Trading Cards

Hey, kids! Be the first ones on your block to get the hottest thing in trading cards. That precious “Dale Earnhardt Showcar ‘05” card your daddy picked up in Alabama – that’s for wusses. Your grandpa’s “Mickey Mantle” card? Fuggedaboutit!

Now you can get your hands on genuine Power Plant Trading Cards from Industcards. They’re the most exciting thing to hit card collectors since…oh, four-color printing. Made right here in the good old USA by Ultra Graphics in Columbus, NE, you can get your favorite power plants and hydroelectric dams, with all the outstanding highlights for each one on the back of every card. Leaf and Topps don’t even come close to trading cards like these! Not since the heady days of “Rails & Sails” has there been a collectible like Industcards.

Your friends will throw up all over their Florsheims when you show off your PP207, the “Fayette Power Project” near Lagrange, TX – a real stunner that will only gain in value as your collection grows. It’s a terrific shot (see above) of this 1,605-megawatt, coal-fired steam-electric plant that burns sub-bituminous coal from the Powder River Basin! Riveting details on the reverse side not only include the owners’ names, but the architects and engineers, and the boiler supplier too.

Add to your collection with cards showing units from all over the US (like “Grand Coulee” and “Indian River”) as well as some of the great power-producing facilities of the world. Don’t miss the stunning “Sayano-Shusenskaya Hydro” dam in Russia. Collect entire series – if you can find ‘em – like the unique Orion Power Holdings set; or the US Nuclear Fleet cards that include both “Brown’s Ferry” in Alabama and California’s famous “Diablo Canyon.” Wow!

Get your first set of cards absolutely FREE! Just send a stamped, self-addressed envelope (41¢ stamp) to Industcards, 5605 Bent Brand Road, Bethesda, MD 20816 today.

But hurry! Supplies are limited and you don’t want to wait ‘til these beauties show up on eBay for twice or three times the price. Start your collection today.

NOTE: Despite Internet rumors, my sponsored ten-card series, featuring coal-fired generating stations with boilers and other equipment supplied by Japan's Babcock-Hitachi KK, is not for sale. Yep – this is the set that has the notorious “Tarong” error in it. Eat your heart out, Joel.

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

Big Wheel

Remember that Stakeholder Rule I created a few posts back? Like here and here?

The rule says, A company’s position ought to take hold – and take place – in the minds of all its stakeholders.

What happens when the position, or the brand, keeps on interacting – even when there is no “overt” activity on the part of the brand owner? Sometimes, these brands maintain their solid connections to our culture while no one is looking. Except in the minds of millions of stakeholders.

In the case of one well-known product, time flies – literally: the Frisbee is 50 years old as of this past Sunday. I couldn’t have written a better story than Michael Liedtke did for AP, here. As you can read, the company (now owned by the Chinese Cornerstone Overseas Investment Limited) vigorously protects its trademark. Although the Frisbee® flying toy isn’t the “choice of champions” anymore, the brand still exercises a powerful hold over peoples’ minds and hands.

But Gary Richardson sent me the above photo from IGN.com, and I wondered what happened to the original Big Wheel® ride-on trike.

Answer: it’s still rolling at age 38. Louis Marx Toys developed the Big Wheel and presented it to the public at the 1969 New York Toy Fair. Because of its outstanding popularity, many of today’s parents have special childhood memories that include endless hours of joy on their Big Wheels.

Big Wheel sometimes bears a registered trademark but (like escalator) became a generic name for any toy whose design resembled Marx’s. Marx sold the Big Wheel brand name and molds to Empire Plastics, Marx's biggest competitor, in the early 1970s. The ride-on got high marks for safety because it was built much lower to the ground than the old steel-type trikes.

Marketing surveys from the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s put Big Wheel near the top of the list as one of the most recognizable household brand names of all time.

Today Alpha International, Inc., makes and sells Big Wheel ride-ons, re-launching it at the 2003 New York Toy Fair. Its use of the registered trademark is inconsistent. Target is selling the “Original Big Wheel” (no ® here) for just $29.99 – to very mixed reviews.

We Barons and Slaviks, from an older tradition, raised our kids on the classic steel Radio Flyer® #34 Classic Red Tricycle. We still have one in the garage we bought and assembled for our grand-daughter. But even Radio Flyer has a Big-Wheel-type ride-on called “Big Flyer.”

More important, though, Big Wheel continues to interact with its stakeholders. There’re Big Wheel Rallies, giant versions of the toy at one of the DisneyWorld venues – even the motorcycle version you see up top. Still interacting with your Big Wheel ride-on? Just google “Big Wheel Events and Promotions” and go crazy, you old stakeholder.

