The Trouble With Branding, Why Doing It Right Pays.

What’s the trouble with branding? The problem is that branding is being peddled as a brand in itself.  Like a hot commodity, entrepreneurs and businesses rush to stock up. Let’s face it; if you do it right, branding your business can deliver a sharp competitive advantage. Business plans spill over with branding objectives and strategies.  An initial search on Amazon.com for branding and you’ll get at least 210 books, search Google and you’ll get 46,000,000 results. And so they read branding books, listen to branding gurus and include branding themes in pitches to customers, investors, and key constituents.  So, with all this stuff out there, how do you get your business to branding nirvana?

Building a viable brand takes, commitment, work and time; it’s that simple.  Effective branding flies in the face of today’s hyper business speed of quarter-to-quarter measurement.  A brand is a result of integrated activities that happen over a period of time bringing together various parts of the enterprise to achieve consumer preference, affinity and ultimately drives growth. Launching a brand is one thing, but becoming a brand is entirely different. I believe that when businesses talk about branding, they mean, “becoming a brand” but act as if they are “launching a brand.” And so teams are mobilized, resources allocated…launch, then what? It’s the “then what” part where brands are built and real value is made.

Below is a discussion that speaks to the heart of the branding problem and offers some real solutions.

Branding Today: It’s a Whole New Game

Businesses must recognize that they are operating in a new world. Today, we live in a connected world where the old advertising model is broken but continues inexplicably to sputter along. Today, the consumer controls your brand as much as you do.  We continue to be bombarded by marketing messages from consumer and business, and we have technology at our fingertips to control what we want to see, and what we don’t.

Web 2.0, the ability for business to meaningfully interact with markets on the web is another game changer. Leveraging the power of Web 2.0 and social networking can help or hinder your brand depending on how you choose to use it.  Not only can you take a strong position and distribute your brand on the web, you must monitor the web for anything that works against your brand.

Relevancy: That’s one of the secret ingredients in this new model. And relevancy comes through engagement of your customers and market, just as much as buying the right number of impressions to reach the target audience. In many ways, the empowered consumer provides business and entrepreneurs with unprecedented opportunities, the key is to execute against those opportunities.

Branding Is a Process and Occurs Over Time

In a time where performance is measured from quarter to quarter, history tells us that strong, lasting brands are built over time.  Branding is not an activity, it is a result of your total integrated marketing communications strategy, and business operations, and it happens over time – Think Coke, Intel, Dell, Gucci. There is incredible staying power in these names that only comes with longevity and execution in the market place, consistent market messaging, and product and service excellence. 

If brands can be rolled out, they can rolled-back. It’s that simple. If your company is considering a branding campaign, then the cornerstone ought to be market driven strategy.  Create a hierarchy for your marketing and PR activities and integrate them. Link those to key products, services, or business lines that you wish to promote and grow. For example, if taking a position in the market place by advertising, then consider developing an aligned public relations campaign and web campaign to fully engage the market. This way you have multiple touches in the market place around a singular effort for more efficient and effective outcomes.

Branding Is Not About Your Creative

Well, that’s not entirely true. Your creative is one, but important, element of your brand. However, I have seen entire businesses spend hundreds of thousands in both real dollars and or opportunity costs, or come to a temporary halt over things like logos, fonts and colors because a brand manager, or executive didn’t like way it looks – samples of one.  While creative is important, and we all want to get it just right, the reality is no one drives by McDonald’s saying, “Hmmm, I don’t really like that logo,” or so closely examining the Dell logo and are appalled by the stylized “e.”  We need to back away from the creative ledge and focus on the over all goals of the brand.

If your creative is appropriate, then the development and execution of your brand distribution strategy is vital. After all, what good is a great business message, product or service, if you have no way of getting it out to your customers and creating value for your business?

