DTC Perspectives September 2008 x 47

Marketing with WomenShifting a Marketing Model Towards Wellness

Women are transforming today’s marketplace. And with $3 trillion in consumer spending power and a family or business to care for, women represent a key ally and marketing partner –

that is if your communications engage and work with women.By kelley Connors

So, who are we, the 21st Century women? And how can you reach us most effectively, not only about your products, but our desire for wellness? We’re your sister, daughter, mother or grandmother. There are millions of today’s women like me out there, across all cultures and you can reach us by going beyond traditional loyalty strategies like incentives and coupons. Give us a vested interest in seeing your brand thrive in our time-constrained, multi-dimensional lives; and market with us, not to us, so you can help us shape a more integrated approach to physical, mental and emotional health… all the while helping you go beyond loyalty strategies to brand attachment.

The key is the four C’s: Coaching, Conversation, Connection, and Charisma.

Coaching: Giving women wellness tools

Women value a personal and interactive experience that shows you care about our health and are also interested in our wellness or well-being. From a marketing perspective, this is a critical first step in behavior change. From smoking, osteoporosis, high blood pressure and heart disease to obesity and weight management, behavior change tools are key to improving our health.

By providing a coaching service that reinforces self-management and personal responsibility, obstacles to self-efficacy are identified and talked about openly. Alli’s “Are You Ready” question puts control of her life and weight loss in each woman’s own hands, empowering her with accountability. This can be an effective strategy to initiate long term behavior change, and provided a leadership position from which others to follow and expand upon.

Studies show that many women today prefer to make lifestyle changes when there is a “fun” component included. Dr. Michelle Segar, a research investigator at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan and founder of a women’s lifestyle coaching methodology called EssentialSteps, has done extensive research showing that women will sustain health behavior changes if they do so to enhance their life and not simply to lose weight.

Conversations with real women

As real women, we have broadened the definition of health and are looking for companies to help us achieve a full life as our life stages change. Since health and wellness searches are the number one reason we go online, you can be a

October 29, 2008

HALL OF FAME

MODULE 1Consumer Choice and the Changing

Regulatory Environment

MODULE 2Consumer Choice and the Impact on

Media Mix

MODULE 3Consumer Choice

and the Social Networking Dilemma

October 30, 2008

MODULE 4Consumer Choice

and Brand Engagement

MODULE 5Consumer Choice

and New Competitors

MODULE 6Consumer Choice

and Improving Both Health Outcomes

and the Bottom Line

AGENDA AT A GLANCE

October 29 - 30, 2008 • Westminster Hotel, Livingston NJ

This new modular format ensures you receive meaningful answers to the most pressing questions. Registered attendees can now pre-submit questions to individual speakers, who will build responses and analysis directly into the presentations. Each agenda segment will be moderated by an industry expert to ensure the real concerns and barriers are uncovered and resolved.

DTC in the Era of Consumer Choice

Featuring a New Issue-Focused Format

Register Now Online at:www.dtcperspectives.com under the Conferences Tab or by calling 973-377-2106 or use the full brochure at the center of this issue.

Modules take place in consecutive order.Registrants will attend all modules.

48 x DTC Perspectives September 2008

How can you help put together a community that supports, inspires, teaches, challenges, empowers, us with tools for wellness that take your brand to the next level? If so, you win. Provide us with the tools and we’ll fuel our own community if we see a need for one.

Charisma with real women

Charisma is more than a person or a personality. It’s credibility and conviction wrapped into a compelling brand message. With courage and authenticity, Sharon Blynn, the founder of Bald is Beautiful and ovarian cancer survivor, did not follow a script to share her message on Bristol-Myers Squibb’s “Together We Can Prevail” television spot – this came from her own diary that she lived with day in and day out of treatment sessions with healthcare professionals. It’s a great example of how we as women can bring a component of our own journey to the brands and conveys a spirit of wellness and mindfulness, just the same.

What’s more, Blynn’s conviction, in an understated way, adds credibility in an age when we as women have learned to be skeptical of the traditional disease awareness campaign.

Women as brand advocates

While medical research advances and new findings from the Society for Women’s Health Research identify sex-based biological differences between men and women, we know that researchers and marketers will help add years to our lives.

By marketing new therapies with us, instead of to us, we believe we can keep your product in the periphery of our lives, and therefore, add life to our years. ■

Kelley Connors is president of KC Healthcare Communications LLC and founder of WomensWELLth, a health and wellness marketing and PR studio focused on women . The studio embraces a variety of proprietary methodologies to connect women with brands . One of the firm’s signature tools, called Real Women on Health!, gives healthcare and wellness companies access to women’s views and voices on health issues of concern today . The company’s web site can be found at www .womenswellth .com and the phone number is (203) 855-0477 .

valuable part of our communities that are focused on stress management, weight loss and mindfulness, including yoga and meditation. For marketers with a cardiovascular therapeutic, this may mean incorporating a stress management component to a heart disease awareness campaign for working women. knowing that women, even younger women, can reduce their risk of heart disease with stress management is a valuable service within a brand marketing model. This also broadens advocacy and media partnership opportunities beyond health to include lifestyle, sports, stress and adventure.

If you want to serve us, you’ll need to become a facilitator of these more holistic conversations that are highly relevant to our desire to live a full life, no matter what condition we are coping with. However, instead of sending out one-way messages, you need to facilitate the conversation, in a way that is transparent, authentic and helpful and allows you to learn more about what wellness really means and how it will impact our lives in a tangible way.

Connect: emotional benefits of wellness

While starting a two-way dialogue is the first step in reaching us with a more integrated approach to health, the next is connecting with us by meeting a real need. To succeed at this, all you need to do is ask us about our diverse interests and know what our cultural, spiritual and psychological barriers to action might be. We love to talk and assuming you engage with us authentically and include our friends, we’ll tell you more than you’d ever need to know to market your brands.

In the product field, Boniva connects by meeting a real need: once-a-month dosing. By not having to dose every day, we are not constantly confronted with evidence of physical decline or advancing age. And, there are definite emotional benefits to each and every daughter who has enjoyed growing up with an active, healthy and adventurous mother. We all want more quality time together to enhance our most important relationships and improve our lives.

Add the punch of endorsement from a real baby boomer in Sally Field who projects the image of young after 50. We all saw her as a growing, changing actress and she has gotten older and better. Maybe we can get older and better, too, as you connect us to avenues of wellness that will help build your brand.

MARKETING ‘WITH’ WOMEN

Studies show that many women today prefer to make

lifestyle changes when there is a “fun” component included.

Nielsen Monitor-Plus™, a service of The Nielsen Company, tracks your advertising andthe competition to give you the most complete picture of your media effectiveness.

Monitor-Plus tracks 18 different media to give you:

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Learn more: www.nielsen.com

We know where your competitorsare advertising—Do you?