“Stakeholder Rule” © Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved.

Moon Dog

If there really is “a tide in the affairs of men,” as Shakespeare writes, “which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune,” then it changes with maturity. For white guys of a certain age (like me), the tide seems to lead on to tropical shirts.

For cutting-edge Hawaiian shirt fashion, it’s been hard to replace Reg Mombasa and the Loud Shirt Gang who used to work under the Mambo label out of Australia. It’s been look-around, peek-into-corners action; keep searching the Worldwide Web. I’m not talking about your chain-store stuff here – that’s for the hoi polloi.

I mean your really OUTRAGEOUS aloha shirts, the kind that, when you’re 6-feet-6-inches tall and weigh 270 pounds, make a definite statement (such as “I’m color-blind and I don’t care” or “Aren’t you amazed that my wife let me out of the house wearing this!”)

Thanks to the power of word-of-mouth advertising, though, I’ve scored this super-fine “Rose Tattoo” shirt from Judy and Richard Kuenstler at Moon Dog in Austin, TX. This is a handmade cotton beauty, a spectacular piece of work that shouts, “Hey, look, I dressed myself.”

I ran into this guy at one of Roni McMurtrey’s gallery openings a couple Saturdays back; we could see each other across the room because no one (man, woman or child) had shirts that remotely mustered the sheer candlepower of the ones we were wearing. Only his was…different. It had like these Mexican Day of the Dead figures on it. Really rocking.

Naturally I complimented him on his shirt. He responded in kind. Then I asked where he had purchased it. He said, “You can buy one just like this from Moon Dog in Austin.” That was simple enough to remember. But I said right back at him, “This shirt is your statement. I’d never buy your shirt. Thank you – I’ll check out the company online and see what else it’s got.”

And I did. See above.

Sure, I could have gone stronger but I like to think I’m more subtle than that (sounds of many people in background unsuccessfully smothering their ridicule). Moon Dog has plenty of options which the Kuenstlers make to order. Excellent!

Here’s a firm that’s been around since ’84 and I’m just hearing about it. But then I purposely don’t spend time in Austin either. Fortunately, word-of-mouth works once again and I’m proud to pass on the favor: Moon Dog Shirt Company.

I don’t know the name of that guy was at the McMurtrey Gallery, but he’s got a great shirt! Happy Father’s Day.

New: Cynapsus

Once upon a time – oh, about two years ago – Mary Jo Martin went out on her own. She created a company called Knowledge-Based Marketing. You’ve seen some of the joint efforts she and I have created, like the disaster communications research study here.

Presto-Change-O! Knowledge-Based Marketing is now Cynapsus. (Magical, ain’t it?)

Martin’s business model changed. Knowledge-hyphen-Based Marketing seemed right two years ago. Today, Martin doesn’t really do marketing. She has increasingly and successfully concentrated on multi-faceted market research.

At the same time (after two years in business) her organization became successful enough to be confused with another company called “KnowledgeBase (no hyphen, no “D”) Marketing,” a large business unit of the even larger Wunderman international marketing communications agency.

Knowledge-Based Marketing…isn’t.

This Wunderman business unit – it never registered with the Texas Secretary of State. I guess those big agency types figured they didn’t need to. Maybe it’s not too surprising: Wunderman is part of WPP, a hugeous multinational agency group with so many operating units, even the ad mags can’t keep track of them.

Martin’s smaller company passed unnoticed (except by her clients) for a couple dozen months. But then, people started to call Martin instead of Wunderman. They asked Martin about mailing lists, which the Wunderman group sells. Very annoying, specially since Martin doesn’t do lists either.

It’s time for a change and Martin has made it.

The old name was quite serious but boring. Way too much is happening in our marketplaces today to be boring. So first, Mark Rothenburg pitched in to invent a whole new name for her firm. Rothenberg believes (with quite a bit of justification) that arbitrary or fanciful names offer the best choice of protection and securing a trademark.

Now Martin says:

Cynapsus describes the left-brain thinking that we apply to our many market research projects…the analytical thinking that helps our clients move from the research findings to activity. (Hear those synapses firing yet?) Cynapsus is about asking the right questions of the right people at the right time. We even included the question mark in our new logo – because we want people to ask us what we’re all about. Cynapsus moves clients from data to knowledge to action – exactly the way your own synapses move you into action when your brain has assembled all the data you need. Cynapsus is also about connections. That’s what the word “synapse” actually means. We’re the connection between you and your customers, the connection between you and your prospects.

