy issues and challenges that people are facing, how to better design websites and everything like that. So these unconference sessions also make sure that people are getting value from being at the conference itself.

[00:39:45.860] – Kriste Goad

That’s awesome. You’re not a one-man show over there, are you? There’s so much going on. How do you do it all?

[00:39:51.420] – Colin Hung

No. Thankfully, we have a very good team of people. Obviously, John, he’s the guy who founded the HITMC community way back when, and he’s the Chief Editor of HealthCare IT Today. Then we have Brittany. She’s been with us now for almost four years now, and she does all the logistics and all of the planning. Then we have a team of Bonnie and Haley and Lizeth and so many others that help us pull off these events.

[00:40:21.030] – Kriste Goad

That’s a lot of work.

[00:40:22.120] – Colin Hung

It is a lot of work.

[00:40:23.410] – Kriste Goad

That’s awesome. Well, thank you for doing it. I know the community is so grateful, so we look forward to Speaking of grateful, I don’t know if there’s really a grateful question, but okay, aside from Swaay.Health Marketing Conference, let’s put that over here. If you could choose only one health IT conference to attend, or maybe just even one health conference, it doesn’t have to be health IT, right? Which one would it be and why?

[00:40:53.110] – Colin Hung

You’re really going to put me on the spot to pick my favorite one.

[00:40:56.080] – Kriste Goad

I know. If you don’t feel comfortable answering that because you might piss some people off, that’s fine. We can cut this out.

[00:41:01.260] – Colin Hung

No. First of all, any conference in Hawaii? Can I answer it like that? That would be great.

[00:41:07.390] – Kriste Goad

Yes, sir. Yes. Look at that.

[00:41:10.700] – Colin Hung

That would be my favorite. I’ll say this. The type of conference that is my favorite to go to are user conferences.

[00:41:18.930] – Kriste Goad

Those are great.

[00:41:21.240] – Colin Hung

I find them great. It’s not because the companies go all out and there’s always a really cool party or anything. It’s not that. It’s just that when you’re at a user conference, most of the users there are pretty happy to be there, and they’re eager to learn, and they’re really wanting to connect with people at the company. I just find that there’s a natural energy at a user conference that doesn’t happen at some of the larger conferences.

[00:41:43.850] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, that’s a great point.

[00:41:45.550] – Colin Hung

Everyone seems to be there for the same purpose, right? They’re all there to learn about the latest features and functions.

[00:41:51.910] – Kriste Goad

They’re all there to- Like you were saying, to experience share, right? And be like, Hey, what did you do about this?

[00:41:57.240] – Colin Hung

Exactly. I love those conferences because there is that energy. Also, a lot of companies now are doing major announcements and major things at their own conferences. From a news standpoint, there’s a lot more stuff to cover, right?

[00:42:12.340] – Kriste Goad

You do get invited to some of these because I also work with not just one or two. There’s a number of clients that we work with that don’t want to invite the media because they think that it’s going to make their customers less likely to speak openly. I’m like, You could still invite the media to the big session or the big reveal or something like that. You don’t have to invite them to everything. But it sounds like there’s lots of companies that they really do open the door and invite the media in.

[00:42:52.830] – Colin Hung

Yeah, I think more and more are open to the idea. I think the concern you brought up is valid. If I was on that side and having been on that side, you always a little bit cautious of, Well, what are they going to hear? What are they going to uncover? Maybe there’s a disgruntled employee who wants to air something out to the media. Yes, that can be all concerns. But I think for the most part, the media It’s pretty… Well, it can speak for us. We’re after the good news stories. We’re after the stories of talking about who has deployed something successfully so that other people can learn from that success. We’re certainly not there to dig up dirt on a company. I I think once a marketing department understands that and has that knowledge and relationship with members of the media, for example, with us, then I think they get more comfortable and they realize, Oh, they’re not going to go and see somebody for the interview..

[00:43:44.030] – Kriste Goad

They’re not going to be doing Got you. Got you stories. Got you journalism.

[00:43:47.930] – Colin Hung

I got to tell you, when that happens, magic happens, because I can tell you that when I speak to some of these clients, these smaller rural hospitals, these organizations that aren’t the big ones that everyone hears about all the time, they’re very eager to tell their good news story because they want their community to know all the work that they’re putting in to improve staff experience or to make something easier for patients or better for patients. And they don’t have an outlet for that, except sometimes us at the user conference. And so I really enjoy hearing those stories because these are probably healthcare organizations that I would never have had a chance to speak with in any other place because they’re not going to HIMSS. They’re not going to Vive. And so this is the only place where I get a chance to meet with them. I really enjoy some of these stories because they’re always so resourceful. That’s the thing that strikes me all the time about some of these smaller organizations. They’re so resourceful and they’re so passionate about doing something good for their community. Just when you interview them, that energy and that love comes out, and that makes for a fantastic interview.

[00:44:54.470] – Colin Hung

I do love user conferences. It’s not a specific user conference. I just like user conferences in general.

[00:44:59.470] – Kriste Goad

That’s great. Great. I did not expect that answer at all. So thank you for that. I’m going to use this a little bit with some of my clients that don’t want to invite the media to their user conferences because you’re right, they’re great and they’re great stories, and they come because they love them and they love the collaborative nature of that relationship that they have. So great point. Okay, well, so we’re running out of time here, unfortunately, and I do love to close my podcast with a burning question or two. So we’re at that point in the program for me to say, what’s your favorite form of media?

