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Lately, I’ve been fielding questions from a number of young companies at various stages of business planning, fundraising, product development or commercialization. The founders/entrepreneurs usually express communication needs in terms of naming (company or product), logo design, generating awareness through press releases and, most gratifying to me, honing their messages. Another common thread is spending money wisely, since budget is limited (whose isn’t?).

When should we start thinking about names and logos? It’s good to have a company name from the get-go. It’s a rallying point for potential employees, customers, partners, collaborators, advisors and investors. Logos are a nice-to-have at this stage. I would save my money to have professionals develop a corporate identity system when there is adequate funding. A simple layout for critical items such as business cards, letterhead and PowerPoint templates will suffice for raising seed capital, planning the business or testing concepts. Focus on functionality. Product names can wait until you are ready to plan your first product launch—unless a good idea comes along serendipitously. I would advise spending a little money on trademark searches if you have a company or product name that you are planning to keep. It costs much more to undo later.

What about branding? Branding goes beyond names and logos, and it’s never too early to think about your corporate brand. In fact, this should go hand in hand with business planning, as you begin to define your vision for your company, the value your company will bring to your customers and other constituencies and how you want to conduct business. Sitting down with the stakeholders, if possible with a brand consultant, to articulate and map out your vision for your corporate brand will pay dividends many times over—but only if you do this when you feel you are ready and if you and your management team are willing to commit to following this road map. All of this will lay the foundation for developing the corporate identity system when the time comes.

What about press releases? Before sending out the first press release, take the time to think through a public relations plan. If you cannot afford the time or the resources to plan properly, it might be wise to wait. You don’t necessarily need a big and elaborate plan, but you do need to answer some simple questions (e.g., what do we want to accomplish with these press releases, who is our target audience) and some more elaborate ones (e.g., what are our key messages and what do we have to support and substantiate these messages). You’ll also need to have the basic elements in place—a media list, a press kit, internal FAQs for fielding questions, internal and external spokespeople and their respective roles, etc. Don’t shoot from the hip!

How much should we spend? How much to allocate to communications is a business decision. The important thing is to align budget with goals and expectations. Do a few things well if your budget is limited. If your budget does not allow you to hire professionals to do the job, at least recruit professionals to give you counsel and guidance. Correcting misperceptions is far more expensive than getting it done properly the first time.

The consumer decision journey, published in McKinsey Quarterly, challenges the traditional metaphor of the decision funnel and suggests a more complex model powered by (you guessed it) the exponential rise of new interactive communication channels and nuances in customer loyalty uncovered in a study of “almost 20,000 consumers across five industries and three continents.” For those of us who work primarily in the B-to-B realm, the new framework offers gems of ideas that we should consider as we develop our communication plans.

One important proposition of The consumer decision journey is that the decision process is not necessarily represented by a funnel, whereby purchasers narrow down their choices as they get close to the buying decision. Rather, as they start from their initial-consideration set (which is, largely, the fruit of investments in brand building), they are very likely to expand the number of brands being considered in the next, active-evaluation phase. The takeaway is that (a) brands cannot take their position in the initial-consideration set for granted and (b) there is an opportunity to interrupt the decision-making process even if your brand has not made it in the first cut. Whichever category your brand may fall into, the key is to be communicating with your target audience as they enter this next phase, with information that is relevant to the current business context. New regulatory or policy guidelines, current socioeconomic forces and competitive dynamics are just some of the factors that can change the decision-making dynamics. The consumer decision journey cites Hyundai’s offer to allow buyers to return their cars if they lose their jobs as an example of a game-changing tactic to break into the active-evaluation phase.

A second point that I gleaned from this article is how we may have to rethink peer groups. Healthcare professionals and scientists have always placed a great deal of weight on peer review and recommendations in purchasing decisions. Just as in the consumer world, new media that accelerate the dissemination of user experiences and opinions, both favorable and unfavorable, are amplifying this reliance on friends and colleagues. What is also interesting is that new media have leveled the playing field to the extent that they have given voice to more people—you don’t have to wait to post an opinion—and therefore the bar is lower for aspiring influencers or “experts.” A brand that is actively engaged in this open dialogue—as a participant, facilitator or sponsor—will improve its chance of being in front of the prospective customer when buying decisions are being shaped and, better yet, have a proactive role in shaping those decisions. Hint: Your communication plan had better have a strong Internet component.

A third takeaway for me is the identification of two types of customer loyalists: the true loyalists (what the article calls “active loyalists”) who will keep buying and recommending your brand and the “passive loyalists” who are staying with you out of inertia (e.g., a long-term purchasing contract) but can be coaxed into moving away from your brand. Clearly, the two distinct groups call for very different communication strategies.