I got the opportunity to counsel Martin on her new logo and color scheme – we aimed for something that combined “distinctive” with “professional.”

When Martin had her new logomark created, this question mark got right to the point of her business, with a dash of sass. The burgundy color scheme makes for a grounded, corporate look.

I’m just as pleased with the new Cynapsus website. Feel free to drop in…and compliment her on the photograph we used: an attractive payoff to the Kurt Vonnegut line, “New knowledge is one of the most valuable commodities on earth.”

A lot of companies frame their first dollar and hang it on their walls. Mary Jo gets a whole new moniker – a nifty and distinctive brand.

Razoo Up

Razoo is in beta.

I only found out about this from a copyrighted article by Brad Hem in the Houston Chronicle. The company’s called iRazoo.com and “Four Houston entrepreneurs” are credited with launching the search engine they expect to challenge Google and Yahoo.

Click on the site and you’ll get a coming-soon sort of intro, but a nice story with beat-driven Indian music…clapping hands rhythm out the words: “Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive.”

Like the article says, there are hundreds of smaller search engines in operation beside the Big Guys. What’s special about Razoo? It requires users to log in, which may slow it down. It is points-driven: I have never tried that. Trust in a new search engine is another big factor. Nevertheless, I always enjoy seeing hometown boys make good, even if they aren’t originally from around here.

Such an odd word, razoo; potentially, a great brand name. So I Googled it (well, why not? Razoo.com isn’t working yet). Turns out razoo is Down-Under slang for an imaginary coin of trivial value, the Oz version of a farthing; according to some definers, it’s used only in negative contexts: “Not worth a brass razoo” – though Encarta identifies it as Aussie for a gambling chip.

The latter definition fits this case pretty well. iRazoo is a gamble. Best of luck to ‘em, though.

If it works, you heard it here second.

Logo Conceited

Certainly you recognize the logo above. Its owner leaps right to the front of your mind, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? Perhaps not.

You know I usually steer clear of overt criticism. On the other hand, of the dozens if not hundreds of logo marks for which I have been the Creative Director in the past 30 years, I don’t recall even recommending a candidate and a brand that’s been this…pretentious.

Maybe “arcane” is a kinder word. It’s a cuneiform inscription: the earliest-known written appearance of the word “freedom” (amagi), or “liberty.” That’s the gloss which many scholars have put upon it. It is taken from a clay tablet written about 2300 BC in the Sumerian city-state of Lagash.

The glyph and the word Amagi also serves as the imprint for all Liberty Fund books: an imprint that brings the past 100 years' classics of liberal economic and political theory to life for today’s college students, according to the website. You can find works that aren’t considered classics. However, the Liberty Fund considers them important to understanding a society of free and responsible individuals.

I won’t cast tablets at the organization’s intention. Based in Indianapolis, The Liberty Fund is a privately held educational foundation founded in 1960 by Pierre F Goodrich. When he died, he left much of his fortune to encourage the study of the ideal of a free society. The foundation develops, supervises and finances activities “to foster thought and encourage discourse on enduring issues pertaining to liberty.”

Well and good. But somebody, perhaps Goodrich himself, came up with this cuneiform logo and name. It is more than a little obscure, an academic curiosity that doesn’t transmit anything to the viewer except, “What the heck is that?” So the website helpfully explains it. That’s a body blow for any logo mark.

Yes, I do understand: every logo has to start somewhere. And I haven’t walked a mile in the Amagi logo mark creator’s shoes, especially since the creator is 4,500 years deceased. Passed on. Joined the Choir Invisible back when Sumer ruled supreme in Mesopotamia.

How many people really know that the BMW mark is a spinning white propeller blade against a blue sky? It reflects the origins of BMW as a maker of military aircraft engines for the Germans during World War I – but it’s associated today with outstanding motor vehicles. How about the Nike “swoosh?” It represents the wing of the eponymous Greek goddess. It first appeared in 1971 and has been gradually simplified as its frame increased. “Run fast,” it says.

So I do come from the school that says a logo ought to tell a story, even if it takes a few years for it to catch on (if ever). Most logos never make it to the Big Show: a common, even universal understanding that a particular mark stands for a specific brand like P&G’s moon-and-stars. Coca-Cola’s script. Disney’s Magic Kingdom castle.

Advertising what your logo stands for is really quite an important step, telling its story and wrapping it around your own.

