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Branding and EmpowermentBy Betsy Raymond Stevenson, posted August 3, 2011
Branding and Empowerment A large part of our work this year at RaymondStevenson has been advising and assisting companies in creating their brands. With biotech clients this has been a fresh exercise in determining ‘who are we and how will we convey ourselves?’ With a pharmaceutical client, the goal has been to define ‘who are we now?’ following acquisitions and a renewed focus on innovation. Last week, I attended ExL Pharma’s 7th Annual Healthcare PR & Communications Summit. If you haven’t ever gone, I recommend it. Managing Director Bryon Main and his team knock themselves out to provide worthwhile topics and speakers and an enjoyable experience overall. The Summit will be the source for a number of posts here on Snapshot, beginning today with a message from Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Principal Deputy Director Ileana Arias. CDC’s goal, Arias says, is to empower people by providing them with the knowledge, tools, knowhow and wherewithal to take care of their health. Knowledge + Tools + Knowhow + Wherewithal = Empowerment What does empowerment have to do with your organization’s brand? A lot, if your goal is a brand that:
What makes a brand great? The best brands are about: The correct answer? c. your stakeholders Why? Because we relate best to people. Not things. Not organizations. Our strongest feelings are for ourselves and our families and for people like us. Communication versus Communications: What your Organization can Learn from SongwritingBy Betsy Raymond Stevenson, posted April 25, 2011
Making your messages sing. Some weeks ago, I acted on one of my New Year’s resolutions, taking my first songwriting lesson with Bill Pere, President of the Connecticut Songwriters Association and a former researcher at Pfizer. Communication is central to songwriting and Bill’s advice to musicians is just as applicable to organizations. Adapting a quote from Bill’s Songcrafters’ Coloring Book: [Organizations] that mistake expression for communication are the ones with poor or, at best, lukewarm relationships with the groups that matter to them the most. Hmmm, does this describe the pharmaceutical industry? An industry bewildered by its negative reputation when it has done so much to restore the health and improve the lives of millions of people? Perhaps, if industry messaging was more like songwriting, relationships – and reputations – would improve. Is your company communicating or expressing itself? Expression is the act of sharing your own thoughts and feelings without considering what happens to those messages after you put them out. Or, to put it another way, “I expressed myself, so now you must understand me.” A classic example of an expressive message used by the pharmaceutical industry is: “It costs more than a billion dollars to bring you a new medicine (so you must understand why we charge what we do). Logical as this is, it has done little to change public opinion on drug pricing. By Betsy Raymond Stevenson, posted March 21, 2011
@Brian Solis, “Defining the Convergence of Media and Influence” In the latest part of his interview series Revolution, Brian Solis interviews Technorati Media CEO Richard Jalichandra on their annual ‘State of the Blogosphere’ report, which has found that “Blogs are not only thriving, they’re challenging traditional media in trust and influence.” |
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