Where Did All Our Clients Go?

Author: Dave Nicol
Posted: Thursday 11th August, 2011. 00:00:00

Back in May, I brought you news of a study that set out to investigate the reasons for declining veterinary visits in North America. The report, which was co-authored by Bayer Animal Health, Brakke Consulting and the National Commission on Veterinary Economic Issues (NCVEI), delivered findings that should be a stark wake-up call to everyone involved in the profession.

The report identified six reasons for the decline in visits to North American vet clinics:

• The economic impact of the recession; (Price)
• Fragmentation of veterinary services; (Loss of control over distribution, competition)
• Consumers substituting Internet research for office visits; (Disruptive techology)
• Feline resistance; (Cats are challenging, but we aren’t helping)
• Perception among pet owners that regular medical check-ups are unnecessary; (Promotion)
• Cost of care. (Price)

What Vets Can Learn from the Cinema Industry

As I sat on my flight home from London to Sydney last week (after celebrating my mum’s most excellent OBE award) watching my second movie, it struck me that there were some clear parallels between what’s currently happening in the veterinary industry and what has been happening to the cinema industry for years.

Threats to Cinemas

Commentators have been ‘crying time’ on the cinemas for as long as I can remember. You only have to check out any online forums for movie nerds to view a morass of negative comments on how cinemas have ‘gotten too expensive’ and soon theatres will ‘price themselves out of the market’.

However, the reality – according to statistics available on the UK Film Council (UFC) website – is quite the opposite. The latest data shows theatre audiences up from 164 million in 2008, to 173 million in 2009. This being the highest attendance level in over a decade.

Several upbeat industry insiders are quoted in the UFC’s annual statistical review describing the industry as being in “rude health”.

This seemingly healthy position however is certainly not down to luck. There is no doubt that the cinematic niche of the wider film industry has had to rise successfully to he type of challenges Frodo Baggins himself would have cracked under. And the similarities between their challenges and our own is (in my opinion) striking.

Vets vs Cinema: A Comparison

It isn’t hard to argue that we vets service a specialised branch of the entertainment industry. Pets are after all a welcome distraction to the stresses of modern life.

It is also true that on both sides of the Atlantic there resides millions of passionate lovers of both animals, and movies. The basis for each industry’s’ potential success in theory, has never been better. In our case the pet owner bond is at an all time high and (in the US at least) pet ownership is increasing.

So it is highly alarming that visits to veterinary clinics are dropping.

In order to get some ideas of how this might be reversed let’s take a closer look at the threats facing the owners of cinemas.

Video Nasty (and friends)

VCR was the first threat I remember, though I’m quite certain that the widespread post-war adoption of TV was just as (if not more so) potentially devastating.

Then along came DVDs (the death of video) and the satellite broadcasters. The problem of increasing availability of movies was compounded as the big money of the cable channels meant films that once took years to get to TV release, were now available only weeks later.

By any measure these are pretty cataclysmic changes, but worse was yet to come and in 1994 the Internet blinked into existence. Less than a decade later movies were available (legitimately and pirate) for download directly onto your computer screen as and when you wanted. In one fell swoop this disruptive technology reduced the price to see a movie to zero, while making it easier than ever to access.

All the while the rest of the entertainment industry was getting better at competing for attention, with bowling megaplexes and restaurants multiplying.

Hot on their heels were brands like Xbox, Playstation and Apple and the impact of attention grabbing games consoles on the younger generation of film-goers. Instead of heading out to the cinema for an evening, a great many youngsters had the choice of spending a night in, gaming with their friends online.

Finally, throw in the global financial disaster and the threat to everyone in the movie industry supply chain and that’s a pretty overwhelming amount of pain.

Enough you might think to give the doomsayers of cinema some credibility. Almost. Except for one small but unavoidable fact. Cinema is very much alive. Well. And for the best part of a decade has been developing nicely.

Compare this upheaval to the impacts in our industry. We’ve had to contend with the effects of disease and regulation on farming. A governmental enquiry into pricing of drugs and the subsequent loss of sales to internet sites. Internet chat room advice and online research being substituted for qualified veterinary advice as the market gets more connected.

Then add in a dose of competition as groomers, behaviourists and supermarkets cut in on our turf. Finally we have the problems of supply and demand, too many vets opening up, too few pets going to clinics to support a healthy business.

Doesn’t it all seem remarkably familiar?

The difference between the two situations is that is the cinema industry dealt with it and evolved. We vets have not and that is the greatest problem facing our industry today.

So how on earth did they [the cinema owners] achieved it, and given the astonishing parallels, what we can learn to help us adapt to our challenges?

Next Week: Part 2 – How Cinema Evolved.

Veterinary practice troubleshooter. Expertise in HR, marketing and all aspects of the vet practice management. Dave can be contacted at info@davenicol.com

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