Amagi, however, may just contentedly sit there being obscure. To be fair, the Amagi imprint does come up in the first two Google listings. (Several other listings point out that amagi means “heavenly castle” in Japan, being both the name of a city and a World War II Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier of the Unryū class – never deployed.)

You have to be acquainted with the brand name Amagi before you can look it up. Correct?

I wouldn’t have know about amagi at all save for its particular mention in a superb new book by Susan Wise Bauer, The History of the Ancient World. It’s a fine, engaging history, let me tell you, with enough interleaved humor to help you realize this is one smart author with wide-ranging interests. I wouldn’t say 777 pages is a quick read although I’m already halfway through it. I recommend it strongly.

In addition to pointing out that the cuneiform marks were snapped up by the Liberty Fund, “simply proving that no good social reform goes unexploited,” (page 93), Bauer also remarks that the term amagi is arguably the first time the idea of “freedom” shows up in human written language. She notes (as does the Liberty Fund site) that amagi literally means “return to the mother.”

That is, the ruler of Lagash intended to return his kingdom to an earlier state, one that is more pure, “the state of justice intended by the gods.”

With this knowledge in mind, we could say that the Liberty Fund logo mark really means, “When you get tired of reading our books, go home to your momma.”

I am exaggerating for effect. Every company has the right to portray itself the way it likes. This cuneiform idea, however, is too precious. Maybe I just don’t have clients who are classically educated enough to appreciate the oddball nature of this brand name and logo mark. On the other hand, who knew what “Google” stood for when it was introduced?

Or maybe my clients recognize that we aren’t playing around outside the walls of academia. The Nike swoosh may have come from the Winged Victory of Samothrace, but it really means “I can beat you with one foot in a cast.”

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.

Memorial Day

At 3PM today, we’re asked to take a moment and reflect in silence on the men and women who gave their lives for our country in so many wars.

When the rain stops, I’ll put the family’s American Flag out. Go up to the corner store, where I’ll likely find a red paper poppy for sale. On Memorial Day in the United States, and Great Britain’s, Canada’s and Australia’s Remembrance Day, it used to be quite common to wear a paper or cloth poppy as a lapel pin.

Just as World War I ended, Moina Belle Michael thought to wear real red poppies on Memorial Day in honor of those who died serving America during war. She got the idea from a poem she’d read, “In Flanders Field.” She was the first to wear one, and sold poppies to her friends and co-workers. The money went to benefit servicemen in need.

A Frenchwoman, Madame E Guérin, was visiting the United States and learned of this new custom started by Michael. When she returned to France, she made artificial red poppies to raise money for war orphaned children and widowed women. The tradition spread to other countries.

In 1921, the Franco-American Children's League sold poppies nationally to benefit war orphans of France and Belgium. The League disbanded a year later and Madam Guerin approached the American Veterans of Foreign Wars for help. Shortly before Memorial Day in 1922 the VFW became the first veterans' organization to nationally sell poppies. Two years later its Buddy Poppy Program was selling artificial poppies made by disabled veterans.

Michael was a countrywoman of mine, born near Good Hope, GA, in 1869. Her daddy was a veteran of the Civil War, serving with the Confederate States Army in some of the largest and most important actions of the war. She grew up with the effects of war on her own family, in her own backyard.

She attended Lucy Cobb Institute and the Georgia State Teachers College, both in Athens, and Columbia University. In later life she had become one of Georgia’s outstanding educators. She died on 10 May 1944.

On 9 November 1948, the US Post Office held first-day-of-issue ceremonies in Athens, Ga. for a 3¢ commemorative stamp honoring Michael. The stamp’s release came on the 30th anniversary of the day she conceived of the idea of selling poppies to help care for disabled soldiers and their families.

After his World War II service, my father-in-law Sam Slavik, USCG, became an active member of the VFW. (My daddy, Paul Hirsch Baron, USAAF, wasn’t such a joiner.) My mother-in-law, Rosemary Slavik, spent years in the VFW Ladies Auxiliary and she was still making red paper poppies for her post until she retired.

The 3¢ stamp is long gone but the paper poppies remain. It’s a remembrance that hardly costs more than a passing thought. It’s worth so much more.

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.

Culture Club

Companies that try to change their business model, their brand’s approach to markets and their operations run into a similar and vexing problem – one I call the “culture club.”

Change will never occur if you can’t convince the stakeholders in your company’s culture that change is good. There may be every good reason – financial, operational, and even marketing – to change the direction of your company’s brand. But your managers and workers, some of whom may have been with the firm for many years, are the company’s culture. Without their consent, the culture won’t change: it’s like your employees hold a club over your head.

