Five Reasons to Measure Your 2011 Wellness Program’s Marketing.

This is not about bottom-line results. Not about the contribution of wellness efforts to company health benefits cost-cutting. It’s about quantifying how your internal wellness marketing is doing – the top five reasons to be measuring.

Reason #1: So management can tell stakeholders the good ROI news about wellness.  Even though you’re thinking, “This one’s a no-brainer,” setting up metrics to deliver hard evidence that your firm’s growing investment in wellness programs is paying off is Marketing 101. Whether you’re a marketer or not.*

Writing in Managed Healthcare Executive last March, Kimberly Bonvissutto reported a survey that found 27% of companies do NOT measure the outcomes of their wellness programs. And 65% have no measurable goals for their wellness initiatives.

Without measuring, how are you going to know how you and your program are doing? Proof of performance is seriously important whether you call what you’re doing wellness promotions, or marketing, or just plain “my job.” Fine. Maybe it is a no-brainer – but you still have to work at it.

Reason #2: So you can learn which incentives worked – and which failed miserably. Incentivizing participation does work wellness wonders. It’s been noted that, across a variety of large and small company programs, incentives run the gamut:

…from lower deductibles and copays, which can move a population toward healthier behaviors in the long run, to cash or gift cards, which might drive short-term, immediate behavior, such as participating in a seminar or challenge.

Prove to management that some incentives performed better than others and you’ll have the opportunity (in theory) to keep fine-tuning…and build better participation.

Reason #3: So you can tell people you told ‘em. Several clients have told me that employees occasionally complained, “…the company didn’t tell me” about this or that element or requirement of a wellness program. These clients keep track of the frequency of employee communications about wellness in great detail. So they were able to quote exactly when the complaining employee got communications. And in what formats, too: online communications, print, audio-visual, seminars, and so on.

Do not underrate the self-satisfaction value of told-you-so!

Reason #4: So you can convince people that change is possible. This is the dream goal. The biggest roadblock to employees’ adopting wellness activities is their unwillingness to change their behavior. Of course, this is connected to a lack of commitment by employers – employees will know this. There’s more to measurement here than numbers. Prism Design principal Susan Reeves says:

It's a long process to effect change of people’s behaviors. We need examples, stories to help us marketers, and employees understand realistic results.

Without quantified results, though, you can’t demonstrate change…and changed behaviors is how you prove [3] to everyone that this marvelous wellness thing can in fact be done. Here the stakeholders are both employees and company managers or owners.

Reason #5: So you’ll have something to show for your own efforts. Certainly, as one of the people responsible for promoting your firm’s wellness programs to employees, it’s your goal.

*It’s possible marketing is not actually in your job description – you could be a Human Resources professional or a Corporate Benefits administrator. But demand for program measurement is growing. Maybe my five reasons will give you grounds to add marketing metrics to your wellness roadmap...and pat yourself on the back.

Graphic: Wiki Commons, with thanks.

Vinegar War

It’s a simple one-page ad. I’d say that brand cant hasn’t been so well executed since the cheese toppings on certain frozen pizzas were accused, accurately but meaninglessly, of including casein (Glue?!?).

And I am particularly grateful to reporter Teresa Lindeman. After I saw the ad in Woman’s Day, I found her extensive article about the new Heinz campaign, “Vinegar wars spark high-octane Heinz ads,” in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette dated June 18. If the Heinz ad and Lindeman’s article aren’t required reading for some uni’s mass communications class, they ought to be.

When a single category’s worth almost $250 million and your price point’s down around your ankles, it’s time to “do something.” Anything. So here’s this Heinz condiment ad – a great example of advertising propaganda – asking homemakers that one provoking headline question:

“What field does your vinegar come from?”

When you decide to take your brand to war, propaganda is a key element. Propaganda goes beyond advertising. It’s “…communication aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause.” The cause, in this case, is the natural organic goodness of Heinz vinegar. The victor wins back lost market share and gets better grocery-store margins.

Lindeman leads with exactly the right touch: The image disturbs. On the one side, stand black towers of an oil facility, and on the other, green stalks of corn plants are seen against a blue sky.

No matter that the oilfield’s 1940s-era rigs comes from some deep photo archive, maybe an Andreas Feininger shot from Life. No matter that it’s difficult to find petroleum-distilled table vinegar in any US supermarket.

