M D Anderson Rebranding Program’s Great Story – Behind the AMA Firewall.

Am I committing a faux pas? Or delivering a service?

I ask because Mary M Flory wrote a fine, descriptive article in the just-arrived issue of Marketing Health Services. Titled, “Painting the Town Red,” it’s about the M D Anderson Cancer Center rebrand. And for the moment, it’s for American Marketing Association members only – stashed behind the MarketingPower.com firewall.

This copyrighted article features the institution’s Associate Vice President of Marketing Alicia Jansen – that’s her in the publication’s photograph – and details how the institution’s stakeholder team pulled off its “comprehensive brand overhaul.”

(On a smacking-my-forehead note, I missed the chance to scoop Flory because Jansen presented the story, in person, at our AMAHouston Healthcare SIG event in June. And I did NOT blog about it.)

I am not going to reprise the article, nor take away from the hard work of brand reviewing and rebranding conducted by the MD Anderson Cancer Center team. But I think it’s worth bringing some element out from behind the firewall – the five challenges that MD Anderson had to identify before the brand could be “fixed.” Directly quoting from the Flory piece, they were:

1. Brand interpretation: MD Anderson did not have an understanding of how its brand promise was being perceived across its many stakeholders.

2. Brand asset performance: MD Anderson’s previous logo and other brand assets did not differentiate the organization nor communicate its mission as strongly. In addition, the assets were dated, fading into the current communications environment.

3. Brand voice: With the volume of communications being disseminated from the organization, MD Anderson noticed a dilution of the brand. This dilution was due, in part, to the lack of a unified design and messaging system.

4. Brand growth: Due to growth in the past 10 years and the mission to be a global leader in cancer care, several national and global relationships were established and a brand architecture and management system had not been implemented to unite or tie the strategy together.

5. Brand management: MD Anderson used a cross-functional approach to communicating its brand and did not have a strategy to manage its current approach, much less future growth.

It’s classic “Find the problems” stuff. (Gotta find ‘em before you can fix ‘em.) Well…your institution or company may be facing the need to build a stronger brand voice. So you next steps are: join the American Marketing Association, get behind its firewall and read the article. It’s a fine first guide to rebranding.

Me? I’m grateful to AMAHouston and Jansen for the chance to have heard all the newest parts of the story first-hand. (I did blog about the MD Anderson ad campaign here 18 months back.) Even more, thanks to Flory, Managing Editor of Magazines for the American Marketing Association, for the telling-in-print.

“How Has Apple Advertised the iPad” Is Worth a Reprise.

Having gone through this year’s Offshore Technology Conference and created a perfectly good post for the AMAHouston blog about iPad missionaries, I wanted to explore the state of marketing for Apple’s newest miracle a bit further.

Floating the sea of content about the tablet is a fine post on the Penn Olson blog by Willis Wee – a fine if not quite up to date review of how Apple has taken the iPad to market. Read this. See how many of the initial parts were fitted together to make whoopee for Apple (and early adopters throughout the US).

Come on: It took the company only 28 days to sell one million iPads. Apple also announced that iPad customers have downloaded over 12 million apps and more than 1.5 million e-books from iBookstore since its April 3 launch.

So while it’s wonderful to think that missionary marketing was the key to this achievement, Apple – as usual – hardly left such things to chance. Wee’s article shows how the pipe was laid. Now I wonder how long I can keep from buying an iPad for myself.

On Friday, AMAHouston Seminar Shows Intangibles Strategies.

When it comes to marketing and advertising intangibles there are several flavors. Services is one - banking services or accounting services. There are intangible products too; employee healthcare insurance, for example. Your written policy is a form of physical proof that you are insured; you can’t buy insurance by the pound.

Marketers have spent years, decades, transforming intangibles into various forms of reality so that a wide variety of stakeholders can grasp them. In these cases, it’s not about the purchase but the buy: Stakeholders buy into these intangibles in a number of ways, accepting them into their businesses and their lives. There is a requirement for mental acceptance which is, or should be, brand-driven.

“Selling the Intangible: B2B Service Marketing Strategies” is quite tangible: Three hands-on experts are going to make everything real for you at Friday’s B2B Special Interest Group seminar, from our chapter of the American Marketing Association. Just click here to register if you haven’t already.

Join us at the House of Blues and get fresh insights about bank marketing from William Trout, BBVACompass Director of Internal Communications. Hear about thought leadership as a marketing tool for employee health benefits from Katrina Drake Hudson, Regional Marketing Leader at Humana. And see a first-hand how-to on rebranding accounting services from Christa Gerlovich, Practice Growth Manager for Weaver, LLP.

Oh - you can market insurance by the pound, sort of, with commodity futures contracts*. One particularly successful example (if I say so myself) is this three-dimensional direct mail program sent to hundreds of US ingredients buyers. The campaign promoted commodity contracts on the Chicago Board of Trade. Of course, a futures contract is only mostly intangible. If you screw up the “virtual” becomes intensely physical and you could enjoy 5,000 bushels of soybeans delivered to your driveway.