One intent behind my earlier post about Pitney Bowes was to begin a dialogue about changing the path – and the brand meaning – of a company as it moves forward. As many older firms do, Pitney Bowes wants to transform the way its customers, prospects and investors view the firm. I wonder, though, if phrases like “The mailstream is all around you—a global force synonymous with commerce” have been absorbed and agreed upon by the corporation’s 33,000+ employees.

If your employees don’t agreed with what you’re doing, they will occlude the fulfillment of your efforts to transform the company. Not only will they block the changes, they’ll become reactionary voices and undermine your work.

Joel Staff just stepped down as CEO of Reliant Energy. He’s become an expert in corporate turnarounds. (I knew him when he first became CEO of Baker Hughes; 10 years later, he led a management buyout of National Oilwell and turned that into a $16 billion company. He took over Reliant in August 2003. He in on record saying:

…at Reliant and National Oilwell there was a lot of the sense that the problem, the enemy, was within the company, so people didn’t demonstrate respect for each other…I think I gained a deeper understanding of how powerful people are when they get committed and own the vision.

How many companies do you know where “the people” are committed to the corporate vision and direction? Mustang Engineering has been a positive example in previous posts. My sense is that Caterpillar is another, although I could change my mind based on a current lawsuit.

Negative side? I suppose you could look at Enron before the crash – at least among its senior executives. They clubbed the brand (and an entire market sector) into a bloody mess. The victims of its top-down version of the culture club were its employees, its stockholders and even a whole industry.

I propose a rule: A company’s position ought to take hold – and take place – in the minds of all its stakeholders. I emphasize the word “all” because the internal stakeholders, the employees, are frequently ignored when it comes to fostering change – at least that’s my observation. I’ll call this the Stakeholder Rule (absent a better name).

When I present the Stakeholder Rule to clients I usually ask, “Is your company’s culture bottom-up or top-down?” It’s not a complex question. When I explain that I’m attempting to discover who owns the company’s culture, it is usually answered rather honestly. So I’ve been fortunate in my clients.

An honest answer is usually the starting point for one of two recommendations. No. 1, make certain that the transformations you want to affect are communicated to and involve the interactive participation of all your internal stakeholders. Or No. 2, conduct intensive internal research to discover the real answer. Once No. 2 is executed, it’s safe to proceed with No. 1.

Adopt the Stakeholder Rule and you can avoid the worst outbreaks of culture clubbing. Willing adoption of changes by your employees will give your transformative ideas a better chance to survive and thrive.

If you’re uncomfortable with the term “culture club,” maybe you’ve heard the expression, “tiger by the tail?” It’s one of several versions of a story about a young soldier who leaves his laager in the evening. His mates and officers hear a great thrashing about in the jungle outside the camp. Then comes the soldier’s voice, calling out for his officer: “Sir! Sir! I’ve caught a tiger by the tail!”

His captain shouts back, “Well done, Private Jones! Bring him into the camp.”

“I can’t, Sir. He won’t let me.” Different metaphor. Same idea.

Photo © Paha from Dreamstime.com. “Stakeholder Rule” © Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved.

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.

Berol Cranks

Nobody is marketing pencil sharpeners these days. They’re simply selling them. But a classic brand – a relic of the machine age – came right out of our back room this past weekend. The machine in question: a Berol® Giant® Apsco® pencil sharpener. (Why does the unit label read “Sanford” in the picture? See below.)

It’s not the Apsco Dexter Model B, mind you – that’s a much older item. Nor is it the kind with the see-through celluloid holder for pencil shavings and graphite dust (which I always thought wouldn’t last very long).

No, I think ours is the better-known AP806 – a model which is still in production under a different name: “Sanford Giant.”

These machines are no longer on the Berol website because the Berol brand is owned by Sanford, the world’s largest writing instrument manufacturer. Along with the Berol brand, Sanford also own Parker, Waterman, Rotring, PaperMate and Karisma, among others.

Talk about your long-term brand: what became the Eagle Pencil Company was originally founded in 1856 in Germany by Daniel Berolzheimer. The company opened a pencil shop on John Street in New York City and a manufacturing operation at Yonkers, NY. At this point (I think), the firm was called Berolzheimer, Illfelder & Co. Berolzheimer’s son Henry took over the business.

Five successful years later, Henry purchased the city's first iron-framed building. This factory, which produced pencils, pens, pen holders and erasers, took a whole city block covering East 13th and East 14th Streets. The company’s showroom was on Broadway.