No matter, in fact, that it’s neither illegal nor unhealthy to use vinegar distilled from hydrocarbons. The creative does a heckuva job for Heinz, which clearly wants careful homemakers to react strongly to the imagery of the ad. (The full-page advert is supported by a handful a handful of other fine executions under the general campaign theme, HEINZ. GROWN, NOT MADE.TM)

The need for campaign is covered in delicious detail in the Lindeman article; the most telling point invokes the commoditization of vinegar.

Private-label vinegars are cleaning up. Collectively, they’re outselling the Heinz products more than three-to-one. Heinz lost 10%-plus share in unit sales last year. That’s a lot of millions. That’s worth a small war and Heinz has chosen its ground. Every label I read at Kroger’s and HEB says the store brands are made from natural products, too. But Heinz is planting doubt and doing a damn fine job of it.

The first volley of the war, this ad campaign is brand-building on a narrowly focused but national scale. Not to mention propagandizing at the same time.

I’m counting on Lindeman to let me know how the battles go.

The blog post headline is taken from the article by Teresa F Lindeman first published on June 18, 2009. All rights reserved and a fine piece of business journalism, too. A concise post on the “Tiny Choices” blog by Karina Tipton and Jenn Sturiale has outlined the issue of natural- versus synthetic-based vinegars.

Rowena’s Read

How to make a little go a long way when it comes to marketing?

Remember, back in February, I blogged about The BIG Read – the national program that tries to interest everybody in reading?

One marketing effort I particularly mentioned was the program being developed by White Light Advertising. The agency’s principal, Rowena White, promised to fill me in on what her team created for The BIG Read of Bridgeport and Shelton, CT – the featured book is The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan.

The agency created and produced a 13” x 19” double fold, four-color calendar brochure. White says: 11” x 17” was too small –we upgraded at no additional cost. The front cover (6.5” x 9.5”) opens into a book and author profile (13” x 9.5”). Then the second fold opens into a 13” x 19” Calendar of Events. The back cover (6.5” x 9.5”) lists locations to pick up free books, and sponsor support.

White Light created a 4-column x 7" newspaper ad to run in the hometown weekly papers for Bridgeport and Shelton for two weeks; then wrote the radio announcements and had them produced for the local full-service AM and NPR radio stations. White notes: The NPR radio cash schedule is 100% matched by a no-charge schedule, in exchange for which we included about 300 of their programming brochures in the BIG Read Goodie Bags.

All the media was negotiated “hard-core” at not-for-profit rates plus added value items. The brochure fee was strictly the hard cost paid to the print manufacturer. The newspaper was at a discounted combo rate of 20% off, plus additional 10% for being not-for-profit. (White is sure they’ll also include an editorial story based on press releases that went out and the Kick-Off Press Conference with Bridgeport’s Mayor Bill Finch.)

White’s final comment: I can say with confidence that we maximized the little total marketing dollars and are receiving far more than double the value.

So the BIG Read gets a big boost in Bridgeport (and Shelton). And White Light gets a tip of the blogger’s bonnet for demonstrating how to make passion work for a heartfelt campaign.

Big Read

I meant to write about the Big Read on Sunday but I was involved with a “big read” of my own, trying to finish The Age of Turbulence. It’s not exactly portable. Plus, this post is meant to be a preview; something fun’s coming later in the year.

The idea that reading needs to be marketed is a little strange to me – but then I remember Woody Allen saying, “I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It was about Russia.”

The Big Read is “an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts to restore reading to American culture.” I’m in favor of it and there’s a strong push nationally for the program.

Our First Lady, Laura Bush, has been touring the country about The Big Read – good PR for the initiative from the nicest First Lady (so I hear) that’s been in The White House since…well…her mother-in-law. Maybe nicer. The most significant promoter of reading in this country is Oprah Winfrey and more power to her (although she seems to be doing fine even without my best wishes).

What are you doing to help? Suppose you’re an ad agency, or PR firm, or graphic design outfit – and you think reading is vitally important not only to America but to democracy as a concept.

And you want to do some pro bono work that’ll get you more noticed? (Most agencies have to turn this kind of thing away ‘cause it eats their lunch, right? This is not a topic I want to get into right now.) You go to The Big Read website, maybe read some of the very good blog by David Kipen. And you’re inspired to find out where in your neighborhood, city or county you can lend a hand…as a professional marketer and communicator. Go ahead. I think it’ll be a great idea. Plenty of books to choose from, too.

Some advertising agencies get publicly involved in promoting The Big Read but they’re hard to find. White Light Advertising in Bridgeport, CT, worked on the media plan for The Big Read initiative in the southwestern part of the state – the agency used radio, cable TV ads, bus wraps and grassroots programs. The news is on the agency’s website, which is where the ad above came from.

