Derek Rudnak | Director of Marketing | MediPurpose

Another year is about to end, and another is about to begin…and what a year it’s been at MediPurpose!

As at most small companies—and especially a medical product company such as ours—every day is exhilarating, and 2011 was especially filled with many achievements, milestones and notable events. Here are some of the top headlines at MediPurpose in 2011:

MediPurpose goes virtual: We started the year by formally announcing that we had become a virtual company. Although we still maintain physical offices in Singapore, London and Atlanta, we made ambitious and active strides with embracing online technology to both reduce our operational expenses and to expand our sales and marketing teams.

MediPurpose honors long-service employees: Later in January, we honored three MediPurpose employees that have faithfully served our company for at least five years.

MediPurpose launches MediPlus Advanced Wound Care Products and gets 510(k): In March, we announced our latest medical product offering, MediPlus. In September, we received U.S. FDA 510(k) clearance for our soon-to-be launched Silver (Ag) Foam dressings. In October, MediPlus became available for distribution, and earlier this month, we expanded our independent sales force.

New team members and promotions: In June, we welcomed Shelly Philips to our sales team. Later than month, Michael Riddle was promoted to Vice President–Advanced Wound Care, and Derek Rudnak became the Director of Marketing.

SurgiLance gets a new look: Our flagship product, the SurgiLance safety lancet, got new packaging in November. Along with adoption of new GTIN bar code standards, packaging language was expanded into 11 translations.

Giving back: MediPurpose recognizes its responsibility to be a socially responsible company, and it demonstrated this by donating medical products to (among others) the American Diabetes Association and the Summer Medical Institute, as well as a cash donation to the Rally Foundation.

And as sensational as 2011 was, just wait for 2012. We’ve got some very exciting announcements that we’ll be making early in the year.

All of us at MediPurpose wish you happy holidays and a safe and prosperous new year!

Let’s be honest: Very few of us had childhood dreams of becoming part of medical product industry. If you had asked me as a kid if I thought I’d be working in this business, I’d probably roll my eyes and laugh. Medical products? Nah, I had more romantic notions of becoming a professional baseball player or writing for Rolling Stone magazine.

Before I became a medical product marketer (which I am now), I was a medical product copywriter. Before that, I was a hospital and healthcare marcom copywriter. Before that, I was a general copywriter that made the successful jump from old school “traditional”/print media to “new” media and online. And before that, I was a journalist. And even before all of that, I was an aspiring academic with fantasies of being a scholar of media and culture. Of course, all of it was prefaced with the dreams I had as a kid.

Some people never stop pursuing those childhood dreams…even if that means a nightmarish adult reality. Comedian Louis CK is a shining example. After graduating high school in the early 1980s, he went after one specific goal: to become a successful comedian. And, as a result, like so many others that share that dream, he toiled in obscurity for decades in that ironically lonely and depressing world of standup comedy.

Skip ahead to last week when he announced that his self-produced and distributed online video netted him more than $200,000 in profit in less than four days. As impressive as the profits might be, what’s perhaps more intriguing is how he made it.

By his own admission, Louis CK could have made even more money had he produced and distributed the video through the traditional path of working with a major entertainment company. But that would have resulted in even more overhead—which gets passed on to the customer—and the sticky tangle of digital rights management (DRM) and DVD region complications (which provides even more hassles for customers).

Instead, he kept it painfully simple: Go to his remarkably low-tech Website, pay $5 (through PayPal), and either stream the video or download it and do whatever you want with it (e.g., burn your own DVD, watch it on your computer). Compare that to what a commercial DVD costs and the process of having to acquire it.

But back to the headline: What can we in the medical product business learn from Louis CK?

Being Good is Not Good Enough

Louis CK is widely regarded as one of the best comedians today. However, it took him years to rise above a very crowded and competitive market.

Whether it’s comedy, baseball players or medical devices, being “good” is never enough. For every good—great, even—comedian, athlete or medical device out there, there are countless others that are just as good, if not better.

