RHetoric

Periods of uncertainty, upheaval, and irrational behavior create wide openings for a new generation of innovators to stop in and assume leadership positions. Here are our top five ways to run with the bulls in 2009:

1. Get Positioned for a Recovery: Periods of economic turmoil create rare opportunity for new brands to emerge and for existing brands to outmaneuver the competition. If there was ever a time to invest in high-impact PR and marketing, this is it. Use this time to upgrade your messaging, revamp Web sites and marketing collateral, connect with the press and analysts, and apply for prestigious awards.
2. Stimulate the Government: Washington is rolling out a welcome mat to anyone with credible ideas on stimulating the economy. Tech and telecom companies that sell to healthcare, government, and education will find friendly audiences in D.C. and should be preparing white papers, talking with the press, and briefing think tanks to influence decision making. Doing so will position you well when stimulus money begins flowing to state governments in 2009 and 2010.
3. Share Your Vision for Healthcare Reform: Perhaps the last bastion of our economy to take advantage of IT-driven productivity gains, healthcare is moving to center stage. If this is your market, now is the time to articulate a vision for empowering consumers, increasing safety, controlling costs, and emphasizing prevention and wellness. Communicate your visionary messages through executive speaking placements, media interviews, bylines, white papers, and Web content.
4. Place Your Best Customers in Front: The flight to safety is causing business buyers to avoid risk at all costs. What better way to prove ROI than to have your best customers publicize the results they achieved using your products and services? Use 2009 to nominate customers for awards, prepare case studies and testimonials, and capture video clips of your customers raving about the value you deliver.
5. Socialize Your Content: As traditional print media continue to struggle, new media and social networks will become increasingly influential to your customers in 2009. Feed the beast with Web-ready content such as video, blogs, optimized press releases, and interactive tools, such as an ROI calculator.

As the late entrepreneur Keith Grinstein noted during the dot-com bust, “Swim between the waves… and you will be carried farther and faster in the long run.”

Two news stories on parallel tracks this week that, if we can get them to cross connect, will create some really powerful momentum behind health I.T…

The first is a report about the frightening slowdown in U.S. productivity growth - the key measure of a country’s average standard of living. We are at a point today where it will take 52 years for our standard of living to double. According to the report’s authors, nearly all economists agree that the only real way out of this economic mess in the long term is to get productivity growth back up in a big way. With bailouts causing the national debt to lurch above $10 trillion, stimulating productivity is the only real method to grow ourselves out of this mess (versus allowing it collapse upon us, thereby blowing up our currency).

The second is the news about Obama’s stimulus package, and his intensifying focus on our nation’s I.T. infrastructure. His plan will devote billions to upgrading and extending our nation’s broadband infrastructure, picking up hospitals and schools along the way. While some think of infrastructure as roads and bridges, there is growing consensus that investments in I.T. infrastructure can return more long term value for the economy and productivity.

The intersection of these two stories is where health I.T. should be jumping off the page. Of all the economic sectors to have huge untapped productivity gains, healthcare is it. Of all the sectors that have the potential to bankrupt our federal government, healthcare is at the top of the list. There simply couldn’t be a more urgent time to devote the smartest minds and federal resources to modernizing our healthcare system with I.T.

Earlier this year, when I heard about Nike dismissing Arien O’Connell’s winning time in the San Francisco Nike Women’s Marathon because she wasn’t part of the “elite” runners, I was appalled.  Certainly Nike wouldn’t do that!  Not the encourager of average women everywhere to get out of bed, strap on some Nikes and “just do it.”  I couldn’t imagine that a company that seemed so nimble with its advertising and PR efforts would commit a publicity crime as disheartening as robbing an average 24-year-old teacher of her rightful trophy!

I wasn’t alone in this thinking, and after a deafening public outcry, Nike has since declared O’Connell a winner, though having her share the title with the previously declared elite winner.

San Francisco Chronicle writer C.W. Nevius put it best in writing, “So what could have been a lovely Cinderella story about a young woman rising above her expectations in a race that bills itself as all about empowering women turned into a strict the-rules-are-the-rules edict.”

What did impress me was the quick thinking, if opportunistic, response of Nike competitor Reebok.  Reebok showed up at O’Connell’s classroom bearing gifts of a years worth of running shoes, a $2,500 donation for her classroom, t-shirts for the students and a trophy for O’Connell.

Kudos to Reebok for thinking quickly and recognizing an opportunity to make the best of Nike’s SNAFU.  The trophy inscription: “Winner and Heroine of Non-Elite Runners Everywhere.”  Well-played, Reebok.

And last place goes to Nike.