There’ll be no soybeans at the House of Blues’ Bronze Peacock Room this Friday morning. Just successful strategies from Trout, Hudson and Stranhoner. Since I will be the moderator, I hereby offer you tangible benefits (including a light breakfast) and say “Come on down!”

*Commodity futures are agreements of contracts that are used to purchase or sell a specified amount of a given commodity – in the case of this campaign, corn, rice, soybeans and soybean oil which are used as ingredients in various food products. The Chicago Board of Trade – CBOT – is now part of CME Group. Direct mail campaign created and produced “back in the day” by The Quest Business Agency, Houston, TX. Creative Director/copywriter: Yours truly. Art Director: Jim Prejean. Production Manager: Beth Palmer.

McKee Comes Back for AMAHouston SIG and Dirkes Reviews His Book.

Laying pipe. It’s what this post does. Laying pipe for our February 26 Healthcare SIG seminar. Attendees will get plenty of advice and examples about “outside the box” marketing and ad campaigns – some from Steve McKee. Who has a book that’s more about management than marketing. Let’s start with this. (A later post will highlight the seminar itself.)

Aubrey Dirkes, who recommended McKee for this event, provided this review for Signalwriter.

Typically when the president of an advertising agency writes a book, the pages are filled with tales of glory about their special pixie dust. Hire their agency and you too will have memorable television ads. When Growth Stalls by Steve McKee, the president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland, isn’t that book. In fact he doesn’t mention a single ad by his agency, and the promotion “P” isn’t mentioned until the last 15 pages of the book. Luckily, he’ll be sharing his agency’s work at the Houston AMA Healthcare SIG meeting on February 26.

When Growth Stalls is really more like a series of executive coaching sessions for your management team. It is part “Good to Great,” part “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” and part personal diary all intertwined with recent editions of The Wall Street Journal. The result is a well-researched book that is timely and not only gives us the solace of knowing that every company stalls, but the hope that accompanies a step-by-step method to get growing again. Reading it reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from “The West Wing,” about the support a friend can provide.

The book acknowledges the reasons we blame for our company’s stall – the economic downturn, disasters, and other market forces that, in truth, our competitors face too. It then dives in to the real reasons that organizations of all sizes stall. This is a fitting discussion for the Healthcare SIG because of its direct correlation to the treatment of symptoms v. curing the patient’s problem. Both business and healthcare practice evidence-based approaches, and just as patient #1’s cancer is different from patient #2’s, the growth challenges of GE are different from those of Home Depot or Chrysler, and their treatment must take into account the individual or the result is disastrous.

The book identifies four reasons for stalling: A lack of consensus from leadership; a lack of focus; a loss of nerve; and inconsistent marketing. When the ground shakes, any one of these can cause an organization to stall. Worse, the failure of one can lead to the slippery slope that results in the failure of all four.

In the book there are great, real-world examples from different industries on how each can lead to stall. In your very real-world environment, where every aspect of the healthcare world is up for debate, I encourage you to give careful consideration to these factors before it is too late. (In my own experience I have had clients suffering from one or all with expensive repercussions.)

The subtitle of the book is How it happens, Why you’re stuck, and What to do about it. About half the book is dedicated to the last of these. It goes beyond the Mission/Vision/Values you all hang in your lobbies to define what success looks like, providing a measurable objective and a timetable that leadership can agree on, get behind and operationalize. After all, business, and healthcare, is about the acquisition and retention of customers. This will lead you to discussions about the importance of your people as the delivery devices for your brand and the compounding impact of your customers’ opinions and experiences. Then you are off to the races.

In reading this, you may say “obvious.”

I say “revolutionarily obvious” because the book will reaffirm the impact you can, and may need to, make within arms’ reach that will make all the difference.

Aubrey is a Philadelphia-based marketing consultant who creates successful customer acquisition and retention programs, brand experiences and award winning creative for hospitals and retailers nationwide. He plays 3x3 basketball in a barn built in the 1700s and refurbished in the 1870s. He interrupted shoveling 2,300 cubic feet of snow and helping four cars stuck in the snow on his street to send this book review to me. Steve, I hope you appreciate his sacrifice.

At Chipotle, the Wooden Nickel Lives On: These Days It’s Worth 6 Bucks.

At last month’s AMAHouston Interactive SIG event, Chipotle Mexican Grill was not only a sponsor. Iliana Rodriguez, the eatery’s Houston marketing consultant, handed out hefty metal coins – each one good for high-quality burrito.

This promotion has the class I’ve come to associate with the Denver-based fast-food chain which is, at the same time, one of the stars in the world of ethical food producers. The branding thread of Chipotle’s “Food with Integrity” manifesto weaves its way all through the company’s online presence; it’s also clearly marked right on the metal coin (which plays an active role on the landing page). Nice weight in the hand, too.

So I’m standing there at the sponsor’s table with Rodriguez and Freeman-Leonard’s Steven Leeper, who’s on the Interactive SIG’s steering committee, and I point out that there’s really nothing new under the sun: This promo-coin thing’s been around for years and years, starting with the old wooden nickel. I managed to cram that together with a (prayerfully) short tale about the “old days” and the 5-cent lunch offers by bars and taverns.

