One of the things NVIDIA does is ask themselves what a social media influencer would say about their products. They go even further by doing two things:
- They write real reviews of their own products. Honest reviews, not puff pieces. If the reviews aren’t glowing, they ask themselves what they need to do to make them great.
- They write the reviews they want to see about their products, then go out and build those products.
This approach to creating and marketing products is why they are the most valuable publicly traded company IN THE WORLD.
The Senior Living Problem
As I was reading about this approach and thinking about senior living, I got to wondering what this might look like in our industry. There are some challenges …
There are plenty of consumers who are passionate about technology. We have very few consumers who are passionate about what we do.
In senior living we don’t really have anyone who actually does consumer reviews about either individual communities or companies. Many years ago I would go visit communities and write about them. Honestly, only about 25% of those reviews were super positive.
The universe of AI chips and graphic chips is relatively small compared to senior living communities and organizations, making the task more manageable.
The Google Review Scam
The closest we come to consumer reviews are Google reviews, and senior living organizations have gotten really good at gaming that system. Over and over again I come across not-very-good communities that have great Google scores.
A Way Forward — Four Ideas
- A great business opportunity — this could be an amazing business opportunity for someone. Create a company that goes in and reviews communities for a price. It would end up being mostly good organizations and companies that would use the service because they really want to get it right and would value a critical look. And when they finally got it right, they would use that consumer review as the centerpiece of their marketing strategy.
- Write the review you want — this is something you could do right now. Write the review you would love to see published about your organization and about your community. Be honest, because no honest review is ever 100% positive. Write it, and then take an honest, hard look at how you stack up.
- Do it yourself — internally, have a strong/critical team member stay in your community for a week. Have them eat the food and participate in the activities. Then let them write the review or simply make a list of the things that are wrong. I spend a lot of time staying in hotels, some high-end and some more modest. I know what a great stay looks like — and a not-so-great stay. It mostly comes down to the little stuff.
I have also spent a few dozen nights in a number of senior living guest suites, and never, not once, have they ever gotten it as right as even a mid-tier hotel, which demonstrates that it is really hard to get it all right. Top-tier hotels have a checklist with well over 100 items for each room. Embrace the problems as an opportunity to make it better and get it right. - Write the Google review you want — this is maybe the easiest place to start. Simply sit down and write the Google review you want. Or even better, write a series of them. Different team members will focus on different areas, and collectively you will come up with something amazing. Once they are written, score yourself on how close you are to making those reviews a reality.
If you do any of these, I would love to hear about it.