For medical products, the basic algebra of having low prices and high quality is not enough to succeed. Rather, it requires tremendous belief in your product just to get it brought to market, and then even more dedication to improve it and market it so that it even has a chance of being competitive. And then there’s the intangibles, the x factors, the je nais se quoi, luck, etc.

You’ve Got to be Innovative in Your Marketing And Distribution

Nothing stays the same. Whomever—or whatever—is “good” today is mediocre tomorrow. Best practices for marketing and distribution can quickly become obsolete.

The music industry—which, due to increasingly vertical integration in the past couple decades—controls the distribution of most other complementary entertainment products, such as DVDs. Because it failed to recognize and embrace radical shifts in how entertainment is distributed channels (e.g., peer-to-peer file sharing, Napster, torrents, the ease of duplicating DVDs), it watched its profits erode—and perhaps worse, its power. This is precisely what Louis CK exploited with his relatively marginal investment in a $34,000 Website that is the portal to his video.

Twenty years ago, MediPurpose didn’t even exist. As illustrated in its success stories, ten years ago, it was a struggling startup in Singapore that would soon find a niche in the U.S. medical product market for its new SurgiLance safety lancet (a niche opened, in part, because of the 2000 U.S. Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act). The company leveraged emerging online communications with an aggressive independent sales force and got itself on the map.

Ten years later, it’s a profitable company that has since introduced two successful product lines—babyLance infant heelsticks and MediPlus Advanced Wound Care—with zero guarantees that it will be here in 10 years unless it remains dedicated to finding innovative solutions for its manufacturing, distribution, marketing and new business development.

You’ve Got to Put the Customer First

Good economy or not, people value their money, and they don’t want to feel ripped off. They also don’t want to be inconvenienced. Louis CK’s innovative use of the Internet to deliver product drastically simplified the process of acquiring (and using) a product and significantly reduced the cost—and his customers responded in kind.

MediPurpose is constantly striving to find ways to keep the customer first—which creates unique challenges because we not only offer several distinct products and services, but also because our customers are diverse. Along with the obvious “end users” (e.g., patients, nurses, doctors), we also serve our distribution partners, inventors and innovators, manufacturers and others.

You’ve Got to Embrace Online Communications

Social media, online/inbound marketing, etc. are not trends, fads or options. On the other hand, traditional marketing techniques—print advertising and direct mail, for instance—are both expensive and very low ROI.

Louis CK more than demonstrated that it no longer requires cutting-edge Websites or bloated marketing campaigns to move product.

For medical product companies, the same holds true. Although the diminished importance and value of print advertising might seem the obvious example, trade shows are perhaps an even better example.

Even to just attend a show as a non-exhibitor to “walk the halls” is expensive. Factor in airfare, hotels, per diems, entry fees and the lost productivity from not being in the office, and the cost to attend can quickly becoming a pricy investment. With a tight economy and the impact of inexpensive global communications (e.g., Websites, Skype, GoToMeeting, LinkedIn), and it’s not hard to understand why trade show attendance seems lower (in general) or scaled down (by exhibitors).

There is perhaps more than can be extrapolated from Louis CK’s recent success, but the point should be clear: Being and staying competitive in business is not for the uninspired and unimaginative. The keys for success are always out there; the challenge is with finding and knowing how to use them. 

We are giving away three free Amazon Kindle e-book readers in daily drawings at the NANN 27th Annual Conference in Orlando, September 14–16!

A drawing will be held at the end of the opening reception on Wednesday (5:30–7:30 p.m.) and after each exhibit hall session on Thursday and Friday (10 a.m.–2 p.m.). Winners will be able to claim their prizes immediately.

To earn entry into the drawings, registered NANN attendees must complete a brief written or video evaluation of the babyLance® infant heel incision device at MediPurpose’s exhibitor booth 436.

See you there, and good luck!

Bonus: Mention this blog and get an extra entry!

