So here’s the list I came up with after thinking about the best & worst new product launches I’ve been involved in and what I’ve learned from them.

1) Ask yourself: How is marketing viewed within the organization?  As a function, like HR or Facilities Management or as a business leader and decision maker.
2) No navel gazing. Always look for new information & opinions outside your organization/team/corporation.

3) Marketing partnerships should be viewed like a marriage, and don’t forget the pre-nup.
4) Set metrics/benchmarks for success up front and leave them set.  If your product doesn’t measure up, either go back and fix the problem area and test again or scrap it before you end up putting good money after bad.  Don’t let your desire to launch override common sense benchmarks for success.
5) Marketing is about finding an unmet consumer/customer/client need and addressing that need in a new/interesting/innovative way.  It’s not about engineering coming up with some cool technology that is then handed over to marketing to ‘find a home/market’ to sell it.
6) Partner with Finance.  If marketing is to be viewed as a serious partner in the business then you need to have strong arguments of which financial information is extremely important.  Work with finance and share your point of view with them and vice versa.
7) Contingency plan like your life depends on it, because sometimes it will, when you least expect it.  Put some “A” players on the “B” team to show how serious you are about contingency planning.
Plan your exits as well as your entries.  When a new product comes to market there is usually another one that is replaced.  Ensure that you’ve put in a program to clear out old stock to make room for new.
9) Always remember you are building a brand.  Everyone is an ambassador for your brand, from CEO to administrative assistants, accountants, customer service reps.  Everyone should be aware of who you are or aspire to be as a brand and how that translates in their particular role.
10) Celebrate success.  Launching products is not easy, there are lots of obstacles but remember that people like to feel appreciated and a little thank-you, public recognition for a job well done, small cash reward or gift card goes a long way.

So imagine my glee when I saw the following commercial on a major TV network during prime time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEbRxTOyGf0

At first he didn’t understand why I was so happy. But then I explained my thinking for the reason behind this commercial, funded by the Corn Refiners Association. If there wasn’t a growing negative backlash against HFCS there would be no need for them to advertise. It’s because so many people are talking about HFCS and actively avoiding consuming it that they have had to resort to these tactics. Now I’m not saying that these ads won’t be effective to convince some people that HFCS is fine. But for others, who are more skeptical, this will convince them exactly the opposite. Think big tobacco.

And, of course, there are now some great spoofs popping up on youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRicUInkYQM&eurl=http://www.cheeseslave.com/2008/12/12/videos-high-fructose-corn-syrup-commercial-spoofs/&feature=player_embedded

These regulations would most likely be similar to what is currently required in the pharmaceutical industry.

My guess is that it’s only a matter of time before the medical device industry is required to follow FDA regulations when it comes to DTC ads. Unless the medical device industry (AdvaMed) took a stronger stance and convinces legislators that self-regulation will work.

This could potentially avoid some of the inevitable delays and incremental costs that going through FDA approvals for advertising would add. I didn’t find AdvaMed’s responses to the Senate Panel to be particularly convincing and I’m on their side.

That reminds me of another industry in a similar situation in the early 90’s. Faced with the possibility of a wide array of federal, state and local government regulations around battery recycling programs, the 5 leading industry players got together and formed a non-profit trade association, the Portable Recyclable Battery Association or PRBA.

At the time I was working for Sanyo Energy USA Corp, one of the five companies that established the PRBA, so I had an insider’s view on how they convinced legislators they were serious about getting things done. They created regional pilot programs and then a national recycling program that the manufacturers agreed to abide by instead of waiting for the government to decide. And it worked.

In my opinion it’s not a matter of if, but when, the government will require medical device manufacturers to follow FDA guidelines for DTC advertising.

How the medical device industry decides to handle this issue could have long-term affects for marketers, their budgets and the timelines required to launch new DTC programs.

My first experience with this ‘industry’ was in 1991 while I was living in San Diego, CA. Two female colleagues at the office went to Tijuana, Mexico. One woman went for a rhinoplasty and the other for breast augmentation; it being much cheaper for these surgeries over the border than in the US. At the time it wasn’t called medical tourism, in fact, a few of my colleagues called it crazy, if I’m not mistaken.

