Recently, Jonathan Richman, author of the popular blog, Dose of Digital, gave me a copy of a new book written by his Bridge Worldwide colleague Bob Gilbreath.  Titled, “The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with Your Customers by Marketing with Meaning,” the book outlines a new strategy (Marketing with Meaning) marketers can use to transform empty and meaningless marketing speak into initiatives that add value to people’s lives .  Gilbreath believes — when used appropriately — digital and social media are tools marketers can use to market with meaning.

Richman and Gilbreath were kind enough to answer a few of my questions about the book and what the Marketing with Meaning movement means for health marketers.  Read on for more. (Also, be sure read a manifesto published on the ChangeThis Website focusing on the Marketing with Meaning concept.)

What is Marketing with Meaning? Why did you come up with this marketing strategy?

The idea was actually born about three years ago when Bob was asked by a client at Johnson & Johnson to give a keynote speech for a group of hospital marketing personnel. We had just launched a program for its surgical device division that provided open and honest information for people who were considering weight loss surgery. We found thousands of people per week visiting the site shortly after its launch, and had begun receiving strong feedback that the site was helping people get the information they needed to make the important decision whether or not to undergo the procedure. Upon reflection, Bob realized that the power of this program was that it was marketing that people choose to engage with, and marketing that itself added value to people’s lives. And it was a common thread with a lot of the other work that Bridge Worldwide does as a digital and relationship marketing agency, such as a program for Abbott Nutrition that helps people with diabetes learn to eat better and exercise more. Bob named this concept “Marketing with Meaning” in his keynote speech, and in the three years since then we have been refining the idea internally and building it into our work for many clients. Now, with the launch of the book, The Next Evolution of Marketing: Connect with your Customers by Marketing with Meaning we are practicing the concept ourselves—essentially sharing our secret sauce with the world in hopes of changing the marketing and advertising world for the better.

Please tell us — in 140 characters or less — why health marketers should care about the Marketing with Meaning concept.

Healthcare cos. create products that prevent, treat & cure disease. That means everything to people. Shouldn’t their marketing mean as much?

Health is clearly a very personal and important subject for many. Do you believe it is even MORE important for health marketers to “Market with Meaning?”

We think that it is more important for healthcare marketers to be practicing Marketing with Meaning than any other group of marketers. Period. We say this for two reasons. First, no one’s products are more meaningful than a healthcare company’s. They are preventing, treating, and curing disease; they are giving people back their good health. That is a very meaningful role to play in someone’s life. Because they provide this, healthcare companies should be held in the highest regard, and yet, they’re held in the lowest regard just above “big oil” and tobacco companies. I think some of the marketing that the industry has done in the past (and I include some of the unscrupulous activities in this) have fueled this. If instead these companies marketing their products with a goal that the marketing itself must be as meaningful as their products, I think it’s a different story. There’s almost an obligation and expectation for healthcare companies to practice Marketing with Meaning. Some have tried a few things, but there’s still a very long way to go.

You mention cause marketing as one way that companies can begin to market with meaning. However, this marketing strategy has come under fire in recent years. What are some ways health companies and organizations can avoid the pitfalls and reap the rewards of cause marketing?

We believe that cause related marketing can be extremely powerful way for organizations to connect with their customers, as it appeals to their innate and increasing desire to make the world around them a better place. In fact, even with the recession taking a toll on customers’ bank accounts, cause related marketing continues to be very effective. That said, it is often practiced poorly by marketers. Many simply jump on the bandwagon of a cause without ensuring that the brand is closely tied to it, resulting in customers who either fail to recognize the company’s impact or mentally write it off as blatant self-promotion. The most successful companies in cause related marketing do five things right.

