Marketing for the Cure...and Sales

Posted by Jack Derby, Head Coach on Wed, Apr 16, 2014

A friend of mine, David Meerman Scott, the definitive guru on Inbound Marketing and the author of the best selling The New Rules of PR & Marketing, just wrote The Marketing of the Moon.  Published by MIT Press, this fascinating book unfolds the story behind the story of the close collaboration of corporate America with the highest officials of government, with the leaders of the best technical universities and research centers and with the senior management of NASA to land a person on the moon.  

By the time John Kennedy announced in January, 1961 before a joint session of Congress the challenge that we would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, detailed marketing and financial partnerships had long been struck with corporations like Disney and General Foods (just to name two) to market such diverse products such as TomorrowLand and Tang  All of this was part of the detailed marketing and sales campaigns that would be required to market the critical importance of space exploration to the American public.  As a result, over the decade, the government would end up spending hundreds of billions fueling NASA and diverting those dollars away from other programs.  And, all through those years, the American people remained highly supportive of the importance of this immense task.  By July, 1969, 94% of Americans were tuned into their televisions watching the first landing on the moon.  Space exploration was on the forefront of everyone's dreams after a decade of hard work, countless innovations and consistent marketing by the government and thousands of businesses as to the critical nature of "Winning the race to the moon".

The results of the NASA initiative and its marketing were spectacular:

  • We landed on the moon first. We won the race!
  • The government collaborated with tens of thousands of companies
  • We created hundreds of thousands of jobs from production to sales
  • We invented countless new technologies
  • And, through all of this, the American public was highly supportive 

cancer 1 resized 600As I was reading the book for the second time last weekend, I thought about what it would take if we were to mount an equally aggressive campaign to cure cancer in the next ten years.  I realize that there  are hundreds of types of cancers, and I have a basic understanding of the biology involved, but I can't believe that the basic science is that much more difficult than space exploration and real rocket science.  Especially if we were to put a primary focus of the federal government, coupled with the collaboration and coordination of corporate and university research, and fueled by billions of dollars into a clinical thrust to cure cancer.  As difficult as this clinical initiative sounds, it would also require an intensive, long term marketing campaign focused on education. Education for prevention, education for care and education to insure a decade-long prioritization of this initiative even when the disappointments and delays, that will occur, will raise questions as to the long term vision of the cure.

Cancer!  

It's that one word that leaves all of us breathless.  It makes our heart skip a beat.  It shocks us into trying to figure out just what do we say next to the person who has just stated that they or a friend or a member of their family has been affected. Every one of us has been touched, many of us multiple times, by this insidious series of diseases. And yet, decades later, the incidence of most cancers becomes worse and more people are affected than ever before even with progressive announcements here and there about "advances".  Advances are good, but my attitude is... "Why not a cure?"

Why not just declare a war on cancer!

Take the hundreds of billions of dollars that we waste on propping up worthless government programs, subsidies that are tax schemes at best and foreign governments who have failed to democratize.  Redirect that money to a war fought on the battlegrounds of concentrated research and applied cures.  

I'm a pragmatist and well realize what a significant undertaking this would be and all of the political infighting that will occur since everyone will want to do this...as long as it doesn't affect the funding of their own sacred programs in their own districts and states.  What it would take is immense courage and the strength of leadership of the Eisenhower-Kennedy-Johnson types of presidents to bulldoze ahead on this.  But the reality of it all, is that it could be done.

If The One Simple Thing of the NASA space program was to "Put a Man on the Moon in this Decade", the OST for this initiative would be to "Cure Cancer Now".  

In all of this, the underlying science would need significant breakthroughs just as were required in inventions such as the double thruster rocket engines that created the Apollo program.  Given the years and probably a decade of research and application work that would need to be done especially across a wide swath of multiple cancers, the selling and marketing of Curing Cancer Now would be equally critical. This initiative would need to go far beyond pink ribbons inspired by the wonderful work accomplished by the Komen Foundation and would need to include massive education across a number of years and to all walks of life partially for the sheer education of how to prevent or deter various forms of cancers.  But the marketing would also need to serve as a constant reminder of the country's focus to undertake this program...and not others.  Similar in scope to not only "Marketing the Moon" which was not openly campaigned, it would need to be more directed, more open and more forceful similar to Johnson's Great Society and his "War on Poverty" and his equally strong "Guns for Butter" initiatives.  Both worked, by the way and changed the face of America forever!

So, as we work our way through another super-busy week with overloaded schedules, just take a minute or two to think about how you and I and thousands of other professionals really could change the world by curing cancer not in our lifetime, but in ten years!

 Jack Derby 

Head Coach
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Tags: sales and marketing best practices, marketing, marketing for the cure, cure cancer now