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Don’t buy amalgam from shady places

July 12, 2011 By Trish Walraven Leave a Comment

Ready for another installment of  Timewarp Tuesdays and some IN YOUR FACE insult marketing?

What I love most about this 1906 ad from LD Caulk (now part of Dentsply) is how it trash-talks the competition while at the same time not really quantifying why their amalgamated alloy is better. Theirs is better why? Because they say so. Because they have “delicate laboratory instruments” and “full scientific equipment.

One other thing that’s interesting, try looking at Google Maps to see what is now built at the SE corner of Broad and Chestnut Streets in Philly. That’s some prime real estate, one block from Penn Square downtown.

 

 

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Anecdotes, Operative Dentistry Tagged With: 20th Century Alloy, Alloy, amalgam, L D Caulk, timewarp tuesdays

Monkeys making fun of dentists

June 24, 2011 By Trish Walraven 1 Comment

Actually it’s the pretend dialogue that’ll get you giggling about the silliness of small talk. Be sure to turn your speakers up:



Filed Under: Fun, Humor Tagged With: dentistry

Timewarp Tuesdays: the cuspidor

June 21, 2011 By Trish Walraven Leave a Comment

Helping to frame our future are the particulars from the past. Welcome to TimeWarp Tuesdays, where you can savor the soul food of “I remember that,” recoil from the utter barbarity of the not so good ol’ days, or simply be amused and entertained.

This cuspidor was a hot seller in the 1890’s and gave way to more modern versions of  the “swish and spit” bowl well into the 1980’s. If it weren’t for the AIDS epidemic in the US we might not have ever gotten rid of these germholes. But yet, they’re still part of modern dentistry in most other countries. What gives?

image courtesy of GoogleBooks

“It has no depressions in the bowl to catch and hold filth.” Wow. Gross. That’s all the imagery I need in order to feel like we moved in the right direction.



Filed Under: Timewarp Tuesdays Tagged With: cuspidor, timewarp tuesdays

This is not Dental Justice

June 17, 2011 By Trish Walraven 4 Comments

by Trish Walraven


Photoshop is fun. You can use it to make a fake Yelp review to help illustrate a point that you’re trying to make about something else. Like a patient writing an online review of your dental practice:


 

 

 

Vindication, finally! Yelp lets me air the true story of this miserable experience, and no one can stop me.

First off, I had total confidence in the way I cared for my car – had the tires rotated every six months, oil changes every 3000 miles, if it was in the manual, I had it done.

About a year after I’d moved into town was when I began noticing a drift to the left (irrespective of the politics here *grin*) so I took my car into Dodgy’s Auto Clinic, which had the highest score on RateMechanics.com.

Get this! As I’m filling out some paperwork, one of the forms they’ve handed me is a “Privacy Agreement” that asked me to transfer ownership of any public commentary I might write in the future to Dodgy’s. Like this review – supposedly they now own it.

Did the red flag go up? Definitely. Did I heed the warning? Unfortunately not.

This mechanic BUTCHERED my car. Nothing feels the same. There are rattles where none previously existed, the steering wheel shimmies when I make a turn, and whenever I drive I just feel like taking a bus instead, it’s THAT BAD. They did fix the drift though, only now it goes in the opposite direction.

Just in case I was insane I took it to another shop to get an opinion about their repairs. The second place agreed that unneccessary “treatment” had happened and that it would be difficult and pricey to undo the damage.

In the end Dodgy’s did refund my money and asked that I not rip them apart online. I bet! The last thing they did as I walked out was to wave that “agreement” at me. Like it has any authority to do anything except make me mad. I have a destroyed car, and people should know the truth about this “Auto Clinic.”

So, Bring it, Dodgy’s. Bring your lawyers. I’ve got everything I need to defend my words. You want to own my words? Here. OWN EM. I now own YOU.



This is a frightening scenario for any service provider. We have a clearly upset individual that seems sincerely convinced her car was ruined by a repair shop. And just one of these unfavorable reviews can inflict massive online damage.

Now let’s take this to dentistry. You got some patients out there talking smack about the quality of your work. Not your chairside manner, not your front office person who was less than helpful about payment arrangements. We are in the heart of your business, a heart that could be ripped out by a singular disgruntled review.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Dental Debates, Marketing, Practice Management Tagged With: Dental Justice, dentist review, doctor review websites, healthgrades, linkedin, Medical Justice, online reputation management, RateMDs, scandals, Yelp dentist review

The gas-powered dental drill

June 14, 2011 By Trish Walraven 2 Comments

Have you seen the most recent ad about electric vehicles, namely the Leaf? Hey, Nissan, the sedation dentists of the world thank you once again for reinforcing patient fears in an original way that also serves your agenda.


Filed Under: Fun, Marketing Tagged With: dental handpiece, electric drill, electric vehicles, going green, Nissan leaf

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DentalBuzz explores rising trends in dentistry with its own slant. The speed at which new products and ideas enter the dental field can often outpace our ability to understand just exactly the direction in which we are heading. But somehow, by being a little less serious about dentistry and dental care, we might get closer to making sense of it all.

So yeah, a tongue-in-cheek pun would fit really nicely here, but that would be in bad taste. Never mind, it just happened anyways. Stop reading sidebars already and click on some content instead.

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