Your image has more to do with how you conduct business, the service level your provide and how competitive your products are relative to your competition, the value you bring to the market than anything else. When you have product and services are market ready, your marketing communications program should have four important elements that will contribute to your brand:

1. Message – The focus and relevancy of your message relative to your customers and the value of your product and service.
2. Reach – How, where and how effectively are you reaching your market place?
3. Frequency – Do your messages have enough frequency in the market place to be effective?
4. Consistency – Product and service delivery must match your market messages. Your market messages must be distributed consistently across all of your customer touch points including, web, brochures, sales collateral, CEO speeches, on-hold message, and everywhere and anywhere that may be relevant to your brand distribution strategy.

The Role of PR in Branding

Public relations ought to be an element of any serious branding strategy. Think of concentric circles, now think of public relations as the largest circle and the inside circles being media, constituent, primary, secondary and tertiary markets, and employee relations among other key defined markets.  With that in mind, construct a communications plan for each of these markets, and that may encompass events, the press of course, newsletters, email, websites, social networking, and even sales.  Again, define each activity, link it to your key market objectives and execute.

Again, in the old model, business think of PR as “get me in the papers,” but in this new dynamic effective brands look for market engagement, which may include events, conferences, social networking, and Web 2.0 strategies. 

Execution is Key

Planning is key but execution opens the door to the kingdom. Flawless execution allows us to learn about our approach, market reaction, and change tactics if need be. And so if we buy the concept that branding is a result of what you do,

not what you, that result can only be achieved through execution. So, execute.

More to Come 

The dynamics of branding will continue to change, as demographics, tastes and technology changes. Successful brand managers are able to recognize these important events and leverage the communications forces in the market, including cultural phenomenon, to distribute their brands to forge lasting, emotional relationships with their customers.

This article appeared in Ad Age today- here’s a link to the site - http://adage.com/article?article_id=125877

From Soap Operas to IPods: History Suggests Slumps Spawn Innovation

By Jack Neff

Published: March 24, 2008

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — The massive bailout of Bear Stearns from the brink of bankruptcy could be the first of many financial rescues needed. Despite double-digit plunges, U.S. housing is still overpriced by historical yardsticks. Retail sales have gone from slow to declining, and the consumer-spending binge that propped up the U.S. economy for years may not return for a long time.

Previous recessions have provided big opportunities — spawning the brand-management system, soap operas, modern cable networks, airline loyalty programs, the IBM personal computer, the iPod, Crest Whitestrips, Axe body spray and — for better or worse — fast-food value menus.

But as any old-timer could tell you, quite correctly, today’s marketers don’t know much about marketing through recessions — or how good they have it when things feel so bad.

Short slumps 

The past two downturns have been among the shortest on record: eight months each. They followed two of the longest economic expansions on record: 92 months and 120 months. That compares with the average recession of 14 months and average recovery of only 46 months.

Gut-wrenching news, layoffs and budget cuts aside, history shows recessions have been some of the best times for media and marketing innovation. For marketers who kept their wits, economic valleys — the deeper the better, in fact — became foundations of empires.

Two years into the Great Depression in 1931, a Procter & Gamble Co. executive named Neil McElroy wrote the memo that ushered in the brand-management system. It eventually helped propel him to the presidency of P&G. It wasn’t a cure-all. During the first three years of the Great Depression, P&G’s sales fell by more than half, from $192 million to $94 million, and earnings fell 50%, to $11 million. (Deflation accounted for some of that decline.)

But P&G didn’t lay off anyone during the Depression. And it charged ahead with innovation. In 1933 it launched the first radio soap opera nationally and its first synthetic detergent brand, Dreft.

Around to cover such events were Advertising Age, launched seemingly inopportunely in 1930, and BusinessWeek, launched at the outset of the Depression, in 1929.

New downturns, new networks

You don’t need to go that far back to find successful media launches or marketing initiatives during recessions. During the next-deepest downturn of the 20th century, the 1980-82 double-dip recession, Ted Turner founded CNN in 1980, and MTV launched a year later. By the time the economy began rebounding, those networks were poised to reshape media for a generation.

Less glamorously perhaps, airlines reeling from a recession-fueled downturn developed what would become a new marketing currency as American Airlines and Delta Air Lines launched miles-based loyalty programs in 1981.