I would have liked to see some results of this particular campaign – but maybe it shows up with kids checking out more library books…or adults getting turned on to something they would no otherwise have even considered. (“I only read the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue for the articles!”)

Maybe this is a good time to get the Houston chapter of the American Marketing Association involved…an organization filled with enthusiasts! Any road, keep an ear cocked for the next Big Read initiative that comes your way. There are plenty of worthy causes but this one won’t force you to pedal 180 miles to Austin.

Krafty Publishing

We all know technology rushes things to death…but some things don’t die so easily.

Last week, one senior ad agency told Signalwriter that printed magazines were dead; that they couldn’t deliver the audiences any more. Felix Dennis, the Brit entrepreneur who publishes titles like Maxxim, was quoted in The Economist (September 29, 2007), saying, “It’s a long, slow sunset for ink-on-paper magazines…”

Technology is banging the business model for consumer magazines pretty hard. Print magazines are increasingly more expensive to publish (there’s only so much tech can do for printing presses and the cost of newsprint). And a lot of publications that have expanded to the Worldwide Web aren’t coining money from their sites, either. Mostly.

Still, print magazines have been in the hot seat before. Mass-circ mags seemed to be dying off – then along comes something like People and changes the model. More exhaustive databanking has meant that dozens of specially targeted niches deliver profitable audiences that could be identified and persuaded to subscribe, or buy the products advertised in these specialty magazines. F’rinstance…

We get a free magazine from Kraft Foods called Food & Family. It’s a substantial, attractive publication that involves its readers in a range of subjects revolving around “delicious ideas.” Everything in it is a Kraft brand.

By publishing and sending the magazine to homemakers without charge, Kraft generates both tactical and strategic benefits for consumers and for itself.

First, the magazine stays near to hand around the house. CPG companies learned a long time ago that recipes are ever-popular and attention-getting (that’s why you see so many recipes in magazine food ads). All the recipes involve Kraft products as ingredients: a key sales driver.

Second, Kraft gets to use its huge ad bank in the magazine: it’s filled with advertising for various Kraft brands. How many print ads do you think Kraft and its business units generate in a year? I don’t know – but it’s a lot! So in addition to running the ads in other magazines, Kraft gets extra mileage from them when they appear in Food & Family.

Third, Kraft has tied the magazine to an inviting, involving website that doesn’t simply duplicate the content of the magazine. It has promotions (of course); it also has a terrific “Welcome to Our Community” section where recipes and other household tips are shared – there’s quite a bit of sharing and it’s valuable for stakeholder involvement. All in all, the package is a good one in terms of branding, content and product sales programs.

This is hardly the only example of a magazine published for and distributed to product consumers. Car companies like Ford and Chrysler, published “owner’s magazines” for years. There’s a big difference, however, between the cost of a box of Jell-O and the price sticker on a car window…and the combination of Kraft brand ingredients makes for effective cross-selling.

Magazines’ fires are only smoored, not completely extinguished. Publisher Dennis completed his Economist quote thusly: “…but sunsets can produce vast sums of money.”

They can also generate an startling amount of reader responsiveness, whether they’re highlighting a busty starlet or a breakfast omelet that the entire family will enjoy.

Yipes! Stripes!

The things I discover when I take a road trip: a total rebranding job southwest of Houston that I’d not been aware of before. (And no, it’s not an excuse to put a pretty girl up on the blog…merely an example...really.)

As I headed southwest for Mexico, to hunt the wily whitewing, I ran across my first Stripes© store in Goliad, TX. It’s a C-store (convenience store) hiding under a Valero gas canopy, my first sight of a new trade dress campaign that’s a year old. Apparently, I don’t get out enough.

I asked the counter clerk who operated Stripes. She could only tell me that the chain sold Valero gasoline and she thought its headquarters was in Corpus Christi. It is.

Susser Holdings Corporation tapped Houston-based BrandExtract to: help define and launch the new brand. BrandExtract crafted a complete identity package, including new logos and exterior store signage. The new look and feel will be taken to market via outdoor boards, weekly radio spots, in-store point-of-purchase signage, Stripes cups and other packaging. (It’s very thoughtful of Susser to mention the agency on its website.)

Then I arrived (with six of our eventual 10-man hunting party) in McAllen and found Stripes everywhere – the eastern Valley area alone has 60+ stores in the phone book. According to Susser, it’s one of the Top 20 operators of C-stores nationwide…and Stripes is the “new face” of the old Circle-K brand.