A lot has changed since then and an entire industry has emerged, from Mexico and Costa Rica to India, Singapore, Thailand and Hungary. Just a quick google search for medical tourism brings up 1.7 million results.

As you know when an industry develops enough to be recognized as a viable business opportunity, entrepreneurs, marketers and researchers try to estimate the size of the prize and the reasons behind consumer interest. McKinsey recently published an article, as well as Deloitte, another consultancy, making predictions about the medical travel market. But their calculations on the size of the market were remarkably different.

So I decided to ask Josef Woodman for his opinion. He spent over 3 years researching his book and I thought he’d be a good a resource.

Woodman’s response to my question about why the market size numbers differed was as follows:

“First, the McKinsey report is spectacularly flawed, a view you will find shared by nearly everyone, pro or con, in the medical travel and global healthcare community. In brief, the report so drastically limited the definition of medical traveler as to render it nearly meaningless. According to author Paul Mango, who delivered the report’s findings earlier this year at a medical travel conference in Las Vegas, McKinsey excluded “contiguous border travel,” such as cross-border travel from US to Mexico (some 40,000 medical travelers annually), Indonesia to Singapore (some 100,000), Indonesia to Malaysia (+/-60,000), Cambodia & Laos to Bangkok, et al. McKinsey also excluded all cosmetic surgery, including bariatrics.”

“Inversely, the Deloitte Touche study, released less than a week later, cited 700,000+ healthcare consumers from the US alone crossing borders for medical treatment. This number is wildly high. A simple calculation, applying the number of total international beds available to medical travelers in a given year, will reveal the gross inaccuracies of these data.”

The industry will continue to grow as medical travel companies try to woo a certain type of consumer. These consumers are people willing to take the risk of going overseas for medical procedures, while at the same time take full advantage of the cost savings. Until employers and insurance companies get more involved in this business and offer it as part of the employee benefits package, it will remain a small but growing business opportunity.

You might think this is far off into the future but there are some significant stirrings happening right now. One example is from an unnamed company North Carolina paying for an employee to travel to India’s Wockhart Hospital for hip-replacement surgery. Another example from The Economist explains how Hannaford’s, a New England grocery store chain, is picking up the entire tab (surgery, accommodation, transportation) for an employee’s medical travel to Singapore.

The quality of this research often provides richer insights into what people do, rather than simply what they say in a focus group in an unfamiliar setting.

Maren says, “On-Site has developed a new cyber segmentation based on cyber literacy, not demographics. We found that age is not what determines your level of comfort with online tools, it’s your level of cyber literacy. Many Boomers have become ‘Zoomers’, people who are comfortable with online tools, but other Boomers have given up with technology.”

Watch the Youtube clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLs8BxNpd1o

Since being exposed to her work on the difference between Boomers and Zoomers, I’ve been thinking about how important it is for health & wellness companies marketing to the Boomer generation (78 million Americans) to understand the difference between these two groups and to choose the appropriate messaging and media for each.

With a huge wave of up-and-coming Boomers hitting the half-century mark, someone turns 50 in America every 8 seconds, there is obviously going to be a slew of new products and services to accommodate them in the next phase of their lives.

A quick check on the advertisements on AARP Healthy Living section serves up a Kellogg’s^TM Live Bright ^TM Brain Health Bars advertisement and an ad link to Oral Longevity, an initiative between the American Dental Assocation and GlaxoSmithKline promoting good oral healthcare habits to older Americans.  The former ad appears to target Boomers leaning towards prevention and willing to try new products that may well serve these interests.  The latter ad appears to speak in a more traditional style educating and advising older Americans about good habits for oral care.  Each one served up on the AARP site but with distinctive styles addressing different audiences.

So it may be wise for us marketers to remember that just because someone was born between 1946 and 1964 doesn’t mean they should all be considered one huge target market. It’s not the python that swallowed the Volkswagen. And this is where it becomes interesting.

The challenge for marketers is going to be as Boomers mature we are able to identify and understand the needs of the various sub-groups within the 78 million. They see themselves as a sub-group of one, with a desire to be targetted individually not as one of 78 million.

Even though there are many high-tech tools available to us now, it won’t be worth the effort using these tools if the Boomer on the receiving end is closed to that style of message or media.