Imagine getting invited to visit an insurance company’s headquarters. Woooo! Will there be popcorn? Now, imagine that the folks inviting you also very kindly hosted your Inbound Marketing Bootcamp (including providing seating for over 100 folks, breakfast, break snacks, lunch, and afternoon snacks). Well, of course you’re going to say yes, because they’ve just made the gesture that you’re of value to them, so it’s good to be polite. (No, they are not a client, but man, I will do my damnedest to change that, as I dig what they’re doing.)
Visiting Humana in Louisville, Kentucky, was a treat through and through. Greg Matthews, Director of something-or-other at the Humana Innovation Center (and his colleague Christopher Hall) blew me away within minutes of entering their sanctum. Let’s start with the fishbowl, we hear.
The fishbowl turns out to be a multi-user visualization of a group of people’s pedometer steps. The fish moving faster than others and higher up in the water have more peds (footsteps) than the fish lower in the tank. The goal every day is to have your fish swimming high and fast. What makes the game fun is that you can identify who in the office is assigned to which fish, and really compete (in friendly ways) towards a health-forward goal.
“We’re not interested in solving sickness problems. We want to work on promoting health,” said Matthews. He said this in lots of variant ways for the duration of our visit. They are really into figuring out ways to make getting and staying healthy more interesting. **Update: Okay, other folks there work on those kinds of things like helping sick people, but that’s not the focus of this particular group.**
You’ve gotta check this out.
A bike. Big deal, right? What if Humana teamed with Trek bicycles to build the ZipCar for bicycles? That’s what B-Cycle is. It’s a bike-sharing program that they launched. They tried it out at the US Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention with great fanfare (Greg has the numbers; I don’t retain such data well), and again, it’s about bike-sharing which will promote health.
We tried out several other innovative products in various modes of testing and development. There were Nintendo Wii games that did more for fitness, this kind of “Simon Says go do ____” game that used a watch-like fob to know which person beat the other person in an impromptu race. In sum, everything that Greg Matthews and all the other folks at the Humana Innovation Center is doing has something to do with productizing better wellness. Why? Maybe because it’s more interesting than waiting for people to get sick and then fixing them.
What’s interesting to think about are the other ways an insurance company might empower wellness. Remember the 90s? A newsletter that told you to eat more cranberries might pass as proactive. Now? If we’re to take what Humana’s Innovation Center is doing seriously, it looks like the way to make us all more healthy is to help us have fun doing it. Yep: serious fun. Sound familiar, Jeff?
Good on you, Humana people.
What do you think? You ready for healthy + insurance company to = fun ?
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