In the custom of the day, sales agents were established in France, Germany, Russia, Austria, Norway and Cuba. To supply the wood slats, the company’s Cedar Mills were established in Florida, Alabama and Tennessee. It’s now the California Cedar Products Company, CalCedar, which has a fine corporate history. Berol itself kept growing (and acquiring other pencil companies) for more than 100 years.

The Berol Corporation was formed in 1969, merging nine different office supply companies from North America and the UK.

In 1986, Empire bought Berol, creating an office supply superpower swimming in pencils. The new corporate entity was then called Empire-Berol. In 1995, the European part was acquired by Sanford Corporation in the UK. In the US, Sanford is part of Newell Rubbermaid. Confused yet? Don’t be: brands migrate even when the products remain the same for decades. Especially a device that keeps on working, year after year.

Our unit is a real machine – you can see as soon as you take it apart. On the faceplate, there’s a six-hole guide that accepts all popular pencil sizes. Inside (even after all this time), there is a shiny micromated cutterhead, “twin planetary cylindrical cutters with spiral cutting edges,” that would do a tool & die company proud.

The body is metal and the barrel is gray-painted plastic. It is about 4”x 4” including the crank. We’ve had it at least 30 years, maybe more; and it’s been attached to the bookshelf in the back room since 1984. (It’s pictured in a 1953 catalogue from the American Pencil Sharpener Company – APSCO – in Chicago, IL…obviously one of the companies that Berol swept up.)

The names have merged and separated and merged again: APSCO, Sanford, Eagle and Berol: still cranking after all these years.

But I’m here to tell you, the quality behind the original name has continued to deliver on its promise, quietly and modestly, for longer than I’ve been alive. Now that’s a brand!

Interested in pencils and their brands? Check www.pencilrevolution.com when you have an opportunity.

Troubled Waters

“Was it your basement that flooded?”

I’ve told a lot of people about the water that got into our home last Thursday evening. After expressing their concerns for our safety, it was the people north of the Line, Yankees, who invariably asked that question.

I gently told them that in Houston, most homes came without basements, us being built so low to the ground and all. Most folks found that idea more shocking than our flooded house. “No basement? Really?”

Okay: long story short. Two weeks ago, we had just finished with having the downstairs level of the house painted. (Great paint job, BTW.) Thanks to a heavy workload, it took us that long to get moved back into all our ground-floor rooms.

Thursday, 11 May, it rained so hard here that we had some water come into the home...just enough so that it’s going to be a real mess for another three or four weeks. The Servpro disaster recovery people arrived on Friday afternoon. Their packers came in on Saturday morning to remove stuff from the back room.

Then it was chainsaws and plaster dust everywhere. Enough dehumidifying horsepower to dry out a large stock pond. And boxes and boxes of stuff everywhere. Thank goodness for insurance, which we took out 20 months ago, between Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. It’s the true National Flood Insurance item, separate from our homeowner’s policy. Just in case.

“The nighttime storms flooded some neighborhood streets and freeway feeder roads across the Houston area. More than five inches of rain fell Thursday night in the Southside Place subdivision, on Houston’s west side,” the Houston Chronicle reported. One TV station announced that nine inches fell in our area of Spring Branch in just about four hours.

Be reassured. (Heck, we’re reassured.) Our house does NOT look anything like the photo above. Still, we had our moments last Thursday evening and Friday morning.

We’re truly looking forward to hurricane season. Yes indeed. It starts in 16 days.

Insurance Morning

“Wait a minute,” I asked Gordon Gorrie during a telephone call. “What’s that phrase you just used?”

“Insurance Morning?” he replied. “Didn’t you have that here?”

Never heard it before. What’s it mean?

Growing up in Glasgow, Gordon could tell me. Glasgow was the industrial heart of Scotland and it boomed after World War II, with one of the largest concentrations of shipbuilding, heavy manufacturing and textiles in Europe (including Albion Motor Works, above left).

Friday was payday for all the factory workers – and they were paid in cash.

When they got home from work, the first person likely to knock on their doors was…the insurance agent. All over Scotland, the insurance agents would go round to all the Council houses and collect their policyholders’ premiums. Every Friday, a little bit of the worker’s pay packet went to pay for his life insurance.

“We had a kind of migration, where the original concept of a death benefit got wrapped up with the idea of a whole life savings scheme, where the individual was expected to invest a set amount each month throughout their working life. This was encouraged by the government, which saw advantages in people relying upon their own initiatives rather than falling back on State aid,” according to Michael Neale, an associate partner at Accenture in Scotland. (Count on an Accenture guy to make a fun story boring.)