Ronald Reagan, who essentially reinvented the marketing of politics as he realigned the political landscape, did so not coincidentally in 1980, during a respite of weak growth between two recessions. Franklin Roosevelt, did the same a little less than five decades earlier during the Depression.

Even the ultimately short recession in 2001 brought two notable media innovations, all the more notable because they emerged from the flaming wreckage of the dot-com bubble.

Wikipedia was conceived in January 2001 and rolled out over the course of the year. Of course, with no apparent revenue model, it’s somewhat, um, recession-proof. But it did spawn a plethora of revenue-generating open-source media.

Tech picks up

In October 2001, only 42 days after Sept. 11, Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPod. It wasn’t an instant success, as compatibility issues with PCs led to one of the highest post-holiday return rates in consumer-electronics history, said Rob Enderle, principal of the Enderle Group. But by 2002, it was still well on its way to reinventing portable media and music.

Indeed, recessions have been salad days for technology. Just about 20 years earlier, during another recession in August 1981, Apple’s nemesis, the IBM personal computer, ushered in a new era in home and business computing. Arguably, the productivity and information revolutions it helped spawn did much to make subsequent recessions shorter and expansions longer.

e="font: normal normal normal 12px/normal Helvetica; margin: 0px">OK, that’s technology. As everyone knows, recessions kill other sectors, such as automotive. Right?

Wrong. The mid-1970s recession, spawned by the first energy crisis, produced an entire new segment of imported fuel-efficient cars in the U.S. During a recession in 1981, Lee Iacocca turned around Chrysler through the launch of fuel-efficient K-Cars (albeit backed by government loan guarantees).

And in 1991, in part because the recession lowered fuel prices, sales of SUVs rose 55% to more than 1 million units. SUV sales kept rising at a double-digit compound annual pace for a decade, quadrupling to 4.2 million by 2002.

Here come the hybrids

Ironically, of course, that contributed to rising gas prices today and current double-digit declines in SUV sales. It’s not obvious how a combination of declining consumer spending, tighter debt standards and rising fuel prices could spawn a new automotive segment this time, though hybrids and super-efficient vehicles are an obvious guess.

Recessions also have been fertile ground for some retail chains. Home Depot opened its first two stores near Atlanta just before a recession in 1979. But it expanded the concept rapidly as the economy headed south, going public in 1981 and using the proceeds to build 100 stores by 1989.

On the brink of the early-1990s recession, corporate raider Robert Campeau took Federated Department Stores in a leveraged buyout and quickly shed its Gold Circle and Richway high-end discount chains in 1989. Rival Dayton Hudson bought many of the units, which it used to push its similarly styled Target into new territory during the 1990-91 recession.

Wal-Mart Stores used the opportunity to charge into markets Gold Circle had vacated in the Midwest. And Wal-Mart’s ruthless efficiency, merchandising savvy and value-conscious consumers made the early 1990s the fastest-growing period in the retailer’s history, with same-store sales up 10% to 11% each year from 1990 to 1992.

Expansion

A decade later, the 2001 recession similarly helped fuel the national expansion of Wal-Mart rivals Dollar General and Family Dollar.

Hard times have spawned seminal innovation even for the finance industry. Charles Schwab founded his discount brokerage during a recession in 1974. The first interest-bearing (negotiable order of withdrawal) accounts launched in 1972 and spread rapidly in Massachusetts during the same recession. They won nationwide authorization during another recession in 1981.

That same recession’s high interest rates spawned legislation authorizing adjustable-rate mortgages nationally in 1982. Of course, those helped spawn the current mess — and a new opportunity for yet-unnamed financial instruments to help fix it.

While consumer staples might seem immune to business cycles, the reality is that the recessions of the early 1980s brought on the generics craze, and another in the early 1990s brought another surge in private labels and helped spark a rolling series of restructurings of such giants as Kraft Foods and P&G throughout the decade.