Last month, we unveiled the logo for our new advanced wound care product line, MediPlus™.

In the news release that I wrote, I mentioned a link to an “official list of print and Web equivalents” for the new logo. If you visit the page, you’ll see the official colors for all of our logos, including the corporate logo for MediPurpose® and the brand logos for SurgiLance® safety lancets and babyLance® infant heel incision devices.

Somebody that saw that page recently asked me about the differences between RGB, CMYK, Hex and Pantone. You might have never heard of some or all of these terms, but they are worth understanding, especially if you are responsible for your medical device company’s marketing and branding.

Along with your own print and online documents, encouraging color consistency from everybody at your medical device company is a key technique to ensuring consistency with your brand awareness.

When talking about "color" in regards to printers or online displays, there are several ways to ensure consistency, especially since the "red" you see on your screen might not exactly what's on mine—or what you might expect to come out of a printer. These are called “color systems” or “color models.” Among the most common are RGB, CMYK, Hex and Pantone.

What is Pantone CMS?

The Pantone® CMS (color matching system) is a standardized list of virtually every color imaginable. It's what professional printers often use to keep things consistent.

For instance, if I had a printer print our logo on a business card, I would tell them to make the red part of the logo "Pantone 206c." That helps differentiate from other shades or red, such as the red that is used by The University of Georgia.

What are RGB and CMYK?

Most devices that create color images—televisions, inkjet printers, etc.—typically use red, green and blue to create the image; this color model is known as RGB (for Red, Green and Blue). Colors are identified by specific combinations of RGB (on a scale of 0–255) are used.

There’s another similar color model called CMYK (for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK), which is a more sophisticated "four-color process" that is often used by professional printers. Similar to RGB, colors are identified by specific combinations of CMYK (with percentages of 0–100 percent).

What is “Hex” Color?

Websites that use HTML (HyperText Markup Language, which is the predominant coding language for Web pages) have their own system of color standardization, which is known as "hexadecimal," or just "hex," because it uses a combination of six letters and numbers to identify specific colors and shades. Colors are identified by specific combinations of letters A–G and numbers 0–9.

So, What Color is “MediPurpose® Red”?

Depending on the color system or model, there are several ways to identify the red in our logo:

• Pantone: Pantone 206
• RGB: R (211) | G (5) | B (71) •
• CMYK: C (1%) | M (94%) | Y (45%) | K (1%) •
• Hex: #D30547

See It For Yourself!

One of the easiest ways to experiment with color models is to open a Microsoft Word document. Write some sample text and select it; then use the "color" sliders to choose a palette (e.g., RGB, CMYK). The above image is what the RGB sliders look like in Word for Mac; the selected color is "babyLance® green."

Once you have a color selected in a particular color model, you can see its equivalent in another model by selecting another palette.

There are many converters available online, e.g., RGB to HEX, or CMYK to RGB; one is the Pantone Color Cross Reference. Design software such as Adobe Photoshop also includes palettes that can be used with the eyedropper tool to pinpoint your medical device company’s colors.

After you’ve identified your company’s colors, it’s best to draft a “style guide” that should in your company’s internal communication governance, as well as a public resource for distributors and other clients.

Earlier this month, we published Success Stories in Medical Device Innovation: SurgiLance® Safety Lancets. This is the first of a series of success stories (and more detailed, complimentary case studies) that we’ll be publishing on a regular basis in coming months.

Our inaugural success story is a brief examination of the launch of the medical device that put MediPurpose on the map: the SurgiLance® safety lancet. Check it out; you’ll hopefully find parallels to the launch of your first medical invention or the challenges you might be currently facing if you are in a pre-launch stage. (If you find them, please don’t hesitate to share them with us!).

As the co-author and co-editor of that success story and others that are in the works, I am in a privileged position to get first-person accounts of what it takes to be truly successful in business. For instance, with this success story, my research primarily consisted of a series of interviews with MediPurpose’s founder and CEO Patrick Yi.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I often find myself in awe of people like Patrick and the leadership of the Medical Device Innovation and Medical Product Distribution teams at MediPurpose. In fact, I find it invigorating to be inspired by people that demonstrate the kind of intelligence and ambition it takes to be successful in this business.

