A lot of the talk these days is that the end is coming for the newspaper industry.  It seems like just about every day I am hearing about another newspaper that is closing its doors after serving communities for 50 plus years.  Being that I have grown up, in what use to be a top 10 DMA, I turned to Detroit News and Detroit Free Press to see what they are doing to weather the storm.  After close examination it seems like there isn’t even a storm for them to weather.  They have reinvented themselves to stay ahead of the ever-changing world of print.  They have created multiple platforms for you to get your daily news:  home delivery, newsstand, online, as well as an electronic edition. An even more exciting way to get the news is on e-reader.  They have changed the delivery days, but still give you access no matter what.  In addition to having an outstanding news product they have fantastic reporters that win Pulitzer Prizes.  The paper is evolving all around from reporting to delivery structure.  They have created a model that is well ahead of the curve and that other papers across the nation will soon take notice. How is your hometown paper weathering the storm?

I’ve been joining a lot of social networks for a while now and developed a handful of them. LinkedIn, Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace, Delicious, Digg, etc., the list goes on. If you’re like me, you’d like to have one universal remote control that can operate all of your entertainment at once.  Check out Flock and Minggl:

A web browser (powered by the same people who created FireFox) built for the networking gurus in us that can view all  of our friends’ activities, status, pics, videos, etc. Like iGoogle, you can also stream in RSS and news feeds, mail, share your stuff, even blog straight from Flock.

It’s an add-on to your IE or FireFox browser, but like Flock, you can view all of your friends’ activities and status in one place. You can also update your status on all of your profiles with one click.

Like any online tools, they’re not perfect, but what do you expect from an ever changing platform. It’s just exciting to see tools made with the user’s behavior in mind. If you know other must have networking tools, please share.

We at Brogan & Partners have decided not to join the social media hysteria over the swine flu. 10,000 Tweets per hour is enough already. So we’re keeping this short and sweet. Our message:

* Don’t panic. Your anxiety over this virus can be attributed to the viral effects of social media which is likely more of a pandemic than the swine flu. (Our sister company, Ignite Social Media, can attest to that.)

* Get your info from the CDC and WHO. Don’t waste your time with random non-experts.

* Do what your mother told you when you were five. “Wash your hands!” “Cover your nose and mouth when you cough!” And please stay home if you’re sick.

That’s it. We’re a healthcare marketing firm, not healthcare clinicians. But it’s simple common sense that will keep you safe from this deadly virus and its viral social media effects. (I’d ask for your comments, but we’re doing our best not to contribute to the hysteria…)

Cartoon credit: Andrew Long

We’ve all heard about the recent buzz around social media and healthcare - perhaps the best example being the hysterectomy that was tweeted from the OR not too long ago. But I think one of the coolest ideas was conceived of by the Imperial College London (and reported in CNN March 30, 2009, “Can Second Life help teach doctors to treat patients?“) This university has developed a kind of souped-up “Operation” game (OK, I’m showing my age) that allows, even requires, medical students to participate in patient care through Second Life - from handwashing and other protocols through navigating surgeries! Complete with warning flags and comments and moderated by a professor, this virtual world is training a new generation of doctors; a generation that cut its teeth on new media (a great example of teaching to different learning styles for those educators in the crowd).

It will be interesting to see what happens as these new physicians enter into the ranks of hospitals and other healthcare institutions - entities that have, for good reason, been slow to embrace new technologies at the heart of their marketing efforts. Questions about privacy and patient records, distractions on the job (jobs that we outsiders like to think require the utmost concentration and attention) are all very valid concerns that smart marketers are working to confront. For now, it is great to see the steps that the innovators are taking, and for this industry, one that is driven on the consumer side by emotion and a need for information - the perfect formula for social media marketing - it will be fun to see what these leaders think up next.

Many years ago, we created these ads for the Michigan Department of Community Health.  The ads were focused on women 40 and over and they were great.  We ran them for many years, turned them into posters and got great results.  In general, breast cancer awareness advertising was focused on women 40+.  This age group has the highest diagnosis of breast cancer so certainly from a targeting stand point, it made sense.

One month ago Deborah Wasserman Schultz introduce the EARLY Act.  The bill calls for $9 million dollars a year from 2010 to 2014 aimed at breast cancer education for women under 40 and physicians.  Each year over 10,000 women under 40 are diagnosed with breast cancer–many don’t realize they are at risk and therefore their cancers tend to be caught at a later stage.  In addition, breast cancer in younger women tends to be more aggressive.  1,000 of these women will die making breast cancer the leading cause of cancer death in women under 40.

I thank Deborah Wasserman Schultz, a fellow survivor, for bringing this to the table.  Pretty soon we may be seeing some new faces in breast cancer awareness advertising and my hope is that the faces will look more like these.

This is me–diagnosed at age 36

My friend Melissa–diagnosed at age 36

My friend Pam–diagnosed at age 34

We have all witnessed them.  Michael for Nike.  Jessica for ProActiv.  Tiger for Tag Heuer.  Bill for Jell-O.  Catherine for T-mobile.  Ellen for CoverGirl.  Yao Ming for Visa Check Card.  Penelope for L’Oreal. 