It’s a very good job – despite the apparent dissonance between the Stripes and Valero trade dressings. It doesn’t seem to hurt the company’s business at retail. And there may be some not-really-hidden reason behind the brand change.

According to a company press release, Susser began re-branding its convenience stores from the Circle-K licensed brand to Stripes in the second quarter of 2006. At approximately the same time, Susser began re-branding its fueling islands to Valero from CITGO after signing a new 12-year supply agreement in July 2006 – in the third quarter.

All the retail stores that were supplied by CITGO were to be supplied by Valero. It looks like Susser was one of the breakaways from CITGO in the wake of the remarks by Venezuelan President Chavez that so upset CITGO marketing partners here in the US.

The same February 2007 press release quoted Ron Coben, Susser’s CMO: “The main goal of this campaign was to transfer the goodwill that we have earned over the last decade as Circle K into even stronger customer loyalty as Stripes.”

One valid reason to re-brand a company or operating unit (especially one long-established) is to signal a change in direction – in this case, leaving behind old or no-longer-appropriate marks (Circle-K and CITGO) for new offerings (Valero).

Whether you agree that Valero’s teal-and-yellow looks a bit odd against the Stripes red-and-white, Coben’s team and BrandExtract have come up with a very strong identity – and you can see executions in addition to “Bikini Girl” here.

On the one hand, Wall Street doesn’t seem to have given Susser much credit for this particular effort. But given that it’s a year after the new brand’s rollout and every Stripes store I saw was crowded, I’d have to say the campaign is very successful: Customers have picked up on the brand transference. What’s the disconnect among Susser stakeholders? I’ll write Ron Coben to find out.

And hats off to Jonathan Fisher and the BrandExtract team for a neat ongoing campaign.

PS: Circle-K is still a going concern. Susser was a major licensee.

CoVi Technologies

So many videos have been posted on YouTube, you might not have seen the one captured by a garage surveillance camera. Click on the link - watch the clip. It’s funny, a slice of life that could happen anywhere, anytime – and get captured on a security-cam.

For a security team, though, it’s far from perfect. You can’t really make out the faces of the couple in the clutch or the license plates on the cars. The images are blurry and indistinct (for which I’m sure our young lovers are eternally grateful).

Enter CoVi Technologies and the world’s only high-definition video surveillance system – aside from those of the US National Security Agency. Most conventional systems installed today record and display video with less than perfect clarity. CoVi is the first company to offer the highest quality standard at every point of contact, from initial image capture to access, storage and management – anytime, anywhere. Picture-perfect – you can see the differences on the company’s website.

The challenge, for CoVi, has been to create a coherent selling message and brand architecture that are as clear and focused as its cutting-edge technology. Which is where the Austin-based designer Gayle Smith and I came in.

Honestly, the joy of working with a client on a new brochure is as much in the crafting of the message (verbally and graphically) as in the final result – the printed piece whose cover appears above. We collaborated directly with CoVi’s Director of Channel Marketing, Stacy Saxon, and company CEO Barry Walker.

Together, we combined the three distinctive features of CoVi’s exceptional tech into [1] a single, benefit-oriented message and [2] a new graphic look that makes the company look like the genuine category leader it is and will help drive its marketing.

That’s the purpose of the cover’s bold “Q3” that matches the CoVi red: the thinking that’s gone into the company’s technologies offers a single answer to the three questions that bedevil the firm’s target audiences: corporate and governmental managers, IT personnel and security teams. (Why? Because it’s not enough to capture high-definition video – it’s got to be available through a company’s IT network and usable by security personnel on a real-time basis, that’s why.) And these are just three of the CoVi stakeholder groups.

I’ll brazenly quote from Saxon’s response to us: The concepts were beyond my expectations. Even though I knew to expect great things I was pleasantly surprised at how ‘dead on’ the concepts turned out. I was concerned that CoVi’s message was fluid but you guys ‘got it’ and articulated it very accurately both word-wise and graphics-wise. I’m just extremely excited about this project and thrilled to be working with you both – you make a great team.

It’s refreshing to see us (CoVi) develop a professional piece like this – sharp, crisp copy and that edgy/progressive tone/style that we want. I also really appreciate you guys working with us on the quick-turn needs; thank you for accommodating that requirement.

Thanks again so much to you both - you're very easy and enjoyable to work with and your work is pretty terrific too!

