A week in the Cleveland Clinic for a family member’s heart procedure (all went well, thanks), and you look at health care advertising differently.

First, there was no advertising at which to look. The walls across the huge, multiple-building complex were quite spare, aside from the occasional and innocuous landscape painting and sexually-neutral metal sculptures in waiting areas. There was also a banner outside promoting organ donors, which prompted a conversation between my brother and me and left me feeling selfish for holding onto my eyes  — “If the Messiah comes and wakes us all up, I want to be able to see him.”

For me, this was a healthy break from ad clutter of the regular world, although free wi-fi had me persistently online via iPad, iPhone and laptop. But online, we mostly can choose the marketing we want, so it’s far less intrusive except for interstitials such as on NYT and AdAge. Cleveland Clinic is on Twitter, and I followed its feed of health tips, promos for online teaching webinars and the outdoor farmer’s market on Wednesdays. All of our pre-surgery tests and appointments had been running on time, so I tweeted the compliment and enjoyed an immediate reply. When I asked in follow-up, however, why the country’s top heart center (ranked 16 years in a row by US News & World Report — the one ad spotted frequently on walls) had a McDonald’s in the cafeteria, I did not get a response.

Even without ads on the walls, you have plenty of sights at which to awkwardly gaze and consider the implications. I wondered which medicines were in one woman’s four I.V.’s. I was curious if the guy with the gadget had to pay full price or if insurance had covered it. And the rolling hospital gurneys made me think of that Plavix commercial in which one spookily trails a seemingly healthy looking golfer around the golf course, threatening an impending heart attack. I don’t even have a heart condition but I am terrified by this ad. I want to scream to the woman in the spot: “Run, Lady, Run! There’s a hospital gurney following you.”

What I don’t like about this advertising approach is that it doesn’t represent what I try to do in strategy or creative. The goal is not to arouse an unfounded worry but to match a brand benefit to an established one. Every target audience has plenty of real substantial worries on which we can prey. Remember LifeAlert’s iconic: “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” That marketed a remote button around your neck to the fundamental worry of falling down alone.

My parents raised me to worry about plenty. Worry about getting hurt in sports like football. (“Jewish boys should play soccer; the worst that could happen is you get tired.”) Worry about choking on linguini. (“Chew everything 35 bites.”) Worry about aneurysms. (“Don’t hold in your sneezes. Your head will explode.”) Worry about career stability. (“Everyone needs an accountant. You’ll learn to love it.”) Worry about going deaf (”Your grandmother did and boy, was she the lucky one.”)

One way to survey worry in American life is to watch the evening network news. In just one half hour, I saw ads for stool softener Dulcalex (“Doesn’t make you go; it helps you go”), heartburn medication Zegerid (Do you worry about what you eat?), and bladder control medication Toviaz. In Tovaiz’s campaign, a woman worries she will have an accident in traffic or need to go on a road trip. For years, a competitor Detrol has been using a similar but perhaps more memorable approach with its “Gotta go, gotta go” jingle. They both hit a nerve of my eternal worry about bathroom availability, especially on airplanes or in Europe where “Les Toilettes” usually means one bathroom even for an entire restaurant. It is also why I won’t travel in groups. There’s always a line for the stall.

Worry done well, however, is a promotional campaign for “The Colony,” a new show on Discovery Channel, created by Campfire (and Thomas Sherman, a creative director I know). To illustrate the effects of a possible outbreak to pandemic, the campaign uses both traditional craft such as horror movie style editing and ultra-new tools such as augmented reality and Facebook Connect, which lets me experience a simulation of my own network of friends talking about it. It keeps reminding me how “This is Not Real” which only makes the effort more credible. This scared me too but instead of in a one-dimensional 1990s way like Plavix, in an experiential and modern way in which I am far more interested. And impressed.