GM’s decision to feature Chairman Ed Whitacre in advertising sparked some debate and numerous raised eyebrows in the advertising community. Advertising Age quoted several industry pundits, none of whom showed much enthusiasm for the concept of the executive spokesperson. It boiled down to four key reasons:

• The rising power of digital tomato throwers in this age of digital media
• Current social bias against senior executives
• Risk in associating the company with one person with no track record
• Difficulty in making an impact with a tired concept

All of this reminds me of one of my favorite quotes.

“If a client moans and groans, make his logo twice as big,
And if he is still refractory, show a picture of his factory,
But only in the dire cases, should you show the client’s faces.” David Ogilvy

Realistically, though, the chief executive—for public companies as well as startups—has always had a public role as a company spokesperson, even if few subjected themselves to advertising stardom. And, before the days of digital media, they were more able to select their audience as they directed their comments to specific groups such as the business and investment communities. So, for healthcare communication professionals today, it’s not a matter of whether or not we use the CEO as a spokesperson, but how best to deploy him or her for specific communication objectives.

• Defining a role: What is the most credible role for the chief executive? Should he/she be a product champion, like Fred Perdue, who made his chicken famous because of his distinct and befitting mannerisms? Can he/she play a credible role as a corporate visionary along the lines of Lee Iacocca or Richard Branson?
• The right media: While few can achieve stardom in 30- to 60-second commercials, most chief executives can find their voices in the host of other media options available today. Chief executives who are thought leaders but not necessarily charismatic public speakers like Steve Jobs can Twitter, blog or otherwise write commentaries. Many can be trained to become polished speakers in one-on-one interviews or panels.
• The message and living up to it. Today’s digital content “feast” breeds extremely discriminating audiences who need to be actively engaged with relevance, newsworthiness and the authenticity of the message and its delivery. Now more than ever, a combination of public skepticism as well as powerful archiving and, more important, search capabilities makes it easier for audiences to hold the spokesperson to his/her words.

Please post your comments and share your experience helping senior executives craft, deliver and manage their messages.

Since April this year, when the healthcare reform policy was announced, the Chinese government has spent 71.6 billion RMB on healthcare reform. Following is a snapshot of what is being reported in the Chinese media.

A focus on community health

In August, at the Work Group on Community Health convened in Xian, Minister of Health Chen Zhu announced that one of the near-term priorities is to build up the healthcare work force and, specifically, to train 160,000 community health workers by 2011. According to Minister Chen, by the end of 2008, a total of 7,232 community health centers and 21,895 community health stations had already been established, and this effectively covers 98 percent of all townships. In some areas, the community health facilities are meeting 30 percent of urgent care needs, providing much-needed relief to hospital urgent care departments. This relief is especially timely in light of other health crises such as those around infant formulas and swine flu. Minister Chen pointed out that there is still significant work to be done in building infrastructure. Aggressive goals for building the community health service system include the creation of 3,700 new and/or updated community service centers and 11,000 community health stations within three years; using government investment to move forward quickly in upgrading and standardizing the community health infrastructure; and a push toward uniformity in public health services. Minister Chen stressed the importance of local government in strengthening the public hospital system, building up the preventive health system and working with community health organizations in exploring the interface between health insurance and community health.

Note: Since China does not have a primary care or physician referral system, citizens can see any physician of their choice. The lack of healthcare facilities in less populated areas, combined with this “open” system, has resulted in congestion at big hospitals. In this context, “community health” refers to making healthcare more accessible to people living in smaller cities or more rural areas and relieving the congestion at big hospitals.

Getting to the root of the problem at big hospitals

In urban areas, one key area for reform is the contentious hospital business model, which relies on revenue from pharmaceuticals and medical device use to subsidize traditionally low service fees for physicians, and which is a major source of patient dissatisfaction, conflicts between physicians and patients, and outright malpractice. Toward this end, Opinions and Directions for Public Hospital Reform, to be published by the Ministry of Health in September, will launch a pilot program at about 100 hospitals in 12 cities. Significantly, best practices that evolve from programs such as these may well be written into the law to ensure implementation.

On a more tactical front, hospitals are also working to implement a heretofore nonexistent appointment system for outpatient visits. In August, the Ministry of Health published a “solicitation of public opinion” as a first step toward developing and implementing an appointment system, and in this solicitation, the Ministry stated the goal of having an appointment system in place at all Category IIIA hospitals by October. It further stipulated that hospitals may not increase charges for the appointment service without permission and may not work with intermediary organizations to implement the appointment system. Additionally, the solicitation asks hospitals to come up with a standard system for making specialists available to patients. (One of the issues with the current system, or lack of it, is that patients have to go to hospitals very early in the morning to get in line for a specialist of their choice. Depending on how hospitals assign patients to specialists, some patients may learn that they are not able to see the specialist of their choice only after they have spent hours waiting.) Lastly, to avoid fraud and scalping, the Ministry wants to see ways for verifying patient identity incorporated into the system. Meantime, trial appointment systems at hospitals in major cities such as Beijing have met with mixed responses.