Yet recessions also have spawned launches of highly successful and pricey new brands, such as Kimberly-Clark Corp.’s Pull-Ups training pants in the early 1990s. It was probably the biggest risk K-C had ever taken, said former Chairman-CEO Wayne Sanders in a 2002 interview. It was also one that rival P&G considered, rejected as too small an opportunity, then later regretted not taking, Chairman-CEO A.G. Lafley has said.

Huge risks, rewards

But the last recession, under Mr. Lafley, spawned two of the most expensive products in P&G’s history: Crest Whitestrips and Swiffer WetJet, both launched nationally in 2001 at prices near $50. And though both brands ultimately cut prices by half or more to expand their market or meet competitive threats, they still established new, high-margin categories they still dominate.

WetJet launched less than three weeks after Sept. 11, recalled Maurice Coffey, a P&G marketing director who led the launch as a brand manager, in a 2006 interview. “Quite amazingly,” he said, “we were on track come January on our sales numbers.” He credited extensive prelaunch buzz and the product’s inherent appeal with helping it overcome the economic headwinds.

Amid an economy still reeling from that recession, Unilever launched Axe body spray in 2002, establishing a new category priced about 50% above existing deodorant sticks. The recession “made the stakes higher,” said David Rubin, brand manager on the U.S. launch and now director of U.S. hair-care marketing for Unilever. “Consumers are forced to make tougher choices when the economy is bad, and the role of marketing just gets amplified.”

Following a better-than-expected year in 2001, the U.S. business got a waiver on profit requirements from London to allow for an expensive launch expected to take three years to pay out, said Charles Strauss, who was president of the North American home and personal-care business at the time. Ultimately, the economy didn’t factor into the launch decision, he said, and Axe came in ahead of Unilever’s sales and profit forec

asts regardless.

Charging ahead

Marketers should draw lessons from such examples of charging ahead despite recession, said Ed Rensi, former CEO of McDonald’s USA through the early 1990s recession; he’s now a motivational speaker, Nascar team owner and director of several companies.

Unfortunately, he said, companies usually do just the opposite. They cut staff, which he said leaves those left behind overworked and risk-averse. And they cut marketing, which props up profits short term but erodes market share down the road.

In his case, McDonald’s lost market share in the early 1990s, in part to Taco Bell, which gained share with national advertising of its value menu (see story, P.1). But by continuing to invest in new stores and remodels through the period, Mr. Rensi said, McDonald’s came out stronger — and in a position where it didn’t have to rely on discounting to build business.

Likewise, he said, McDonald’s focus on new products and customer experience over discounts will continue to pay off.

“My response has always been that when you go through periods of stress, that’s when you really have to go after top-notch, high-quality people,” he said, “and really go out and market like crazy.”

By Abe Kasbo

So the CMO of Proctor and Gamble did it, so did his peer at American Express. And in February of 2006, John Stratton, VP & CMO of Verizon who controls a budget of more than $2 Billion bluntly warned “major money is going to be in motion in the next decade and yet no one understands exactly where it will land, or even if will land, or just disappear altogether.”

Mr. Stratton is referring to Madison Avenue’s love affair with existing media, “antiquated media plans,” and its apparent inability to capitalize on a variety realities including, media fragmentation, the Internet, brand loyalty shifts, and the changing American demographic scene.

So what’s happening? It appears that advertisers are lauding the Internet, but still are unable to make sense out of it. Kind of puzzling though considering Google’s meteoric rise – if that indeed can be used as a measure. If you’re American Express, Coca Cola, your fully invested in your marketing plans, but where do you get the biggest bang for the buck? Where and how do allocate your budget in an increasing wired world? And what do you make of the mobile web?

Media will change rapidly and the next medium is right around the corner. Regardless, this continues to be an issue of asset allocation, messaging, and consumer engagement. It’s those advertisers that can consistently bring those elements together that will be fully invested in the market – smartly.

So with that in mind, advertising firms need to step up and partner with their clients utilizing a different financial model to continue to expand their business and deliver more value to their clients.