[00:45:41.740] – Colin Hung

That is a loaded question, but I will answer it. It is video. I would never have thought I would say this because I’m a reader. I read lots and lots of books. I’ve always read a lot of books. I love reading magazines, printed ones. But today it’s video. First of all, so creative. There’s so many creative videos out there, from the fun ones you see on TikTok to the super interesting ones you see on Instagram to the ones, the very educational ones that you see on Facebook and LinkedIn. I consume a lot of my knowledge and things now via YouTube and via video. That is my favorite form of media. Also, I think there’s a lot of play in terms of creativity. It’s really hard to get creative with written word, I mean, other than fiction. Because in B2B writing, there’s a certain format to it. There’s only so much you can do, right? But on video, you can get really creative, and you can really play off the other people that you’re interviewing with. I think video for me now has become my favorite form of media. I just enjoy consuming that.

[00:46:50.890] – Kriste Goad

Yeah. It seems like for the conference coverage, too, it allows you to get a lot more, maybe a lot more interviews in, a lot more content in, and then kick it out really pretty quickly, too.

[00:47:04.390] – Colin Hung

Can I tell you a fun story?

[00:47:05.880] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, please do.

[00:47:07.240] – Colin Hung

I’m going to sound like a geek, but because I didn’t have any full media training, I’ve got this imposter syndrome, right? So I’m like, I got to learn. How do I do video better? How do I stand better? So I’m like, so I find myself analyzing documentaries and news coverage, not because of the news coverage, but because, oh, that looked really good. I’m sitting there going, well, how are they standing? How is the reporter standing? Where were they standing? And what shot angle did they choose? And what are they saying? How could they pack so much information in 30 seconds? I actually study it like tape.

[00:47:47.290] – Kriste Goad

That’s beautiful. That’s like curiosity at its finest, right? You’re really diving in. Well, so what do you use for your video creation? Are you a one-man show in that regard when you’re at the conferences? Are you using your phone?

[00:48:00.150] – Colin Hung

No, I did at the start, but now we have a lot of toys. So now I have my handy dandy camera that I travel with that I do my videos with. We do have a videographer that we use. He’s awesome, Doug. He’s great. We bring him to some of the larger conferences where we’re shooting 10 or 15 videos. But for some of the smaller conferences, it’s just a one-man band. We got our cameras and we just set it up and we start talking. But yeah, I’m learning every day and I’m making horrible mistakes every day, but hopefully every day we’re also getting a little bit better.

[00:48:35.590] – Kriste Goad

You’re doing the editing, too?

[00:48:36.520] – Colin Hung

Yeah. Well, for some of the videos, because we produce them, we publish them that night. Yeah. Those ones I sometimes edit myself. Then other ones we have someone on our team. She’s very good, and she will help us do the more fancy videos that are longer form interviews. Yeah.

[00:48:53.600] – Kriste Goad

That’s awesome. I love that. Well, keep on keeping on. Okay, one more burning question, and then we’re to wrap up. Other than AI, what are we going to be talking about this year?

[00:49:05.670] – Colin Hung

I hope that what we’re going to be talking about is the recovery, the economic recovery and the lowering of interest rates. I think all of us would go, I would want to be talking about that in the latter half of 2024.

[00:49:19.920] – Kriste Goad

Ai-driven economic recovery.

[00:49:22.420] – Colin Hung

There you go. But barring that and barring the Toronto Leafs winning the Stanley Cup, what I think we’ll be talking about at the end of this year, and what I’m hearing certainly, is the focus on privacy and cybersecurity. It is the second biggest topic right now of discussion. It’s not just because of what happened to change. It’s just in general, healthcare is a soft target or has traditionally been a soft target, and it is a life and death situation. Unlike so many other industries, somebody goes after a retailer, it’s just hitting their bottom line. But in health care, it literally means lives. I think some of the threats that healthcare is facing, the infrastructure that we need to invest in to protect ourselves. I think cybersecurity and data privacy are definitely going to be the hot topics for the rest of the year that we’re going to be talking about, sometimes for all the wrong reasons, and sometimes for all the right reasons of of finding better ways to use the data that we have collected for the improvement of care and the improvement of patient experience and so forth. I think that’s going to be the second biggest topic of the rest of the year other than AI.

[00:50:42.610] – Kriste Goad

Yeah. Well, maybe it’s also the silver lining of the Change Healthcare event because a lot of investments in infrastructure have been put off, not unlike just the infrastructure around us in our world every day. But then When something like that happens and everybody sees the impact of it, suddenly it’s a top issue and it starts to get attention at the highest levels. Maybe there’s a silver lining there.

[00:51:13.180] – Colin Hung

I hope so. I hope so.

[00:51:15.590] – Kriste Goad

Well, this has been so great, Colin. Thank you again for joining me. You have so much knowledge, and thank you for your passion and your curiosity and for showing up and for reporting Coming out to those of us in the industry. We count on you. I’m a former journalist from way back in the beginning of my career, and I’m just always so grateful when there’s great journalists and I know you said you didn’t start off as one, but here you are doing a great job. Keep up the great work.

[00:51:51.150] – Colin Hung

Oh, thank you. Thank you for that. I really do appreciate those comments.

[00:51:54.160] – Kriste Goad

Yeah. Well, as always, we will include links and background in our show notes. So for our listeners out there, please be sure to check out those on our website, growwithfuoco.com or wherever you get your podcast. And don’t forget to hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode. You can also find Colin at Swaay, that’s S-W-A-A-Y.Health. Again, my guest today has been Colin Hung, Chief Editor at Swaay.Health, and an editor at HealthCare IT Today. Thank you so much, Colin. That’s it for now. Thanks so much for listening. We’re looking forward to keeping great conversations coming your way as we grow this podcast. There’s even more great content from our conversations on our blog. Be sure to check it out at growwithfuoco.com. That’s growwithfuoco.com. Stay tuned time, and no matter what, stay curious.

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