And thanks to CoVi, which demonstrates one more time that great clients get great work. Maybe next time, we’ll be able to see precisely who’s kissing whom in Zone 3, Level 2 of that garage.

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

Drugging Heavy

Want to cure your marthambles? Suffering from the strong fives and want to relieve your pain? You don’t have to call your doctor this instant. Start your exploration for the perfect drug in the pages of, oh, say, Cooking Light magazine.

Not news: advertising Rx drugs to consumers. Several years ago, a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) survey of 500 doctors found that Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertising was increasing patient awareness of diseases and improving interaction between patients and doctors. Despite this, and because they were concerned about the rising cost of health care, some Members of Congress began considering legislation to restrict or discourage DTC ads.

This past April, the Magazine Publishers Association’s vigorous defense of magazine publishers’ right to carry pharmaceutical advertising suffered a little setback. The US Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee booted an MPA-sponsored amendment to a drug safety bill that would have lessened restrictions on DTC pharma advertising. The villain-in-chief is pictured here – bet you can’t guess who it is.

The vote against the pro-DTC amendment was 11-10. All Democrats opposed the amendment. All Republicans supported it. The association will carry on the fight: “MPA Continues Vigorous Defense of Drug Advertising as Committee Rejects DTC Amendment by 11-10 Vote.”

DTCA is illegal in many countries, like Australia. In the US, it’s alive and well and part of a public debate about the right-to-inform (which is also about the right to advertise.)

I strongly support the right to advertise. I do wonder, though, if prescription drug advertising is exploitive.

Twenty-plus years ago, a survey of 64 popular men’s magazines and 47 women’s magazines revealed that almost seven times as many drug advertisements were found in the women’s mags than in the men’s rags. These ads were for over-the-counter drugs, not prescription…this was before the FDA let the drug companies undertake DTC advertising. [Journal of Drug Education, 1986-00-00; authors: Vener, AM; Krupka, LR]. Today, DTC ads are common in all media.

So the recent issue of Cooking Light arrived: 258 pages including a foldout cover. I like the magazine, mostly. There are some good recipes, nice photos…nothing exactly fancy in the way of print ads, but interesting for trend watchers.

Among Cooking Light’s 258 pages, 124 (48%) are full-page ads or equivalent units. Of these, 20 ads are for prescription drugs. So about half the issue is advertising and 19% of that promotes drugs DTC.

[These drug ads must have accompanying pages of lice-type-size “Patient Information,” which I’ve included in the count.]

Here’s Sally Fields pitching Boniva®, just like on the television commercials. The headline is a quote but Fields’s name does not appear in the ad. Hmmm? Cure the shooting pain in your feet with Lyrica®. “Protect against the formation of clots” with Plavix®. You can do something about your bladder control problem if only you were taking Detrol® LA.

PremproTM is right for menopausal symptoms. An ad for RozeremTM says “your dreams miss you” – an unusual series if you’ve been following it. Nexium® can heal the damage caused by acid reflux disease. (Is there anybody in America who doesn’t recognize the purple capsules now?)

The symptoms of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may be relieved by Spiriva®. Or you could stop smoking, I suppose. A rather ghastly purple cousin of Taz, the Warner Bros. cartoon character, represents migraine headaches in the ad for Imitrex®. I wonder if the people at Warner see a resemblance.

One of a very long-running series is an ad for Vytorin®, which is [a] for treating cholesterol and [b] rather clever (if occasionally obscure). The proposition is clearly stated on its website. Merck and Schering-Plough have been remarkably consistent in the two years I’ve been tracking this campaign. There’ll be a post about this campaign soon.

Finally, an ad from GlaxoSmithKline is introducing a once-a-day form of its best-selling heart medicine, called Coreg CRTM. Fair is fair: I use Coreg and I read this ad front and back. I may go for the 30-day-free trial since I have to take a dose twice a day.

The Vytorin ad in one of several that make sense for Cooking Light’s direct audience – foodies. Several more are close while the one about foot pain is…a bit disconcerting.

All these Rx ads (I included the OTC products in the overall page count, not the 20 DTCs) appear in a magazine whose readership is 85.4% women. Will I find the same heavy concentration of DTC ads in Field & Stream or “the Magazine for Today’s Go-To Guy,” Popular Mechanics?

I’ll just have to go buy the pubs and find out…since I’m reading Cooking Light these days.

PS: Most trademark law says that a registered trademark should be used as an adjective rather than a noun. For example, Brand-Aid® Brand Adhesive Bandages. The drug companies and their ad agencies seem to have reached a gentlemen’s agreement not to do this. Otherwise, Sally Fields would be saying “Boniva Brand Ibandronate Sodium Tablets” in every commercial.