By Abe Kasbo

A couple of days ago a report issued by Delloite’s Consumer Products group said that consumer online reviews strongly influence purchase decisions. Online consumer reviews are the “pimp my ride” version of “this is not your father’s Oldsmobile,” the highly effective, ever selective, never underestimated power of word of mouth.

So this report confirms what we know about how brands are created and built. By the consumer, and the internet is the ultimate word of mouth play, because it roars. It’s natural that “consumers are turning to online reviews in large numbers, and those reviews are having a considerable impact on purchase decisions,” said the report. It went on to say that 62 percent of consumers read consumer-written product reviews on the Internet, and of these, more than eight in 10 say their purchase decisions have been directly influenced by the reviews, “either influencing them to buy a different product than the one they had originally been thinking about purchasing, or confirming the original purchase intention.”

And just to confirm that is a human behavior issues, much like word of mouth, the report said that “seven in 10 of the consumers who read reviews share them with friends, family or colleagues, thus amplifying their impact.”

Not surprisingly, the survey also “found that reputation and word of mouth are the key factors that influence consumers’ decisions to purchase a new product or brand, many other factors also play a significant role.”

So it’s our job as marketers to provide our consumers not only with the products and services to keep them loyal to our brands, but also to provide them with the outlets and the opportunities to recommend our products and services, both on and offline.

By Abe Kasbo

We’ve all been there. hunkered down, coming up with names for our businesses, products, and so on. And let’s face it, some of us have come up with some good ones and other, well, not so good. But what’s the difference between the good and not so good? How do you know?

Let me give you an example. About 18 months ago, we decided to change the name of my firm from Integrity Worldwide to Verasoni Worldwide. Why? We were getting exposure to larger and more international clients and needed something to reflect that growth and international exposure. Also, we wanted a unique name, and name that stood on its own as a URL. Our old URL was long an cumbersome. The name change was a fundamental strategic decision for us. A key part of the change is communicating the name change to our clients and the market. So we developed a strategy on how, when, and what we were going to say, to whom, how often and by why media. And excuted that plan so every client was clear on the name change and new clients at the were aware of the name, for due diligence purposes.

When looking at branding and messaging issues, businesses must look at several factors, including:

1. What do you intent to convey to the market?
2. How will you do it?
3. How will you distribute the message?

The fact is, businesses like Google and Yahoo! did not spend thousands of dollars doing market research to get the perfect name. They understood the culture, technology, the space and their potential impact on the market. In fact, by all measures, they were ahead of the culture on this, committed strategy and budget to brand distribution (and delivering for their clients too)…and now Google is a verb.

Google and Yahoo!’s names are much more about their customers and the culture than about their techical businesses. Imagine if someone at Yahoo! when sitting around coming up with the name for the business said, “I got it! We’ll call it Associates Search Specialists.” After a colleague checkout the acronym, they decided against it. Meanwhile in meeting at Google before it was Google of course, someone said “I got it! Let’s call it, SirChing! And our mascot could be an English gentleman holding money…get it? Got it.

It seems like businesses worry too much about the development of logos and spend a ridiculous amount of resources mulling over logos and colors. It’s perfectly understandable that businesses want to project the right image, at the same time, this imperfect process is often injected with personal biases rather than market driven decisions. As long logos and marks and messages are appropriate for your market, provide your business with a sense of clear and distinct identity, you are on the right track. Think about it, no one drives by McDonald’s and says “boy, I really hate that logo!” And that is why, you get the biggest bang for your buck when your market messages are shaped for the market and driven by a thoughtful brand distribution plan. You can have the perfect message for the market, misplace it, and now your marketing investment is effectively wasted. And the converse is true here too.

More to come…

By: Abe Kasbo

Often marketers tend to think about media as an end-goal for campaigns when then ought to be thinking about the market. I often hear, “we’ve gotta be on TV,” or “we’ve got to get on Youtube,” or “our competitors are running are on the radio.” My typical response is almost always, “so what?”