I screwed it up – though I’m hopeful Rodriguez and Leeper will forgive me. First glance, wooden nickels don’t have anything to do with old-timey bar lunches. It is true that some histories identify the wooden nickel with the bank failures of the 1930s; in ’33, Blaine, WA issued round wooden coins when its bank failed. Commemorative nickels are then supposed to be an outgrowth of these legitimate wooden nickels. More accurately, though, collectible wooden nickels have been mentioned in print since at least 1888.

The famous tracer of lost catchphrases, Eric Partridge, puts “Don’t take any wooden nickels” back at least as far as the early 1900s. It’s a warning to be watchful for shady practices or goods. (And for mature ad guys with faulty memories.)

To add to the confusion, I also mixed up the free-lunch-with-a-5¢-beer and the nickel lunch…two different but historically accurate things. The free lunch helped win the 1890s beer wars for Adolphus Busch: With beer at five cents a glass, it was a luxury within the reach of everyone, however humble. The nickel, moreover, included a free lunch.

The nickel lunch was itself a common saloon promotion and quite a wonderful deal depending, I note, on which bar or café you favored with your custom.

Can you believe it? I’ve come full circle. Mangled history can’t keep a good promotion idea down. Here’s Chipotle putting the “nickel lunch” idea back to work not with a paper coupon (too easy to ignore) but with a weighty coin. It not only weighs more than today’s nickel. It’s worth more* at Chipotle Mexican Grill.

Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch?

*The “rare” 2001 Chipotle coin is selling for $20 on eBay. Thanks to Chipotle Mexican Grill and Iliana Rodriguez for participating in AMAHouston. “New York Bowery lunch counter c. 1910,” 8x10 glass negative, GG Bain Collection, see Shorpy for all the details.

Recovery Ahead? The “Reset Economy” in Marketing, Advertising and Promotion.

BrandWeek’s Elaine Wong interviewed Steve Pacheco, marketing communications director at FedEx, because the company’s not going to be advertising on the Super Bowl again this year. One thing he said goes like this:

There is a new [way of thinking] in America and beyond where folks are sort of reexamining events. It’s been called the “reset economy” to some degree, and so, we’re giving every marketing investment greater scrutiny than before. In this case, we want to leverage the FedEx Orange Bowl investment in a more powerful and impactful way, [to the point where] we’ll be well served not to have advertised in the Super Bowl, and to have our own Super Bowl with the FedEx Orange Bowl.

Pacheco forgot to credit Jeff Immelt with coining the phrase, at least according to Business Week. The biz-mag quoted the GE CEO himself when he named our current econ challenge the “Reset economy.” He feels that people’s expectations are in the process of being ‘reset’ from the past decade.

Immelt says the reset will impact everything from what’s sold and produced to the prices we pay. That’s an obvious view, but Mary Jo Martin, principal of research firm Cynapsus, agrees with him about resetting expectations: “Things are likely not going to be like the good old days for quite some time – if ever. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.”

To Trevor Eade, Director of Marketing/Communications at EMS, it’s like going back to using a stick-shift instead of an automatic transmission. “Our programs were on automatic, with a smooth momentum. (Everyone had a wonderful ride.) Now we’re learning how to drive all over again, with bumps and crunches when shifting.

“We’re forced to use fewer resources and adopt new techniques. We’ll get to the same destination but a little more frazzled.”

And for CITGO E-Communications Manager Beth Palmer the focus is broader, keeping both programs and executions in mind. “The reset economy means that in 2010 we continue to scrutinize and re-think every aspect of HOW we deliver,” she maintains, “while still dazzling our customers.”

Whether you’re frazzled or dazzled, NPR host/novelist Kurt Andersen can help. A few weeks back, the AMA interviewed him about the start-fresh state-of-mind. It’s a pretty damn encouraging view titled, “Hitting the reset button.” He finishes up the transcript this way:

As companies die – and as terrifying as that can be for people in manufacturing, retailing, media, and all the obviously challenged industries – people don't stop wanting the things they provided.

You might be encouraged by reading the entire transcript. (His similarly titled book Reset is enjoyable too.)

Then visualize a new game in which marketing, advertising and promotion are still in demand because your clients and prospects won’t stop wanting the things that your company delivers. That’s the right reset.

PS. Thanks to AMA-ers Trevor Eade, Mary Jo Martin and Beth Palmer for participating in this post; and to Prism Design for help with the photo-illustration.

Asked and Answered: Blausen Medical Closes the Loop.

Is a couple of billboard executions all it takes? Apparently so. Three weeks or so back, Signalwriter asked:

Coming to the AMA Healthcare SIG event, [Bruce] Blausen and [Mike] Hensgen have a slightly different challenge. Can they envision (and communicate to SIG attendees) how an institution might combine its use of the Human Atlas with its hospital-wide iPhone platform – and then market the combination to its stakeholders?

The SIG event went off yesterday (at the Houston Zoo, thank you very much) with more than a hundred healthcare marketing professionals in the audience. During this extensive, five-speaker seminar, Bruce Blausen answered the question I posed above. The key to his presentation, “Driving Business with Mobile Apps,” was identifying what today’s most effective patient education tool is, in his view: narrated animation on a mobile phone platform.