Anyway, the insurance agents would work through every Friday afternoon and late into the evening, seeing their policyholders and getting their premiums. Every Friday morning, before they went off to collect premiums, golf courses throughout Scotland filled up.

Insurance Morning was when all the agents played golf.

Interior of the Albion Works in Scotstoun, 1955, Partick Camera Club, City of Glasgow, with thanks. And to Wood Group’s Gordon Gorrie for ensuring that a fine regional phrase isn’t lost to history.

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.

Word: Nevelson

To the west, the Gaudalupe is flooding. In Houston, we’ve been driving under waterfalls all afternoon. So when Bill Large showed up the Mo for Martini Night, the total number of attendees was…two. He got hold of his see-through and handed me a stiff folder, asking, “Have you heard of this artist? She’s got an opening tonight at the McClain Gallery.”

Louise Nevelson. I was raised up on Nevelson, along with Barbara Hepworth, two of the iconic artists of the 60s and 70s. I “learned” her from Bob and Edith Fusillo…opening the folded invitation was like time travel.

You are cordially invited to the opening exhibition of Louise Nevelson, Sculpture and Collage. Bill was practicing finest kind word-of-mouth advertising. I hadn’t even known her work was coming here. We had two quick drinks and drove through the downpour to the gallery, about two miles west of Mo Mong.

In fact, the show is something of a last-minute arrangement, according to Leigh Manley at the gallery…after she darted me with a tranquilizer gun. The gallery tells it succinctly:

McClain Gallery is pleased to announce the first Louise Nevelson solo exhibition in Texas in more than 35 years. The exhibition centers around a selection of works from 1957 through 1979, and includes wooden box landscapes, wall reliefs, steel sculptures and framed collage drawings.

Apparently, her estate has been either closely held or in disarray for the past 20 years – she died in 1988. Suddenly, these pieces are here. In Houston. You can see works from her “Black” period as well as collages: my own personal way-back machine on a rainy Thursday afternoon. One of the real joys of moving to Houston in the early 80s was that Nevelson’s works were virtually public art. MFA Houston has a pair of them (“Mirror Image I” and “Mirror Image II”) that used to hang opposite each other in the original Caroline Law Building entryway. There was a giant Nevelson panel outside the Enron Building downtown for many years – I wonder what happened to it?

Look: this is a rare event. The McClain is at 2242 Richmond Avenue, just east of Kirby. The exhibition is there through 10 June.

For those of you in “Metropolis,” another retrospective of her work opens on Saturday, 5 June, at the New York Jewish Museum. It's raining Nevelsons...and they're terrific!

Go. See. Word!

Shown: “Silent Music II,” 1964, wood painted black with mirrors, 80 x 50 x 11.5 inches. Photo courtesy of the McClain Gallery – and thank you for the opportunity to see these works.

“Attraction” Research

A study conducted by UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry has revealed that the kind of face a woman finds attractive on a man can differ depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle.

For example: If she is ovulating, she is attracted to men with rugged and masculine features. However, if she is menstruating, or menopausal, she tends to be more attracted to a man with duct tape over his mouth and a spear lodged in his chest while he is on fire.

No further studies are expected.

Beauty product marketers please note. Thanks to Nancy McMillan, who noticed the study while reading this month’s issue of American Journal of American Psychiatry or someplace like that. Picture: Munch und Warnemünde 1907-1908 with thanks.

Celebrating Barbara

Some people say “you can’t have too many birthdays.” And some (like Barbara, whose birthday is today) respond that once is enough – there’s no need to draw attention to the rest.

Personally, I think this is because Barbara comes from a large Minnesota-style family: one momma, one dad, seven children. Seven. Maybe, with a family that size, the only thing she got on her birthday was a year older.

I know it’s not true: about growing up as one of seven children and lacking birthday presents. She got plenty and I believe she’s still got some of them (after all, she’s kept the same husband for 30 years). And today she got a lot of best wishes from family and friends: the e-card business took a big jump today.

Last year, an Australian woman named Mary Armstrong celebrated her birthday (at a number that’s considerably higher than Barbara’s) by skydiving 12,000 feet to the earth. It was her third charity jump, raising $1,900 for an animal fund. Newsworthy and a good deed, too.

Barbara jumped into the kitchen to bake bread for dinner – not so newsworthy, perhaps, but I’m certainly grateful.