With so many trumpeting the demise of traditional media and touting the new social / Internet marketing Holy Grail, the numbers are telling. While there is a noticeable shift in marketing and advertising dollars from “old-school” to “new-school” media, the fact is large marketers are still masters of the traditional media domain. They are also endowed enough to experiment in and rule new media. Meaning that they have enough money in their coffers to see if something works, without degrading their market position.

Strategy (which incorporates, research, creative, messaging, placement, above the line and below the line tactics, etc) drives successful marketing campaigns, while media are vital spokes in the wheel. Media are essential tools that help you distribute your strategy. So use the tools wisely, but understand their nature as delivery mechanisms, and make the most of them by ensuring that your strategy is solid.

By Abe Kasbo

In our talks with with our clients, we hear a incessant cry for “Public Relations.” What they almost always mean “is get me in the paper.” Certainly, press coverage is a great way to get the word out and to let people know about your differential advantage, people, technologies, business processes, etc. We also recognize that print articles the right media outlet has real value. Good press can attract attention, move product, and lend some credibility to young and established business alike.

We also recognize that pitching the media these days, strong relationships or not, is becoming more challenging simply because of amount of “stuff” assignment editors and reporters have to go through. Control over the message can be a particular challenge and certainly, at times, the timing of when the piece would hit the street may not be in concert with your business goals.

It’s why we ask CEOs, CMOs and marketing and PR managers, “what is your PR plan when you are not in the media?” Because for the most part, businesses are over-whelming NOT covered by the media. So what’s your plan?

Think Outside the Media for More Strategic Public Relations:

Strategic marketing and PR strategies must be business driven. Business owners and investors must be invested in strategic public relations, of which, media relations is an important component. What to do? Here are six ideas (with more to come)

1. Strengthen business relationships with your customers for continued loyalty and growth. So develop a customer relationship campaign that will engage the customer and strengthen your relationship, as well as provide you feedback on your products and services. Yes, that’s PR.

2. Be a resource for your clients and investors. There are many ways to do this including the web, face to face, conferences, etc.

3. Investor and network relations is key. Don’t skimp here, engaging your investors is key to many things including, when appropriate, next round of funding or asking for business referrals!

5. People buy from people. So your company or its representatives must have a plan to be present in venues directly related to your business – whether on the buy-side or sell-side.

6. Create or participate relevant events that involve people and can generate news.

So, by recognizing that PR is much more than sending out press releases and getting in the news, your business can implement more strategic public relations and marketing strategies that delivers a real boost to your business.

More to come…

By Abe Kasbo

There are certain tendencies in almost every industry to communicate to the market in sector specific lingo, and actually believe it will deliver results. This lingo usually leaks into advertising, marketing communications, and worse, the language between the business and its customers. This isn’t good for both the business and its clients. Let me explain by giving you an example from health care. (Not singling out health care here for any reason, and this practice is pervasive in many business sectors).

In hospitals, people speak differently. They refer to Mr. Johnson as a patient. To physicians as “providers.” People who come in for a particular test or procedures and leave the premises the same day are known as “outpatients.” Similarly, people who stay in the hospital over night are referred to as “in-patients.” Out if you go, in if you stay. Seems simple enough, yet there’s something about these terms that are simply not “patient-friendly.”

If you work at a hospital or a large medical practice, it’s fashionable, if not a must to speak hospitalese to your your peers. While this language is certainly as young as western medicine itself, it is pervasive. Hospitalese, like a bad virus, quickly spreads from employees, physicians, nurses to the patients, and general public even though usually, both the patients and general public the lingo confusing.

Take for example my favorite word from that comes from that foreign language known as hospitalese – “Ambulatory.” Hospitals name some of their “outpatient” (there’s another term that drives me loopy) services as “Ambulatory Services Centers.” Like “Westmount Ambulatory Imaging Center,” or “Westmount Hospital Ambulatory Surgery Center,” or the Ambulatory Care Center of Westmount Hospital.” My question here, isw what does “ambulatory” mean? So I looked it up. Here’s an official definition from the Random House Unabridged Dictionary

am·bu·la·to·ry [am-byuh-luh-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee] Pronunciation Key – Show IPA Pronunciation adjective, noun, plural -ries. –adjective

1. of, pertaining to, or capable of walking: an ambulatory exploration of the countryside.
2. adapted for walking, as the limbs of many animals.
3. moving about or from place to place; not stationary: an ambulatory tribe.