Then, for the close of his talk, he created and displayed a quartet of speculative billboards (two shown here) that tie “Human Atlas” mobile app and iPhone into single, brand-oriented messages on behalf of prospective hospital users.

That famous “picture worth a thousand words” thing can hardly be demonstrated more clearly than these boards: the answers to my questions, at least. Well done, Blausen.

Concepts courtesy of Blausen Medical. Some elements may be properties of stock photo houses – all rights reserved to element owners.

Blausen Human Atlas – Next Step in Intimate Medical Marketing?

Today we consider a dramatic iPhone app from Balusen. But can it be marketed?There’s probably no conscious connection between the next American Marketing Association-Houston Healthcare SIG event and its venue…the Houston Zoo. Still, synch up your calendars now for Friday, September 25 – the SIG presents “Healthcare Marketing via Emerging Technologies.” Read all about three-hour event (including networking and a bite of breakfast) right here.

To be clear, this seminar’s not about those technologies themselves, which I am sure are quite excellent. This group of people will talk about how you might use some of the technologies to market to broad groups of customers – patient groups, physicians, nurses and so on.

The presenters will cover the marketing capabilities inherent in data analysis software (which should be challenging), and how hospitals are using e-marketing. Since I’ve helped create the program, I hope to hear some fresh ideas.

I have the biggest expectations of all for the Blausen Human Atlas and its iPhone application, especially after talking it over with Blausen Media CEO Bruce Blausen and Account Director Mike Hensgen. Blausen will be doing the presenting.

Why the high hopes? Well, who do you know who doesn’t have an iPhone yet? (Besides me, I mean.) According to blogger Greg Kaiser at the end of April, Apple had sold 21 million of them and that was before new models caught on. Big deal stuff, especially when you consider the iPhone can be a pretty amazing marketing implement.

But it’s not about the smartphone, it’s about the Blausen app on the smartphone. The “Human Atlas” lets users manipulate superbly detailed medical illustrations and animations at the touch of a finger. There’s a zoom feature that provides the ability to explore different body systems.

Blausen points out that a click of a button helps explain a complicated medical problem or diagnosis. Seeing the problem in pictures helps doctors (for example) relieve fears and concerns for all kinds of patients. Hensgen says that the individual experiences with the application are stunning: Learning and understanding are speeded up dramatically.

In selling the application, Blausen wants to leverage both the iPhone and web-delivered versions to give hospitals a competitive advantage in terms of communications. The hospitals’ medical and nursing staffs can take the educational opportunity right to the point of care, and deliver a patient experience that’s superior to any other.

Hensgen demo’d the Human Atlas on his iPhone for me; it’s dramatic. The tool also just got a perceptive nod from iPhone Medical App Review: …this is an app that could change the way physicians and providers communicate with patients. We've been using this application on a daily basis with our patients.

Coming to the AMA Healthcare SIG event, Blausen and Hensgen have a slightly different challenge. Can they envision (and communicate to SIG attendees) how an institution might combine its use of the Human Atlas with its hospital-wide iPhone platform – and then market the combination to its stakeholders?

To paraphrase Harvard professor Theodore Levitt: Marketing is different than selling. Marketing views the entire business process as a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs.

The implication (to me) is “user intimacy” – the inherent opportunity to bring customers much, much closer to a brand. Register for September 25. We’ll find out together how “technologies” like the-palm-of-your-hand Human-Atlas-plus iPhone combination will take us to the next level of healthcare marketing.

A big thank-you to Bruce Blausen and Mike Hensgen for helping me think ahead on this topic. Photos courtesy of Blausen Media.

Knowable, Noble

Three days after an outstanding AMA-Houston Healthcare SIG seminar at Rice University, Houston pediatrician Dr Ana Malinow wrote in the Houston Chronicle about treating a six-year-old girl in a public clinic:

When I saw her, her hand was swollen to twice the normal size, purple, tender and warm to the touch, with a red streak (signifying an extension of…infection…to the bloodstream)…she was uninsured and had been sent home with a prescription that her mother tried to fill but was unable to afford. How much did the antibiotic…cost? $500.

The four speakers who addressed “Marketing Healthcare under a New Administration” were effective and humorous. Passionate. Completely engaged with almost 100 attendees. Each one lit up a different facet of the American healthcare system in crisis…a phrase that’s still stabbingly relevant as Malinow’s op-ed letter makes clear.

The nature of this blog makes it difficult to condense two hours of presentations and QAs into a few paragraphs. Still, I’m revisiting the event because of the high quality of the presentations.

Dr Lewis Foxhall, President of the Harris County Medical Society, delivered the overview and laid the foundations of the case, quickly but effectively covering present circumstances.

Memorial City Medical Center’s Tim Schauer addressed policy issues and made the case that pay-for-performance will never work because medicine is still a “practice.” He also spotlighted the nature of special interests.

Houston Wellness Association president Jonathan Lack portrayed wellness as key player in prospective solutions, emphasizing that workplace wellness is a productivity tool. He vividly revealed portrayed the challenges of community and public health. Lack contends that today’s medical center is a sick-care model and it’s considerably overburdened.