They can be pricy.  They can be risky.  So, one should ask before going down this road, “Should a celebrity endorsing my product or service even be an option?”    This can be looked at in many ways but one major consideration should be if this strategy positively impacts your target - or for those savvy marketing folks, PSYCHOGRAPHICS.  Certain segments of the population are more likely than others to be influenced by celebrity endorsements.  According to the market segmentation system Claritas PRIZM, one particular segment that stands out as a fan of this tactic is Bohemian Mix.  A little bit about them – they are college grads, drive Mini Coopers, shop at J-Crew, wear Pumas and use E*Trade.  Relatively speaking, they are not heavy users of traditional media so knowing this little tidbit about them is quite valuable.  But hold on Tyson Foods, they are also likely to be vegetarians.  If you can’t quite get enough of celebrity endorsements yourself, take this quiz and test your knowledge:

Celeb Endorsement Quiz

Monday’s New York Times included an article about a summer internship opportunity with Pizza Hut.  The position was for a summer Twintern.  That’s Twitter language for a person to Tweet 24/7 about how wonderful Pizza Hut is in its community, service, etc. 

The kicker is that job seekers are required to demonstrate their social media ability in a creative way.  Of course this got me thinking….hmmm…if I were a 20 something college student applying for this prestigous position how would I creatively show my social media prowess???  Well, instead of using too much of my own brain power, I took a quick poll of agency youngins and here are the top 5 ideas they provided:
1) Submit a YOUTUBE video resume using a Pizza skin as the core graphic.
2) Send resume via a Tweet but use Pizza in front key words (i.e. Pizzalicious, Pizzadiculous).
3) Have your Twitter followers Tweet your resume to Pizza Hut.
4) Submit your resume as a Tweet.
5) Via Twitter or YouTube or Facebook, provide a list of social media ideas that could be deployed over the summer for Pizza Hut.

It’s your turn…what other creative social media ideas can you come up with to help a college student a summer Twintern with Pizza Hut???  Send us your toughts.

The Detroit Lions unveiled their newly designed logo and uniforms to fans at Dunham’s sporting goods store Monday in Madison Heights. According to MLive.com, not many fans were impressed with it. They thought it wasn’t much of a change.

Any change in the Lions franchise seems to be a good change to me. I’m just glad they’re trying to make a difference from all angles. The logo seems stronger, edgier, more animated, more fierce, more vibrant, but still keeping it’s identity. If the Lion’s game changes as much as the logo did, it would be a huge difference. Having seen what the Pistons did to their logo redesign back in 1996, I’m glad they didn’t go all out. What do you think?

We just did a da Vinci robotic surgery campaign for a hospital client. If you’re in healthcare marketing, you know da Vinci isn’t new. Our client isn’t first in the market. But their da Vinci equipment is NEWER and thus, truly better. So our job was to find a way to communicate its superiority in a way lay people can grasp.

Without saying, “na na na na na, ours is better than yours…” we based the campaign on the differentiator of its ”High Definition” feature. We figured folks would get it, due to the HD buzz in the TV world.

50 da Vinci cases in one month is proof the da Vinci HD message is getting through. It reconfirms for me that you have to dig deep to find the meaningful differentiator. The    da Vinci people have a comprehensive marketing toolkit with gobs of nice stuff. But their generic messaging wouldn’t have worked for this client and this marketplace. It dawned on me that like HD da Vinci, we used HD healthcare marketing to define a clear benefit and help people see it without a blur.

Instead of fighting over which soft drink taste better - now they are fighting over advertising campaigns.  Gatorade (Pepsi owned) filed a lawsuit against PowerAde (Coca-Cola owned) this week.  Gatorade seems to feel they have a duty to protect the consumer against PowerAde’s claim in their recent ad campaign: “The complete sports drink.”  They’ve positioned themselves as “complete” because they’ve added two electrolytes – calcium and magnesium.  Gatorade’s case is that Coca-Cola doesn’t have any scientific facts supporting that the sports drink is actually “complete.”  Well Pepsi and Coke put your differences aside.  There’s always been room for the both of you.  All consumers have their own preference.  Me personally I like the both of you!  
I wonder what Vitamin Water has to say about all this?

Every agency has a formula for success.  They usually show it to you in a fancy chart in their pitches.  This is how and why we are better than the competitor – this amazing, brilliant formula.  To be honest, we have a formula.  But I recently realized that we may need to revise it.  Watch out Albert Einstein. 

My epiphany happened while I was previewing the new TV commercial we developed with the University of Toledo Medical Center.  I got goosebumps the first time, the second time, and still do after the 40th time. 

We did something right.  But why isn’t it always this way?  Because really, it wasn’t just us in this.  Leo Burnett once said “there is no such thing as a great advertising agency. There are, however, a few great clients.” No one says it more eloquently than Leo. 

Yeah, we can write an amazing strategy, we can develop emotionally appealing creative, but without a smart, solid client partnership we’ve got nothing.  So, I just want to give our clients at UTMC a little shout-out.  A good strategy, a good client, a good team.  There’s no better formula. 

Any math whizzes want to challenge me?

There are few things closer to my heart than college basketball. In college, I studied abroad in Australia and spent many afternoons skipping the beach to watch games on my computer instead. And I vowed never to leave the country in the spring again. You get the idea … I’m an avid fan. Being a UNC alum, I follow the Tar Heels religiously, watching as many games as my cable plan will allow. And I am not a minority … every Tar Heel fan I know is just as obsessed.

So when one of our agency partners, Scott Werner, suggested we make a wager on this year’s NCAA championship game between Carolina and Michigan State, Brogan’s North Carolina office said, “Bring it on!” We know our team’s abilities, we know what happened at Ford Field on December 3, 2008, and most importantly, we always back Roy and the Heels. The stakes: the losing office had to dress in the opposing team’s apparel while munching on that state’s most famous cuisine and donate a basket of goods to a shelter of the winner’s choosing. The results: Duh. The Heels trampled the Spartans, and our Birmingham, MI office donned Carolina blue while enjoying some North Carolina BBQ and Cheerwine. That doesn’t sound like they lost much, does it? Yeah, we don’t think so either.