Hold off on the tar and feathers! Of course, everyone with a spine and a functioning nerve system needs chiropractic care. The planet would be a better place if every man, woman and child received regular spinal adjustments.
That's a hard concept for many of us to accept, especially those, like me, who came of age in the B.J. Palmer era that endowed the profession with a distinctly evangelical bent. We left our chiropractic colleges ready to convert the medically minded and help them see the light of chiropractic. And many people have done just that.
But on the whole, over the past 30 years we've seen much more medicalization of chiropractic than the vitalization of medicine. Some of that might be because we've spent too much time and energy struggling to "create converts" and shoe-horn chiropractic into a medical model, and not near enough time boldly being ourselves so like-minded people could catch the spark.
Today, any one of us can get our "Pied Piper on" by using global connectivity to find, communicate with and lead others who think like we do. What if we start throwing our considerable energy into banding already vitalistically oriented people together to make ourselves heard and felt like never before?
Finding Our Chiropractic Tribe
Seth Godin, author of 13 best-selling books about the way ideas spread, has turned the traditional concepts of marketing on their head. (It's well-worth spending some time with his writing or even just logging onto one of his presentations on TED [Technology, Entertainment, Design] at www.ted.com.) Godin argues that influence used to happen through efficient production; the company that had the best factory to churn out the most products at the cheapest prices cornered the market. That approach created the need for what evolved into "mass marketing," by which this plethora of products was pushed out to the masses through aggressive advertising. Today, Godin says, leadership and influence come from connecting very specialized ideas with the very particular people who find them irresistible.
Silos of Interest
There are two interesting, seemingly opposing trends weaving through our lives right now. We are at once more connected via the Internet, social media, cell phones and travel than ever, yet more fragmented and specialized in terms of how we connect with others based on unique interests and circumstances.
The "me" generation has morphed into the "exactly like me" generation. It's no longer enough to connect with people of the same general age or social class. Today, we expect to connect with others who share our exact interests: people who have walked the links of St. Andrews, moms of unvaccinated kids, duplicate bridge players, or followers of a local musician.
There is no longer one monster album of the summer that all teens are singing along to, but rather thousands of musicians catering to much smaller groups of people with more specialized tastes. We no longer read general-interest magazines like the old Saturday Evening Post, while Mental Floss, a magazine started in a Duke University dorm room, can thrive with 300,000 subscribers.
It Doesn't Take an Army
The great news for chiropractic is that it no longer takes millions of dollars to reach and mobilize millions of people who think like you do. Instead, we can now very cheaply go out into the digital universe and say, "Hey, this is how we see things ... if you're intrigued, find out more or come join us."
Godin calls this assembling a modern-day "tribe" and says one small tribe can literally spark a movement. The key is to realize we don't need everyone. This is not a mass-market thing. It's all about assembling a core group of "true believers" – people who really care and get worked up about the same things you do.
There are people out there with chiropractic yearnings (to live a more holistic, natural lifestyle, have health care options, get access to truthful information about vaccinations, avoid drugs and surgery, respect the body's inborn wisdom) who feel disconnected. We can reach out to them.
Willing to Stand Out
To connect with more of these vitalistically oriented folks, however, we must be willing to stand out. Blending into the crowd is the worst possible way to lead a modern tribe. The more we look like traditional medicine, the harder we make it for people who want what we have to find us. Just to get through all the noise, Godin says you have to offer an idea that's big and remarkable; something that's worth talking about. He provides the example of a purple cow. If you saw one, you'd surely mention it. But if you saw 1,000 black-and-white cows you probably wouldn't think to bring the topic up over dinner.
Fortunately, chiropractic is a huge, remarkable idea. We're already a purple cow. It's when we try to look like black-and-white cows (watering down our message to fit in and act like pseudo-medical doctors) that we lose our unique element of attraction. Back pain is a very small idea. A vitalistic, inside-out philosophy of health is a huge idea.
New Rules
To fuel our vitalistic health revolution with the power of the 24/7 digital world, we need to behave like a modern tribe. That means we must be willing to do the following:
- Challenge the status quo
- Stand out from the crowd
- Build a vitalistic culture
- Provide ways for our tribe to connect with each other
- Get out in front so people can follow
- Reach out to those already tuned into our message
- Embrace the "fringe"
Godin has three rules for modern marketing that dovetail so beautifully with chiropractic it's almost as if they were written for us. Fitting in may well have been the right course of action for us 50 or even just 20 years ago, but things are different today. Godin's rules for effective marketing in 2012 are:
- Playing it safe is the biggest risk (it leads to the deadliest marketing sin: being boring and unremarkable)
- Live at the fringes (embrace that space and don't be afraid of it; you can make it uniquely yours)
- Perform well beyond good (fluff without excellence gets discovered very quickly)
Let's get busy in every chiropractic practice, state and national association, and chiropractic college searching for and reaching out to people who think like we do about health. We've got a tribe to connect with and a revolution to lead. Go do something to stand out from the crowd so others can find you.
Dr. Guy F. Riekeman, current president of Life University in Marietta, Ga., has held leadership positions in chiropractic education essentially since his graduation from Palmer College of Chiropractic in 1972. He was appointed vice president of Sherman College in 1975 and has served as president of all three Palmer campuses and as chancellor of the Palmer Chiropractic University System. In 2006, he was elected to the board of directors of the Council on Chiropractic Education.