Marketing with Meaning Still Means You're Selling Something [1]
Submitted by Diane Farsetta [2] on
The WPP Group [3]'s online advertising firm Bridge Worldwide offers its clients what it calls "marketing with meaning [4]." For ConAgra [5], the firm created the "Start Making Choices" website [6], which "conveys nutrition, exercise and other well-being tips from cardiologist James Rippe ... as it weaves in messages and sponsorship from the company's Healthy Choice, Eggbeaters, Hunt's, Orville Redenbacher and Pam brands." To promote Abbott Laboratories [7]' Glucerna brand products for diabetics, Bridge created a "Diabetes Control for Life" program. The program website [8] offers food and health tips, which Bridge says help "participants lose weight and have better blood-sugar management," while "Glucerna product consumption increases ninefold." Using a similar approach, Johnson & Johnson [9] "has funded what it calls the world's largest database on children's sleep," which just happens to "point out to parents that giving their babies a bath before bedtime helps get them to sleep (which doesn't hurt the world's largest purveyor of baby bath soap)."