1. Make sure the cause supports you back – To make an impact, marketers must ensure that the non-profit cause is also investing in making your efforts successful. For example, entrants in the annual American Express Members Project openly ask their members to vote for them on the American Express site and use its cards to help them secure funding.
2. Commit for the long haul – Consumers see through one-time tie-ins, but when brands keep coming back to the same cause over weeks and years they begin to closely associate the two and give much more loyalty to the brands that commit. This also allows great efficiency for the marketing team, too, as an entirely new program does not have to be created and negotiated from scratch each year.
3. Provide a benefit without purchase – The greatest cause marketing doesn’t just add a donation for each product purchased, which is usually only a few cents per product. Instead, the brand shows that it is committed and giving, which in turn drives greater customer trust and sales.
4. Make the cause part of your company culture – Cause related marketing can also pay dividends for employee satisfaction and company culture. After all, employees, too, want to make the world a better place. By getting employees involved your marketing team will make better decisions about how to involve the cause, and customers just might notice that the company truly believes.
5. Create a new cause – A rare few companies have gone beyond joining up with an existing non-profit and have actually created causes on their own. Dove created The Campaign for Real Beauty to support global girl self-esteem, and Haagen-Dazs created a cause around saving honey bees. Both efforts were very close to what the brands stand for, and successfully have driven sales gains.

Clearly companies under fire (like managed care organizations and drug firms) can benefit from the Marketing with Meaning approach. However, what’s to prevent these companies from engaging in what I call “shallow marketing” — i.e., engaging in marketing campaigns that are at odds with their business practices?

There’s not much to prevent companies from engaging in these practices. Certainly, the massive fines that many companies have paid in the past two years aren’t doing much to deter companies, as some of the same names come up over and over. Theoretically, there are laws to prevent some of the worst of the worst behavior, but when you can sell billions by engaging in “shallow marketing” and only be fined millions, for some directors it’s an easy call. Perhaps fortunately, this isn’t proving to be a winning long-term strategy, as many healthcare companies find themselves lumped in among the least trusted industries.

Even for more scrupulous, but short-term focused, marketing such as DTC TV, the impact is decreasing. There are formulas that brand managers can count on and know that for every million impressions, they’ll get X number of new prescriptions. Of course, this only works to a point and the effectiveness (if it ever really was) continues to plummet. It’s a short-term strategy that doesn’t improve trust or improve public perception. It’s definitely not Marketing with Meaning. Marketing with Meaning can have short-term impact, as many of the examples in the book will show, but there’s also a common thread in that the companies that have truly embraced this concept also find themselves in a much stronger position for the future. Trying to find companies that have really put Marketing with Meaning into practice and found themselves out of business a couple years later isn’t going to be a fruitful effort. Finding those companies that have gone for the “quick hit,” short-term impact and who now don’t have a “long term” would be much simpler.

Can health organizations undergoing great internal upheaval, such as massive layoffs, employ Marketing with Meaning concepts to bolster employees’ morale and productivity?

Absolutely. In fact, this is another benefit and a great way to position Marketing with Meaning. We’ve both said that we didn’t get into this business to make 30-second TV ads. We thought we could make a difference. We’re not too idealistic to think that our work curing cancer or anything, but we know that we can help create programs that, when paired with a good product, will make the product better. That’s a reason to come to work every day. If you feel that you’re making a difference, you’ll get out of bed a bit faster each day. If you’re dreading doing the same thing and following the same script with the same predictable results, you might not even bother getting out of bed. Doing Marketing with Meaning requires more thought, more consideration, and certainly more determination than following the usual path. You’ll be doing new things and pushing ideas that will be counter to what the company has done before. In most cases, you’ll be fighting some battles to get your idea approved, but you’ll be fighting for something you believe in and that’s what gets people motivated.

You’ve created an online community dedicated to accelerating the Marketing with Meaning movement. What are you trying to achieve with the community and why should busy marketers join it?

Again, we’re trying to practice Marketing with Meaning in everything we do to support the book launch and our company’s business. A big opportunity we see is to help marketers make the shift to this new, meaningful model. Reading a book or hearing a keynote speech is great, but the hard work is in actually making change in a company that has been doing “traditional” marketing for many years. One of our solutions for this problem was to create an online community where believers in the concept can come together and help each other directly. Our community offers discussion boards, case studies, and blog posts. Anyone can join, but we ask each new member to commit to doing something to actively support and promote the cause. It is very, very early but we are encouraged by the number and diversity of members so far.

This is your chance to focus on any burning issues you feel have not been addressed by my previous questions. Have at it.

This should do it!

Read More from Walking the Path:

1. Tools You Can Use: Planning, Approving and Evaluating a Pharmaceutical Social Media Marketing Initiative
2. Disease versus Illness: Two Different Marketing Approaches
3. Introducing #mustshare: An Easy Way to Highlight and Save Great Healthcare Marketing Communications Content