Yaffe Deutser’s President/COO, Brad Deutser, concluded with what might be called the “capitalist model” of marketing healthcare: The state of the economy isn’t going to change the number of affluent people but will change what the affluent people buy from doctors and dentists. He suggests that marketing effectiveness will still be an organizational survival mechanism, targeting more profitable prospects.

In presenting, Deutser unconsciously set the tone for my morning. One of his premises was, all target prospect information can be found – “Today, everything is knowable.” What I heard the first few times Deutser said this is, “Today, everything is noble.”

Compared to healthcare in some parts of the world, America has arguably progressed only slowly to noble. The most valuable transformation under the new administration in Washington, then, is redefining how our people deserve and receive healthcare.

My big takeaway from Thursday’s marketing seminar is that marketers can take more of a role, a noble role, in fostering improved healthcare access.

In an issue with so very many stakeholders (doctors, community activists, “ordinary” people, to name only a few), I want us to make it more. Don’t ask me how, yet. It can’t be just about the ads – or the brands. It’s can’t be just about knowing.

A survey’s being conducted now – if you’re invited to participate, fill it out please. I’ll report the results. Extra thanks to the quite large number of people who made this SIG event a success. Event photos by Suzanne Jarvis at Shutterfly. Graphic courtesy of Aceofhearts1968, Wikimedia.

Deutser Preview

Talking in advance of this Friday’s AMA Healthcare SIG seminar, Brad Deutser thinks the new administration approach to American medical care is going to require a fundamental shift in how healthcare institutions communicate with – and market to – their customers.

“But we don’t know yet what the new policies will be,” he says. “The immediate challenges are underinsured and uninsured customers…more proactive recognition of this fact will lead the greatest value while serving a given institution’s mission.”

You can hear his take on what’s ahead when you join us Friday at Rice University. Click here for registration.

Photo: David A Farias/Houston Business Journal.

Healthcare Change?

In 1957, Parke, Davis felt that public perception of the high cost of a prescription was so negative, the drug company created and ran ads like this one. The dad on the left is shocked – shocked – that his buddy “…paid $9.00 to get that one prescription filled? Wow!”

Today, if you can get a prescription filled for $9, you feel like you’ve hit the jackpot. Today, we get a new administration in Washington that’s pledged to “do something” about healthcare in America.

So next week, AMA-Houston’s Healthcare Marketing SIG is putting on a big seminar: “Marketing Healthcare under a New Administration.” If you have anything to do with marketing, selling or advertising healthcare services and products, you better be signing up here.

The day and date: Friday, 27 February at 7.30 AM – the SIG’ll have a coffee-and-pastry bar set out for you. The location, Rice University’s Anderson Family Commons (Rice Blvd and Main, Entrance 20), is exactly the right venue for what we hope’s going to be a provocative mixture of marketing and public policy.

The seminar panelists include marketing executive Brad Deutser of Yaffe Deutser; Houston Wellness Association president Jonathan Lack; Lewis Foxhall, MD, President of the Harris County Medical Society; and Tim Schauer, Memorial Hermann Healthcare System. They are going to help us envision the policy changes and marketing challenges that healthcare marketers will have to face in the next four years.

One point we made in the event’s write-up is that American medicine is a business (the Parke, Davis drug ad underscores that). But it’s a business that’s significantly affected by national healthcare policy. Marketing is “downstream” of policy; it’s critical on an operational or tactical level. You don’t think so? Check out Parke, Davis’s ad copy: “…you appreciate what good value you’re getting.”

That’s a hard, hard case to make 50+ years later. Today, nobody feels they’re getting bargains. Sign up now. Maybe you’ll find out how to change your prospects’ thinking.

Parke, Davis & Company is now a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical company Pfizer. Ad #MM0340, Medicine and Madison Avenue On-Line Project, John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History,Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections. Thanks.

Expanding Branding

We could have called it “Manifest Destiny,” I suppose: This upcoming AMA-Houston Healthcare Special Interest Group seminar. We could have stressed the potential value of brand expansion with a title like, “The Promised Land of Brand Expansion.”

Still, here’s your chance to register early for the SIG’s 26 September seminar which is really called, Community Marketing: Expanding your “brand” outside your backyard. (Think of the railroaders and teamsters in this mural as role models – political correctness aside – taking your healthcare brand out into the wider world.)

Look at this from our SIG programmers’ POV.

Healthcare marketers can’t expect patients to come to a central location any more. We’re moving beyond the need for marketers to think outside the Texas Medical Center, to move providers and facilities outside that geographic box. In fact, even “early expanders” are losing patients to sister facilities newly established in farther suburbs, according to gossip heard among professionals in one of the suburban hospitals.

We believe your brand has to be effectively transported as well. The more stakeholders you involve deeply in your brand the better, whether it’s a local, a regional, or even a worldwide effort. Your hard-won brand facets help carry your value propositions beyond your original facility’s doors.

So we’re willing to put our seminar where our thoughts are. A panel of “expansion experts” from three different healthcare practice areas to discuss the marketing value of expanding your brand outside of your own backyard.