Hmmm…Having said that, let’s look at the operative or key terms that will resonate with the market. If you’re promoting surgery, then focus the message so there’s less distraction. “Westmount Hospital Ambulatory Surgery Center?” or ” “Westmount Hospital Surgery Center?”

Simply put, diluting your message with industry lingo adds to confusion and confusion is enemy number one to your brand and brand equity. With the downward pressures on hospital budgets, one can ill afford to loose focus of communicating more directly to the market. So speak directly and let your message carry a big stick.

by Abe Kasbo

[This article was published in Strategic Healthcare Marketing's May, 07 issue]

Yes, I am encouraging hospital CEOs and chief marketing officers to think inside the box to build successful marketing campaigns that positively contribute to their organization’s bottom line. Successful corporations tap this kind of thinking every day.

Anyone whose kept a keen eye on recent advertising and marketing trends fully recognizes that the increasingly potent cocktail of media fragmentation, greater advertising clutter, Internet influences, and subsequent consumer control over media has made creativity in reaching patients and physicians a hot commodity. I am not talking about creativity in the sense of creating branded or image ads. I am talking about implementing what some may consider being non-traditional marketing strategies that will drive your business and increase patient volume. To do that, you have to fully understand what’s inside your box.

Industries outside of health care have heeded the message, understanding that the advent of the Internet, mobile phone, and iPod has brought about fundamental changes in the way people consume and respond to media. The marketing heads of the world’s largest advertising powerhouses, such as Procter & Gamble and American Express, have recently demanded more accountability from their agencies, noting that traditional ad campaigns are simply not working to their satisfaction. Corporate marketers are no longer settling for great ads, logos, and tag lines. They are seeking a tangible return on investment through concerted campaigns that push the traditional bounds of advertising and marketing.

Indeed, what’s inside the box can drive volume and positively contribute to your bottom line. Here are some ideas to fuel your thinking:

Define the key elements of each service line in your hospital and their relationship to the overall market. Your marketing efforts must reflect your strategic plans and should focus on those services that provide your institution with the best opportunities to profitably grow patient volume in your primary and secondary markets. Prioritize your service lines with this objective in mind. Carefully researched and executed advertising should enhance your organization’s brand while it tells your market about your hospital’s unique and specific services.

Take a broad view of the market. Today, a variety of different types of providers from outpatient surgery centers to imaging facilities may be competing for patients in your primary and secondary markets. By recognizing these entities as competitors and understanding their services, you can more clearly define your offer and what sets your organization apart.

Give your brand away. This is what successful brands do every day. Google, Yahoo, Coca-Cola, Harley-Davidson, and MySpace create communities of people who share a passion based on their experiences with the product or service. The company here is almost irrelevant; no one talks about the parent company of MySpace, News Corp. Community building, although non-traditional, is an activity that allows for more business growth potential than any other communications form.

You can build communities by looking inside, to the people whom you’ve successfully treated as well as loyal physicians and volunteers and bring them together around specific events and functions. Let’s say you have patients with a unique experience with your hospital and you know that there are people in the community who would benefit from the same service. Involve those patients in your community outreach plan, and if they agree, and usually they do, ask them to speak at events on behalf of your hospital. Perhaps you can also feature their stories on your Web site or through a blog.

Make every patient a spokesperson. Focusing on the experience rather than the transaction is a surefire way to get advocates in the community to rave about your hospital. In speaking with marketers, I find that while the “patient experience” is important to them, they tend to focus more on advertising. Without a doubt, the patient experience piece takes time and effort to develop because so much of it has to do with how everyone in the organization interacts with patients, physicians, and visitors. However, staff encounters, or touch points, with patients and others are an integral part of how your institution communicates its brand and is perceived by various constituents. Experience management requires leadership commitment to operational changes and investment in training and incentive programs.