So I’ve made jokes – not at her expense, but to celebrate her birth and my luck. Look at the photo I took of Barbara: we were in Piraeus on a lovely winter day at the beginning of this year, and walking by this neat little boating canal. On the small bridge overlooking the water, her smile is so beautiful that it’s worth every pixel to capture it.

Happy birthday, Barbara Nytes-Baron: now that you’re 42, you know the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Better Datasheets

Weary, weary, weary of spec sheets that look like the Interoperability and Performance Data Sheet shown on the Novell site? Your customers are.

I’ve been doing datasheets for more than 30 years. I can tell you there’s good ones and bad ones. I can tell you there’s a misapprehension that only words (spare and technical) will serve – isn’t that what engineers want? “Just the facts, Ma’am?”

No, no and no. Whether you call them product guides or spec sheets, datasheets or inserts, there’s an art and a science to transforming datasheets into more engaging, more beneficial instruments of marketing and sales.

For this post, look at the outstanding Hypercom datasheets shown above. The series has been designed by Peg Grant at The Phillips Agency and written by me, admitted with a certain modesty. This entire new series has a colorful (even exciting) combination of features, advantages and benefits – FABs – that turn drabs into dazzlers.

1. ATTRACT THE VIEWER FIRST. Rule One, a picture’s worth quite a bit more than a thousand words. Even when the product’s a black box. Especially when the product’s a black box. (Tougher yet, it’s a service you’re trying to sell.) People use these products and services. People are attracted to other people like themselves, doing things, preferably in conjunction with the thing you’re selling. Why do you think People magazine’s so popular? This doesn’t mean four humans, gingerly portraying the right gender/race mix, around a conference table – or a computer monitor. Look at the users in the Hypercom datasheets: they’re top, front and center.

2. DON’T THINK ENGINEERS ARE WHAT THEY USED TO BE. If there’s one idea that’s stuck in everyone’s head, it’s the image of the geek-engineer with the heavy-framed spectacles. That’s two generations out of date. Today’s smart, savvy engineers are heavily engaged in a wide variety of lifestyle activities…they’re involved in life. So yes, make sure the product specs are available (we put the specifications on the back of the datasheets, in a single column). More important, datasheets aren’t just for engineers any more. Your salespeople may put them into the hands of purchasing professionals, company owners, CFOs, CEOs…even the folks on the loading dock. They’re going to have a voice in the decision-making process, so be sure to build in options that are relevant to the many rather than the few. And for heaven’s sake, post them to your website.

3. SELL THE SIZZLE. Well, duh. What’s really in it for me? Why do I want to spec it, buy it, use it, recommend it to my design engineers, production team, jobbers, distributors, customers? Will it make my hair grow back (too late for me, I fear)? Will it save me [a] money, [b] time or [c] stress? Will it benefit the lives of its users? Which leads to…

4. BAF, NOT FAB. Put the benefits first, then the advantages and finally the product/service features which deliver the goods. Bad example: “The ARM9 processor family is built around the ARM9TDMI processor and incorporates the 16-bit Thumb instruction set, which improves code density by as much as 35%.” Good example: “Get more capability in a smaller footprint: 35% higher code density comes standard in the ARM9, thanks to its advanced architecture and compact, faster-acting 16-bit Thumb instruction set.”

5. TELL ‘EM – THEN TELL ‘EM WHAT YOU TOLD ‘EM. Every user will NOT review every single word of your datasheet. So each new Hypercom datasheet offers sections where customers and prospects can browse. Some sections have copy, some have photos with captions, some have bullet-pointed BAFs. Wherever they look randomly, they’re going to see/read/absorb benefits – yet there’s a consistent organizational flow that helps connect to the engineering mind-set.

Above all, sell. Datasheets are valuable sales and branding opportunities. It’s real estate that should not be confined to lists of specifications, because telling isn’t selling. (And if necessary, educate your sales force on the new datasheet format you create. I once produced an entire 3-foot x 4-foot wall poster for Exxon Technical Marketing Services, on which we showed both sides of a new datasheet with callouts explaining the sales benefits of each section.)

There are more ways to design datasheets than any one person can assemble in a lifetime. Some work really well. If you don’t follow my line of thinking, you want to make other choices or you’re not certain, take three or four different datasheet formats on the road. Ask your customers…they’ll be quick to let you know what’s attractive as well as informative.

Now go. Talk with your own engineers. Together, you can work out how to turn their datasheets into powerful marketing tools.

Thanks to The Phillips Agency – Terri Phillips, the aforementioned Peg Grant, Anna Giles, Catherine Colangelo and all – for the opportunity to work on these projects.