I got not one, but two glossy promo pieces in today’s mail from OHSU. The first campaigns - also seen on buses near you - offers free heart screenings for 10,000 moms and dads (courtesy of OHSUHeart.com.) What the buses don’t tell you is that it’s a quickie online heart health survey a la WebMD - a mere 12 questions, followed by a few vague platitudes about checking in with your doctor due to your ‘increased risk’.

(Ironically, the related link to http://www.ohsuhealth.com/chestpain/ gave my computer fits, issuing warnings about ‘fatal JavaScript runtime errors’ and bringing the browser to a crashing halt.)

But my favorite piece was the one for the new OHSU Center for Health and Healing down at SoWa. A quick run through the virtual tour gives one a pretty good picture of just who they think their customer base is:

Bob loves eating at restaurants in the Pearl. Unfortunately, his GI tract doesn’t. But after a noninvasive capsule study shows he can’t eat wheat, rye, or barley, now Bob happily eats steak and pomme frites but avoids baguettes - as he should.

Amy and her mother can get a flu shot, and then stroll by the river! Tamara can get a facelift, followed by monthly facials in the day spa! Designer glasses at the Casey Eye Institute!

I think there’s a few missing characters here, though:

• There’s no irate character in the zippy little car that keeps driving by, shouting obscenities about the 20 minute traffic jam he just waded through in order to drop Tamara off for her facial
• And all those people who don’t own automobiles? They’re SOL

But then again, it was already pretty evident that the auto-free crowd wasn’t exactly the target demographic for this particular marketing campaign…