I’m also not ashamed to admit that I’m sometimes intimidated by Patrick and his team. I’m certainly humbled. Don’t get me wrong: Everybody is very nice at MediPurpose. However, my educational and professional background is in communications, not business management, healthcare, or engineering. Despite my confidence in my abilities and my track record of success in marketing and communications, I very much feel like an eager college student listening to a wise professor when I work with Patrick and his teams.

Yet, as I’ve learned more about Patrick, the more I’ve discovered that I am not that much different than him.

Like Patrick, I already had a thriving career in other industries before I started focusing on healthcare and medical. Like Patrick, I migrated into healthcare and medical because an intriguing opportunity presented itself. Moreover, like Patrick, I’ve remained—and thrived—in healthcare and medical because it’s a challenging environment that requires one to consistently put their skills—and intelligence and ambition—to a major test.

One key difference between Patrick and me is that Patrick’s pre-medical device career was in developing and marketing new businesses. Another difference, of course, is that he launched a very successful line of medical devices and a medical product company.

At times while listening to him recount the story of launching his medical device—or while crafting his story in the aforementioned success story—I realize that I’m doing much more than my job. I’m essentially getting an accelerated education in business…and arguably, an on-the-job MBA.

Think about it: What is an MBA degree? According to Wikipedia, “the core courses in the MBA program are designed to introduce students to the various areas of business such as accounting, marketing, human resources, operations management, etc.”

Now look again at the success story (or sign-up to be notified when further success stories and related case studies are published). For that matter, look at some of the blogs written by Patrick or Randy Prather or Mark Stoppenbach.

What you are looking at is an invaluable collection of content that examine those “areas of business”—but focused on medical devices and medical products, and written by true “masters” of this kind of business.

In time, this Website will become much more than a collection of blogs, case studies, promotional pages, etc. Instead, think of it as a textbook, a manual and a road map for how to get your medical device funded, developed, launched and distributed—or most simply, how to become a successful medical device entrepreneur.

There’s no tuition fee either!

Casual filmgoers, professional film critics, and academic film professors often have markedly different perspectives on what makes "great" cinema, but there are a handful of films—and filmmakers—in which there is often little debate about their greatness. Francis Ford Coppola is certainly one of those filmmakers, and The Godfather is certainly one of those films.

Yet, despite producing one of film history's most fabled movies in 1973, by the end of the decade, Coppola would be facing complete financial, professional and personal devastation while making what would become yet another of the virtually indisputable cinematic masterpieces, 1979's Apocalypse Now.

To make a long story very short, the film's allegory of a man's descent into madness as he attempts to track another man (that also descended into madness) ultimately became an accurate description of the filmmaker and his film's development and production. (In fact, an award-winning film about the film—Heart of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse—was released in 1991).

Medical device inventors and innovators can probably very easily relate to Coppola's saga. After all, how many of you have invested or risked innumerable hours and dollars—as well your reputation and sanity—while trying to create, launch or distribute a medical product that you believe in as much as Coppola believed in his film?

Like a film, a developing medical product needs support at all phases, from conception and pre-production phases through development and distribution. This is why MediPurpose has expanded its scope to provide funding and distribution services for medical device inventors and medical product innovators.

Although the process is by no means willy-nilly—in fact, there's a carefully structured methodology for selecting and developing the "right" medical product—it is led by somebody (company founder Patrick Yi) that has experienced many of the challenges (and risks) that you have faced.

Pretty arrogant headline, huh? Actually, it's not meant to be. Although I take pride in my writing style and the ideas that I share, one of primary reasons to read this blog is because of the immediate access it provides to Patrick Yi and Randy Prather.