Come that Friday morning at The Health Museum (the SIG’s fortunate home base), you can hear from Edgar Vesga, International Attaché at Texas Children's Hospital; Les Mann, US Oncology Vice President of Marketing; and Suzanne Jarvis, Executive Vice President of healing sciences organization Esocen.

Each professional has a different brand; each has a different set of challenges expanding outside their core markets. You’ll have the opportunity to see how each story applies to your own challenges – and how to measure the success of your brand extension efforts, too. Sharon Lore of UTMDACC (which knows a thing or two about branding) will moderate.

Here’s a few good guides to help get you to where you need to go brand-wise…without a lot of mishaps. We aim to help show you the way come 26 September. So sign up now and avoid the rush, because this past year the Healthcare SIG’s managed to pack the trains for every trip. And O Pioneers! There’ll be a light breakfast for you, too.

State Capitol Mural by Charles Banks Wilson. Photo By David Fitzgerald with thanks.

OTC Precog

Precognition – “precog” – is knowledge in advance of an event, especially by extrasensory perception.

I can’t see much further through a brick wall than the next fella. But last night, at the American Marketing Association Houston second annual pre-Offshore Technology Conference networker, I wondered if anyone could see lightning far off on the watery horizon.

Here’s the price of oil holding at US$115 a barrel and attendance at this Mixer was down compared to last year.

This is no fault of its excellent hosts and sponsors: It was a good time at a good venue. However, to justify this post, I ought to be able to find something reasonably profound to say about all this.

What I learned is that every person I spoke with has had a different business experience through the first quarter of this year. Some people have been struggling and this is in a market that feeds off the Energy Sector, which continues its growth. To be clear, no one I met last night had to testify about his or her “obscene profits” before the US Congress – obviously I am hanging with the wrong crowd.

Here’s the deal about OTC .08: One of the world’s largest trade shows, it opens at Reliant Center here on 5 May. It’s the Houston version of the Texas State Fair, Ringling Brothers Circus and a Bob-the-Builder Convention rolled into one huge event, with more than 70,000 “offshore E&P professionals” and more that 2,000 exhibiting companies.

That lightning you see on the horizon? I sense that’s the sparking of opportunity, precognition of fresh business for marketers. The truth is out there. Get your rear ends down to Reliant Center when the OTC doors open.

All the official OTC hotels are sold out, but if you’re serious, you can stay here with us. And thanks to the hosts and sponsors for last night’s get-together. (The AMA’s Sherri Scott caught me with my enthusiasm showing…again. I have got to be careful around that woman!) Have a great weekend.

Elective Emotions

I decided not to write this fast. So it appears today instead of right after the American Marketing Association-Houston’s Healthcare SIG event. I hope you take a moment to read it.

My previous Elective Surgery post invited medical marketers to hear about “Marketing Elective Medical Procedures.” All the information we needed to begin to market elective medical procedures was laid out by four speakers this past Wednesday.

Yep, there were tips and takeaways about marketing plans and media; measurements to determine which campaigns worked and which campaigns did not. Why out-of-home doesn’t work for people who don’t go out much, but the Internet does.

These are mere nuts-and-bolts, the things we ought to have learned in college or through years of working in the industry.

It became clear in our speakers’ presentations that marketing the “electives” – urological and gynecological procedures in one case, bariatric surgical solutions for the morbidly obese in the other – is intimately connected with humanity.

The most difficult group of people to whom to market elective procedures are women with these health problems because of the extremely sensitive and revealing nature of the conditions.

What did I re-learn?

1. Genuine empathy is important and intensely personal. Kimberly P Taylor (left) is Director of Marketing Brand Strategy for Bariatric Partners and is rolling out a new brand image for the organization’s flagship program, Journey Lite for Life. She pointed out, “The mission of a bariatric program is to treat the disease of obesity. It must be done with compassion, sensitivity, and be heartfelt in order to succeed.”

“Heartfelt.” Every speaker, from the physician and the nurse to the directors of marketing, repeatedly emphasized it. Taylor spoke specifically about her specialty: “If your heart isn’t touched by the obese, don’t even consider going into bariatrics.” Empathy applies no matter what the area of practice.

2. Connect with prospective patients in meaningful and intelligent ways. Patient needs can be medical, certainly; but also psychological and social and financial: elective procedures often contain a monetary component that is part of the “worry structure” and it ought to be addressed in the marketing process.

3. Select creative and media that transmit compassion, that help build confidence and trust.

4. Continue the relationship with your patients – not only to retain them, but to grow your practice (whether you’re representing a major hospital or a small group of physicians). Stay connected with them. Enable them to form additional connections that “continue the campaign” long after the actual procedure.

The four speakers: Dr. Richard Collier and Kimberly Taylor of Bariatric Partners, Inc.; and Nurse Practitioner Joleen Bishop and Mary Beth Robinson of Obstetrics and Gynecology Associates, PA. They spoke to more than 30 marketers for a full hour and a half about the topic. Several attendees commented that the program was too long. But for every attendee that left to return to work, there was another who stayed on, talking to the speakers well after 2PM.

