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Better to brand the medical equipment or the profession?

Products use to be the final goal and brands use to be the media to put them closer to consumer. Today, brands are the final goal and products are the media to reach them. Consumers are looking for brands that have same or similar ways to interpret life. Brands that help them to give or find significance to their lives.

Don't treat your customers as product consumers or they will treat you as product seller, which means price seller.

Matias Gaviria, National Marketing Manager, Carulla Vivero S.A - January 30, 2006

Profession is a different entity, from product. How can profession be compared with product in terms of branding?

Meenu Bansal, Product Manager, Wallace - January 30, 2006

Branding for the mature market is extremely important, despite the current mythology that older consumers do not switch brands. The language a brand uses is one of the most sensitive issues and calling them 'old folks' and 'geezers' even in the context of the debate (which is obviously tongue in cheek) is unhelpful as it perpetuates this stereotype. The marketing profession should be tackling these entrenched attitudes as ageist assumptions will be their biggest battle in the future.

Jane Silk, Director, Brand Manners Limited - January 31, 2006

Lipitor....Viagra....Zocor...The list is endless for these blockbuster drugs. They are branded and are sold as a brand and not as drug categories.

Similarly in case of medical equipments, brands matter more than equipment or the profession. In this overcrowded market, the main differnetiating factor of the product will get lost if it is not highlighted. Branding the profession will give a generic look and feel to such innovations and differentiations. Thus, to highlight these advances in medical euipments, it is utmost necessary to position these differentiators in cutomer's mind. And clearly branding will speak out this differentiation to the final consumer.

Thus, even if a doctor recommends, say, hearing aid to a patient, patient will act as reverse influencer onto doctor to prescribe a differentiated product and may be the brand itself.

Thus, branding not only helps in communication differentiation, it actually influences the influencer.

Thus, in my opinion, Branding the equipment is more important than branding the profession.

Mohit Bahri, Student (Marketing), Symbiosis Institute of International Business, Pune, India - February 2, 2006

This is a great question on an issue that needs attention.

The problem is not to extoll the 'the uniqueness of the business or the product.' A hearing aid is a hearing aid to anyone who will need one. Quality will be a differentiator, yes, BUT the brand needs to empathize with the user (consumer/patient) at an ulterior level.

The current look and feel of these devises is a stigmatic magnet because of the way the product itself looks. They are UGLY!

A good branding approach is not to add a logo promoting a brand but to redesign the product in a branded manner which makes the user feel like a hip 'maturing' member of the social fabric as opposed to a sorry patient who has to wear an ugly looking prosthetic device. If this devices, looked like an iPod, the branding issue would be resolved automatically, while delivering on a secundary, yet very important core benefit to the consumer: his/her image and self esteem.

A deteriorating eyesight is a fact of life, but one can feel good and distingushed with a nicely designed pair of eyewear, same goes for this hearing aids... make a very neat chromed version... heck, even I might want to go deaf! and will certainly become loyal to the brand which provided the sensibly designed device.

Franz Schnaas, SPLACE Inter-notional - February 2, 2006

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