As part of social media, blogs are distinctive because they are living documents. Perhaps because they are often seem off-site from a company's Website, there's a more casual, open and personal nature to blog content.

Furthermore, since most blog sites (including this one) allow and encourage comments from the readers, there's a unique opportunity to interact with the authors. Think about your favorite informational resources-newspapers, books, magazines, etc.—and then think about how little contact you have with the author. Now think about a blog...such as this one.

For medical device inventors and medical product innovators, you have a very special opportunity to engage with two people that truly know what they are talking about, want to share it with you, and perhaps just as importantly, want you to share your ideas, thoughts and experiences with them.

Again, that might some a bit arrogant, and perhaps it is. Then again, there's something to be said about interacting with people that have proven success in something, especially when it's accomplished without somebody else's game plan or blueprint—which is very much the MediPurpose story.

Whether it was 10 years ago when Patrick Yi was launching the company (despite not having any experience in medical device development or distribution) or today as he attempts to leverage MediPurpose's experience to help new medical device inventors and existing medical product companies enter medical product markets, there's a fierce entrepreneurial and experimental spirit in everything he does.

The Geoffrey Canada Analogy

Last weekend, I watched a 60 Minutes segment on Geoffrey Canada. Ever heard of him? Interesting guy.

Four years ago, 60 Minutes visited this remarkably innovative educator at his charter school in the economically challenged section of New York City, Harlem. The story's angle was about how Canada opened his school with a promise to the community: Give him your kids, let him call the shots, and he'll make sure they get into college.

Naturally, there were plenty of skeptics. But four years later, not only has Canada's educational system and style proven to be highly effective, but now the government is trying to determine if it can be duplicated and done elsewhere.

The looming question is if the same exact educational model would work in other similar urban areas—or if perhaps there's an "x factor" that is special to Canada?

Time will tell. I wouldn't want to discourage anybody from attempting to duplicate the model, but my hunch is that there's something special about what Canada brings to the table. The "model" for his school isn't a model as much as it's the guy's vision and passion. It's also his leadership style. As he expressed in the interview, he expects everybody in his school-students, teachers, administrators, parents-to be "all hands on deck." There is zero tolerance for those that aren't.

Relating Canada to Patrick and Randy

Having spent many hours working with Patrick Yi—or people that he has carefully selected for his team, such as Randy Prather or Mark Stoppenbach—I can relate to what it must be like to collaborate with Geoffrey Canada.

Although Patrick is the undisputed leader, he also encourages (if not expects) the same commitment and innovative solutions that he gives to MediPurpose and its tradition of success. That's the "x factor" of which I speak.

It's also the value of reading and engaging with this blog. Although it's not quite the same as sitting at a desk with a Patrick or a Randy, it's as good as it gets, especially if you are an ambitious medical device innovator or company that is seeking guidance, wisdom and community.

Before I became a professional in marketing and communications, I had the raw childhood dream of becoming a writer.

I didn't know what kind of writer—my fantasies flickered between wanting to write horror novels and being a music critic or a sports journalist. Nonetheless, I knew that I had a passion for writing.

As I got older, I realized that my passion was less for writing—after all, there's nothing particularly rewarding about the act of scrawling letters on a piece of paper or typing keys on a keyboard—and more for exploring, testing and perfecting the creation and delivery of descriptive and informative ideas—better known as communications.

You don't need to be a professional communicator to appreciate where I am going with this point: You (as a medical product innovator) and I (as a marketing and communications specialist) share quite a bit in common. We both:

• Have a profound need to use our minds to solve problems.

• Are constantly experimenting with the applications of technology to satisfy those problems.

• Want to get our unique ideas distributed and embraced on a mass scale, often by a targeted audience.

This blog will hopefully prove to be an intersection for our paths.

Along with exploring medical device innovation and medical product development and distribution, it will also explore tangential but related topics about medical product marketing and communications.

Ultimately, we want this blog to be a forum for medical device innovators to find information, ask and answer questions, and access and provide support. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed so you can stay up to date!