This week’s announcement that Merck is closing its research lab here in Cambridge, Mass., is a close-to-home reminder that hard times are still very much upon us. In the device world, budgets have been trimmed and head counts reduced. Customers are delaying or scaling back new purchases, especially for capital equipment. Physician interaction guidelines have been tightened. So … are you still having fun? Before you grab a life preserver and head for the ocean, here are seven reasons to stay with medical device marketing, despite the heady allure of, say, the oil industry.

1. You’re the first to know. How often have you held forth at a family cookout or “diagnosed” a friend’s mysterious ailment because you’ve got the inside scoop on something as arcane as hip arthroscopy or pulsed-dye cosmetic lasers? We tend to forget how cool our technologies sound to ordinary people.
2. You get to fly in an airplane. Thanks to the global nature of medical advances, device marketers travel the world speaking to colleagues, healthcare professionals and the big, burly guys standing at exhibit hall entrances. C’mon, admit it — you feel like a grown-up passing through all those airports, don’t you?
3. Frequent flyer miles. See #2.
4. It improves your vocabulary. Toss terms like “duodenum,” “anterior cruciate ligament” or “percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty” into conversations and watch the eyebrows go up. If you’re asked if you’ve ever been on Jeopardy, just smile knowingly.
5. You become a better patient. There’s something to be said for talking to so many physicians over the years. Not only do you learn what makes them tick, you learn what makes them talk — and that makes you a more inquisitive, less intimidated patient. You and your family benefit.
6. It can touch your life. Sometimes we benefit from the very technologies we tout. When I had a spinal fusion not long ago, I was happy to hear that my neurosurgeon would be implanting my client’s best-in-class allografts as I requested — and he was happy to hear that another of my clients had just launched a new spinal product he’d been anticipating.
7. It’s still a growth industry. The device industry is the very essence of innovation and is one of our nation’s true economic engines. No surprise, then, that the medical device industry is growing faster than the pharmaceutical industry these days. And did you know that one out of every 10 med device exports from the U.S. comes from Massachusetts? Mass. med devices rock!

And how about this: We help people get better. Other than being a medical researcher or a health care provider, there are few professions that help get as many lifesaving and life-enhancing technologies where they’ll do the most good — to the patients who really need them.

Of course, the ugly truth of medical device marketing is that it’s not for the squeamish. If you tire of constantly figuring out new ways to get busy people to stop and listen; if you don’t like translating engineer-speak from the R&D department into plain English (or solid medical-ese); if the sight of surgeons training in cadaver labs turns your stomach, then medical device marketing probably isn’t for you.

But then, you wouldn’t be nearly as interesting at those summer cookouts, now would you?

Rob Kinslow, vice president of strategic communications at SeidlerBernstein, oversees the quality and accuracy of branding and message strategy for the company’s clients. He makes it a point to know everything about clients’ business, products and market, right down to the smallest detail. He’s worked with clients including Bayer, Boston Scientific, Genzyme and Millipore and has won awards from the Biomedical Marketing Assn., the Rx Club, the American Medical Writers Assn. and others.