Consider how much you spend on external versus internal advertising. Let’s say you spend $7,000 a month on image print ads. Are you getting a good return on the ads? Consider moving some of your budget to inside your building to build your brand in-house. I once worked at a large academic medical center where the lobby traffic averaged about 2,500 people per day and that didn’t include employees, now that’s measurable.

Embrace the Internet. According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 93 percent of health seekers have gone online to look for information about a particular illness or condition. Your Web site is your key to solid connections with your community. Utilize search engine optimization and fill your site with appropriate clinical content and relevant service information. Position your Web presence as your community’s health care resource and communicate that consistently to your community. Make it easy to do business with your organization by including tools such as online bill payment and registration for elective procedures and diagnostic tests.

Your Web presence is a vital strategic and business development function that needs to be an essential part of your strategic planning. We are now in the pull media age, meaning that the consumer chooses what he or she will watch and see.

Tap appropriate social networking sites. If you have specialized services where people choose to travel for care, such as cardiac or bariatric surgery, tell the world. Some sites to consider: OrganizedWisdom.com, DailyStrength.org, PatientsLikeMe.com, and Sermo.com (for physicians only).

Know that your employees are your sales team. Yes, your physician relations department is also very important, but if your organization has 1,000 employees, then you have 1,000 sales representatives. Be sure that your employees know about the organization’s key services, physicians, what sets it apart from the competition, and other relevant information that will enable them to engage in positive word-of-mouth communications with friends, neighbors, and family members. If recipients of positive communications believe in the clinical excellence of your physicians and nurses, they will also utilize your services. Remember that people buy from people.

Your communication should be to the point and focus on the benefits. Use different formats and make them fun. Think way beyond employee newsletters to intranet quizzes, facility treasure hunts, electronic bulletin boards, and one-minute stand-up expert talks. And, be sure the workplace is highly regarded by employees and the community at large.

Stay focused. Just because the competition places an ad in your local newspaper doesn’t mean you have to respond in kind. Focus on your game plan and brand distribution strategies. An effective marketing and public relations plan is a disciplined one based on which service areas you want to grow in a given area. Diverging from the plan for emotional reasons is likely to take you off course and waste resources. Keep an eye on your competition and their campaigns, but do not feel you have to respond to one or two ads. Research tells us that frequency reigns in media campaigns and most likely a few ads will not sway the market.

Although exposure to the market via traditional communications efforts is vital, it is equally important to demand more creativity from your marketing strategists and ad agencies. This year and next portend a far different marketing universe than 2005 or even 2006. With the speed of technology adoption by consumers, who knows what the media outlook will be like in the next few years. Accordingly, hospital CEOs and marketers must also recognize these changes in the market and consumer behavior quickly in order to build market-driven strategic marketing plans.

By having a thorough understanding of your box and what’s in it, you can create meaningful campaigns, using the right mix of traditional and non-traditional tactics and brand distribution strategies, to drive volume and heighten patient and physician loyalty.

So the next time you’re working on your strategic marketing and public relations initiatives, look inside the box for non-traditional ideas that, if implemented correctly, can pay off in a big way

Abe Kasbo is the CEO of Verasoni Worldwide, a marketing and public relations firm in Montclair, NJ. Kasbo is also an adjunct instructor in health care management in the Graduate Department of Public and Healthcare Administration at Seton Hall University. He can be reached at kasbo@verasoni.com.

By: Abe Kasbo
Successful brands have some common elements. They are usually recognizable; consumers have a distinct feeling or affinity about what these brands represent to them. And consumers tend to internalize the brand. Internalizing the brand simply means that consumers tell themselves stories, or rationalizing, about why they are loyal to the brand.

But to get to that point takes a carefully planned and executed brand distribution plan. This takes the business message and gets it out to your customers. In the process, you must carefully consider your media from traditional advertising, direct mail, to the internet.

In overall planning and budgeting, plan on the plan and not just the logo and taglines. After all, what good is a great business message if you have no way of getting it out to your customers and creating value for your business?