Note: all trademarks are the property of their respective owners. All rights are reserved. Get your own brand name. “Marthambles" and “Strong Fives" courtesy of Patrick O'Brian of blessed memory.

Pitney Bowes

In the year of the US postage stamp’s 160th anniversary, seems like a good time to talk about changing the course of a company.

America’s first official stamps were offered for sale on 1 July 1847, in 5¢ and 10¢ values. Seventy-plus years later, on 16 November 1920, the Pitney Bowes Model M postage meter became the first commercially used metering device in the world.

Walter Bowes merged his Universal Stamping Machine Company with Arthur Pitney’s American Postage Company the year before. The result was the Pitney Bowes Postage Meter Company. In 1920, there was the telephone, the telegraph (Internet One) and the US mail.

There was no such thing as the mailstream – a phrase Pitney Bowes is now counting on to position itself for the 21st Century.

The visual at the top of this post is from a new Pitney Bowes marketing campaign. In one ad, this communication satellite’s solar panel has a Pitney Bowes postage meter impression. It’s supposed to represent the company’s advanced address-level data technology, which lets businesses analyze data better, to target their market more effectively. (“Innovation” is a hot word for Wall Street analysts.)

In another corporate ad, a newborn baby’s wrist-bracelet bears the Pitney Bowes postage meter impression. Copy tells readers that Pitney Bowes solutions help health-care providers accurately deliver government-mandated patient communications. (More regulation means more paperwork and the healthcare market is booming…another sector stock analysts watch closely.)

Both versions direct readers to the company’s Mailstream landing page. The campaign was developed by OgilvyOne Worldwide in New York. It is supposed to include print, out-of-home and online media; the new ads, intro’d last November, aren’t up on the agency’s site yet.

A company press release makes it all sound like Obi-Wan Kenobi: “The mailstream is all around you—a global force synonymous with commerce.”

Still, Young Skywalker, the neologistic mailstream is a pretty good way of getting the market to re-define the company’s business. Wall Street seems to value the idea, since the company’s stock has gone up about 20% in the past year.

One thing I noticed is that the mailstream concept is not quickly apparent on Pitney Bowes’s main site. At 87 years old, Pitney Bowes is “Engineering the flow of communication” as its trademarked website slogan says – but it also has a huge investment in all the technologies and the sales efforts that have gone before the mailstream concept was created. Once you finally get down to it, mailstream refers to the “software, hardware and services that help companies manage their flow of mail, documents and packages to improve communication.”

Pitney Bowes’s vice president and CMO, Arun Sinha, was quoted in a company news release this way: “Pitney Bowes introduced a new business category, mailstream, at the beginning of the year (2006), and it is now a $250 billion category. Our goal was to build awareness for the mailstream as a category.”

The company's “Innovations in the Mailstream” concept is one attempt to shift its $5.5-billion self out of the old business-machines-and-office-equipment profile into something grander…while taking its customers and its employees along with it.

I think the company’s going to have to push real hard and real long to make this mailstream thing happen: the burden of changing your company’s culture. It takes more than marketing communications to move the load.

I hope it works, though. With the price of a first-class US stamp going up to 41¢ next week, I say we need all the mailstreaming we can get.

Birthday Imagination

I was born the year this ad appeared in Look magazine: one part of a nationwide marketing program that “The Airlines of the United States” created and used to promote a return to traveling by air. (More of these here.)

It not only commemorates my birthday – 13 April, 1945 – it’s a reminder. My daddy was in the US Army Air Corps, in B-29s flying out of Guam. He was still there, still at war, when I was born.

See that plane above the kids’ heads on the right? That’s a Douglas DC-3, the civilian airliner version of the aircraft I served in during my stint in Southeast Asia, 1970-1971. We called ‘em C-47s (even though the official US Navy designation was R4D)…old, WWII-era birds by the time we flew them out of USNS Sangley Point in the Philippines. I’m a member in good standing of the McDonnell-Douglas “Mach Nix” club: when so many other people were in jets, I was flying around in prop jobs.

I look at ads sometimes and imagine how many connections there are. One of advertising’s attractions. Yesterday, I celebrated. Got lots of calls and cards. Barbara and I went out for fresh oysters and Manhattans.

“What’s it like up there?” Age is no barrier to the imagination. Thanks to everyone for their best wishes and their thoughts.

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.