Sooner or later, our Association is going to release a new definition of marketing. Right now, it’s this: Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.

Among the famous “4 Ps” of marketing (Product, Position, Price and Promotion), it seems that “People” has gone missing. Check out the current post by Susan Kirkland on pharmaceutical pricing practices if you don’t believe me.

Although the AMA mentions “stakeholders” in its definition, it’s clear we (sometimes) institutionally forget the human in the equation – at least when it comes to healthcare marketing.

Thank goodness our speakers came along to remind us.

Photograph © _ib_ Dreamstime.com

Elective Surgery?

Charles Halliman went searching for a definition of elective medical services – like surgery. He’s a good researcher: he’s written and spoken about Business Intelligence for the medical community for more than a decade.

He discovered the job wasn’t quite as straightforward as the Healthcare Special Interest Group (or I) imagined.

“My research,” he says, “focused on how experts described bariatric surgery (for example), with respect to the word ‘elective.’ I wanted to see how often the word ‘choice’ was used in conjunction with the surgery. I didn’t find the word ‘choice’ very often. I found the words ‘necessary’ and ‘urgent’ more often. And I felt that saying that a patient can make a ‘choice’ to have the surgery may be misleading since strict criteria are used to decide when to do the surgery.”

Elective medical procedures aren’t life-threatening. They’re not always considered cosmetic, either.

Instead, an elective medical procedure can improve a sufferer’s quality of life. Bariatric services are just one field of “elective” practice that leads to better life quality. So are certain gynecological services (like pelvic reconstruction) – an area I’ve never considered and shame on me.

You and I are going to find out more about how these quality-of-life options are marketed on Wednesday June 20, 2007.

A specializing physician (Dr. Ginger Cathey, MD, FACOG) and a pair of highly skilled marketing professionals (Mary Beth Robinson and Kimberly Taylor) will present “Marketing Elective Medical Services” at a special lunch-time event.

Elective medical procedures involve complex issues like patient need, motivation, and awareness, not to mention insurance and financial constraints. Marketing these so-called “electives” is sometimes very tricky. We’re not talking botox injections here.

We’ve been promised some case studies about marketing tactics plus the importance of physician communication to grow the practice.

So if you’re a marketer from any Houston-area healthcare organization, or you have healthcare-related clients for your advertising, PR or design practice, get the details and register on line here.

Your reminder’s right there on the clipboard. The place is the Hilton Houston Plaza, 6633 Travis Street in the Medical Center. (I’ll probably take the train.) The marketing event has been put together by the American Marketing Association chapter’s Healthcare SIG. We’ll start at 11.30AM on the dot.

You can choose to miss out on a presentation that may improve the quality of your skills. Or elect to come to the luncheon and learn something necessary, even urgent.

Tuesday thank-yours to Prism Design, Inc., Medical Journal Houston and XL Films for the extra support.

Endearing Stakeholders

…Or a follow-up article about the “Stakeholder Rule.” I introduced it in the last post (below). You don’t have to peek ‘cause I’ll repeat it: A company’s position ought to take hold – and take place – in the minds of all its stakeholders. It’s an interactive approach to a brand. These days, every company should recognize that its branding is a two-way street; I used this in the earlier post in terms of employees particularly.

I thought several firms were doing a good job of involving their internal stakeholders (managers and employees). At the same time, I asked the members of my online discussion group to help identify other companies. Among the helpful answers was one from David B Wolfe, a long-time advertising pro who pointed me to his new book.

The book’s cover is pictured above, left: Firms of Endearment, published under the Wharton School imprint. When you go to the book’s website, you’ll see that Wolfe is one of the authors; Raj Sisodia and Jag Sheth make up the rest of the writing trio.

I’m not about to critique a book I haven’t read. But I have done two things: I read the Prologue and I read Chapter 1.

You can do these too – they’re good for your mind and they’re free. Form your own preliminary conclusion. (In fact, Wolfe has done an outstanding job of getting the book title onto the Web…you’ll find plenty of references and arguments via Google.)

What I like about what the story so far is that Wolfe and his co-authors have identified firms that have endeared themselves to their stakeholders. The authors have taken care to identify which groups make up the typical stakeholders of a given company.

The book names names: Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s, for example. It presents cases (insofar as I can tell at this point) about why these firms and their brands work better in the modern capitalist world than others. The “why” seems to be better stakeholder interaction. The basic premise is stated early: This is not a book about corporate social responsibility. It is about sound business management.

Some of the material does have a New Age tinge that would otherwise make me shy away. The book hasn’t won 100% ratings from critics, like a review by PR executive Stephen Newton here. Newton calls the book’s title “twee,” Brit-speak for “overly precious, affectedly dainty.”

Considering Wolfe’s background, though, there’s value in his experience alone.

If you think there’s any importance to my Stakeholder Rule, you ought to at least preview Wolfe’s book. His premise isn’t quite the same, but Firms of Endearment appears to have some well-researched material that I’m looking forward to digging into.

I ordered it from Amazon.com (so you can relax, David – this month’s rent is secure).

Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose by Rajendra S Sisodia, David B Wolfe and Jagdish N Sheth. Wharton School Publishing, 2007. “Stakeholder Rule” © Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved.

Morris’s Exemplar

If you could drive your “customer base” up 500%+ in three years, you’d be pretty pleased with yourself, right? Right.

You may have been one of the 50 marketing professionals who watched Annetta Morris pack so much punch into her presentation this past Wednesday. You heard her speak about the integrated Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center (GCR) marketing program, Commit For Life.

Morris was the star (but not the only cast member) of our Healthcare SIG’s spring event. Reviewing our lunchtime presentation taught me four valuable lessons…maybe they’ll help you, too.

Morris was forceful. Funny. And pretty humble about the achievement that’s made GCR the exemplar of blood donor programs in the US. (EXEMPLAR n. One that is worthy of imitation; a model.)

Donations of blood are down nationally. But the Houston-based non-profit organization delivers almost all the blood that’s needed throughout our region…thanks to a program that keeps donors coming back again and again to donate: once a quarter, every quarter, year after year.

We collected post-presentation surveys from just over 50% of you (which is great all by itself). Then 85% of you respondents rated the presentation’s relevance and quality “Excellent.” And 88% thought Morris herself was equally “Excellent.” Want some actual quotes?

“Great presentation. Annetta is fantastic.”

“Great speaker.”

“Wonderful!”

But enough about her. Back to what she presented and you can learn (as I did).

1. The Commit For Life program is a tightly woven tactical set that keeps “touching” the audiences (external and internal) continuously and meaningfully. But it didn’t happen all at once…didn’t spring full-blown into the world. It’s taken GCR three long years to get every cylinder firing and help it reach its goals. So, in your case, are you and your executives giving your marketing programs enough time to work? Or are you changing strategies and tactics every month or every quarter?

2. Everyone in the organization has to be on board. Has to. Nothing would have happened without GCR’s recognition that “business as usual” meant failure to reach its goals – and no blood for our hospitals and emergency rooms. That means changing the paradigm (terrible cliché). Now you should be asking yourself: if what I’m doing isn’t working, why do I keep doing it?

3. Morris made it clear that executives, marketers, staffers and vendors all participated thoroughly in the process of changing the GCR marketing program – and she gave appropriate credit to each of them: the people at the top, the phlebotomists that escort their patrons into the donor’s chairs, the partners with whom GCR cooperates in the rewards program, the vendors (like TCB Specialties and NextLevelThinking) who think and act in support of GCR. Qs for you: Do you get everyone on board with your program? Does everyone who touches a customer or a patient or a patron understand what the marketing program is trying to accomplish?

4. Back to “time.” GCR asks its patrons to take the time to donate. Morris was quite pointed about this: Time is an element much more valuable to donors than blood – though people don’t often think of it that way. In healthcare marketing (as in many other segments), we are not necessarily asking our prospects and customers to change their minds, or their brands – we’re asking them to take the time to consider our message, the time to think about a new software approach, the time to visit a clinic. What do you think? Does your marketing program help make your prospects think their time is worthwhile?

FYI, our SIG learned a few things as well – which will we apply to future events. That’s what an exemplar is all about: something worthy of imitating.

Thanks to Annetta Morris and the entire GCR team; our sponsors, XL Films and Medical Journal Houston; and the AMA Houston Healthcare SIG-folk: you know who you are.

Blood Treasure

See the ad above? It just appeared in Medical Journal Houston. It announces the upcoming AMA Healthcare SIG event, April 4th, 2007.

This case study is so good, it’ll make the blood rush to your head. (Sorry, couldn’t help it.) So make your reservation now – don’t be put off by that bland online title. You are going to have fun!

Our speaker is a treasure: Annetta Morris oversees The Blood Center’s successful Commit For Life blood donor program. She’s one of the most engaging people I’ve ever met.

So you’re going to hear about the Commit For Life program, that uses [1] regional marketing research to develop The Blood Center’s integrated marketing plan, and [2] a series of tactics that has boosted the number of donations and prompted current donors to donate more.

If marketing’s in your blood, you’ll find out how The Blood Center keeps on persuading donors to help people throughout the region. You’ll discover how to “envision” a comprehensive marketing approach to a core audience, whether it’s for external (public) or internal (employee) use.

And you’ll learn more about executing such a marvelous integrated marketing plan.

Morris has 15 years in the blood-banking industry, including experience in donor collections, donor recruitment and information systems. She’s using this experience to help The Blood Center increase the retention rate of donors…and she’s going to share her story with us on April 4th.

Morris’s department is responsible for recruiting and educating donors, volunteers and donor groups: a huge job. Under her team’s direction, The Blood Center partners with businesses, religious organizations, community groups and educational institutions in the Gulf Coast region to permanently increase the blood supply in more than 220 health care institutions in a 25-county area. It’s an award-winning marketing program that’s being copied all over the country.

I alerted you last month that this was coming. Now I’m throwing some red-blooded promotional language at you, so you’ll make your attendance April’s don’t-miss thing.

(And I’m not even close to running out of bad puns.) So come on down to Trevisio’s in the Texas Medical Center on Wednesday, April 4th. I’ll see you there.