My colleagues here at Seidler Bernstein know one of my dirty little secrets: I like to collect slogans from trucks and vans.
Okay, maybe it’s not all that sinister. More like a guilty pleasure. Because it’s fun for a brand strategist like me to see how some businesses summarize what they’re all about in one line. Really, those billboards rolling down the highway are in effect the front lines of Brand America. We’re constantly exposed to their messages.
There’s the local cement company whose trucks have emblazoned on their mixing drums, in all caps, DELIVERING VALUE. (I can see the supervisor every morning: “Hey, guys, we’re not just delivering cement here!”) Another company, can’t recall the name or the business, managed to cram several positioning statements into one line stretched across its tractor-trailers: The World Leader in Innovative Customer Satisfaction. (What makes satisfaction innovative?) My all-time favorite is from a produce supplier: “Innovating Asparagus,” complete with quotation marks as if someone had really said it. Either that or the phrase is code for something else entirely and I just completely missed it.
So I got a bit of a tingle on a recent morning commute when I found myself behind a sparkling white van for Stryker Corp., the orthopedic device manufacturer headquartered in Michigan but with offices in Hopkinton, Mass., as well. I noticed two things: A question on the back of the van, “Where Is Your Pain?” and a web address, aboutstryker.com. So of course I checked it out as soon as I got in the office.
The URL is for Stryker’s patient education/testimonial site — which includes a physician directory to point patients to surgeons who use Stryker implants — and is certainly not the first direct-to-consumer (DTC) site launched by a medical device company. There are plenty of other examples, including for Genzyme’s Seprafilm adhesion barrier, Smith & Nephew Endoscopy’s patient education site, or Cynosure’s DTC site for its Smartlipo laser alternative to liposuction. What feels different about the Stryker site is not the site itself, but the fact that there are vans out on the streets promoting it. And you know what? It kind of makes sense.
What about you? Should you and your products follow Stryker’s vans out of the operating room and onto the open road? Could you see a toy version of your device as part of a special Happy Meals promotion? Is there a billboard in your future? Write to me here on MassDevice of your experiences or your opinion. There are no right or wrong answers. Inquiring brand strategists want to know.
Rob Kinslow is vice president for strategic communications at Seidler Bernstein. A journalist by training and former president of the American Medical Writers Assn. in Boston, Rob gently guides companies through the often byzantine world of brand and message strategy. His work has been recognized by the American Hospital Assn., AMWA, Diagnostic Marketing Assn., the Healthcare Information Awards, Rx Club and others. An avid magician and musician, he is also a former three-term president of the International Brotherhood of Magicians in Boston.