If you’ve been following the field of healthcare you know that one of the new exciting developments is called predictive medicine, or genomics. Based on your individual genetic make up, doctors can predict which diseases you are more likely to have, and maybe start preventing or preparing for them. Our new client, Inova Health Systems, is a pioneer in this field, and thus the tagline “Join the future of health.” The more I learned about this way cool concept, the more I thought how great it would be if other things in life were like that. Based on the individual characteristics of my kitchen sink, is it going to clog during my next dinner party? Will the next thunderstorm cause my dog to pee under the bed? And could this concept work for our clients? Of course it could. It’s what we already do every day. Based on a company’s make up, consumers’ mindsets, the competition, and the company’s management, we can usually predict the future health of the company quite accurately, and prepare for the expected ups and downs, and more importantly, help them avoid the big diseases and injuries. Sure, we test, experiment, react to external factors, but predictive marketing is exactly what we offer. Or, to use the medical nomenclature, personalized marketing. Inova is not the first hospital account we’ve worked on. But our marketing plan is completely different than any of the other hospital marketing plans we’ve done, because Inova is different. As an agency we write radio ads, create websites, tweet/blog/facebook like crazy, but the reason our clients pay us is to help them figure out what is coming next, and prepare for it. Wayne Gretzky, one of the great hockey players, once said, “I don’t skate where the puck is, I skate where it is going.” Like hockey and healthcare, your marketing plan should be doing the same thing. You have the tools. Your company’s genome has been mapped. Ask your advertising agency what comes next. Ask for predictive marketing. The future of your company’s health depends on it.