valerie s hart: business & marketing strategy, storyteller, problem solver

vshart — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 01:05:00 +0000

The COMPREHENSIVE CARE CENTER,

Tennessee’s Primary Clinic for People with HIV/AIDS and a Center of Excellence

Moves into Vanderbilt Health at 100 Oaks Center

Expanded Quarters Enables CCC

“Our First Patient from 1994 is still Our First Patient at Our New Location”

October 4, 2010, Nashville, Tennessee: The Comprehensive Care Center (CCC), Tennessee’s oldest and largest clinic serving people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) has moved into almost 24,000 square feet of brand new space at Vanderbilt Health 100 Oaks.

The CCC has been nationally recognized since its inception in 1994 for developing systems that give patients with HIV/AIDS the best chance for positive health outcomes. Through innovative and personalized disease management, the CCC has prevented — in almost every case — transmission of the AIDS virus from HIV-positive pregnant women to their babies during or following delivery.

The new location, in the office tower on the south side of the former mall near the theater, also will house the clinical research programs of the Vanderbilt AIDS Center and the Nashville Pharmacy which specializes in HIV therapy.

With the release of the new antiretroviral drugs in 1996, the CCC’s treatment focus has evolved from managing the pain and advancing complications of AIDS to helping patients control HIV infection while living out their lives as active and productive members of society.

“We’re all surprised and delighted with the longevity and opportunity to build health that these new drugs provide,” said Stephen Raffanti, M.D., MPH, the CCC’s founder and chief medical officer, and associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt. “But this also increases the need to continue to provide highly specialized and expensive care for our patients on an ongoing basis. And that is getting more difficult for a small, stand-alone facility, like ours. So we welcome this expanded relationship with Vanderbilt,” Raffanti said.

This phenomenon will be underscored on the first day of operations at the CCC’s new facility as their first patient from 1994 will also be their first appointment at the new location. “That’s what’s so great about this new arrangement,” said Roshanda Johnson, MBA, the CCC’s Administrative Director. “We’re taking AIDS treatment to the next level by combining the recognized expertise in patient care resources of Vanderbilt with the mission driven performance of the CCC. So our patients can expect to benefit from state of the art technology and patient care systems and still retain the special relationship they have with their providers at the CCC,” Johnson said.

Currently the CCC provides care for more than 2,800 patients in Nashville and through satellite clinics in Cookeville, Columbia and Springfield.

Since its beginning over sixteen years ago as a collaboration between Nashville’s hospitals, business community and Vanderbilt University, the Center has served over 7,400 patients and their families.

The relocation also will further relationships with other AIDS organizations, including Nashville CARES, as well as the city and state health departments, to reduce the number of new HIV infections. About 400 new patients are enrolled annually at the CCC.

About The Comprehensive Care Center

Established in 1994, the Comprehensive Care Center (CCC) is the largest and most successful HIV/AIDS primary care clinic in Tennessee. This private, non-profit agency provides the most expert, state-of-the-art, cost-effective medical care and support services for People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Dedicated to advancing and coordinating care, research and treatment of people living with HIV/AIDS the CCC offers individuals, who frequently have no other health care alternatives, dignity, compassion, and hope; and we help patients and those who care for them access related medical and support services. For more information or to make a donation please visit our website at http://www.compclinic.org/ or our page on the Giving Matters website.

Tennessee Repertory Theatre’s Ingram New Works Lab gave this playwright a “leg up”!

vshart — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 19:11:51 +0000

I’ve been a Resident Playwright in this program since September and it has been unbelievably fantastic! It’s been one of the best writing experiences I’ve ever had and my play has benefited in innumerable ways. Come hear it read on May 4th at Nashville Children’s Theater by a fantastic cast and capably directed by Tenn Rep’s Lauren Shouse. Meantime you can read my article (see page 19) about the whole experience here that came out in Tennessee Writer’s Alliance’s quarterly newsletter.

Thank you Martha R. Ingram, who’s endowed this invaluable program!

My Marketing Guru = William Strunk, Jr. (with editorial aid from E.B.White)!

vshart — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:01:49 +0000

I’ve recently completed several marketing communications assignments that were also tremendous fun, almost like play. Part of that playfulness for me is feeling free and comfortable in the task at hand. This lead me to wonder about how this developed in me, which got me considering when I actually started to “learn” marketing, and by “learn” I really mean: when did this sense of how to craft persuasive messages become less about thinking and more about reflexive, muscle memory?

As I noodled this over I realized that the little marketing flames in my mind were not ignited in the first technical writing class I took in grad school (the first time around) nor were they kindled when I was the bumbling, journeyman account officer for my first real ad agency gig in Colorado. It was waaay before that – I was a high school freshman and had picked up The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. & E.B. White, hoping to crib some mnemonic ideas for some bad grammatical habits before the PSATs . In that slender collection of rules and principles were the keys to the marketing kingdom; especially the second section: “Elementary Principles of Composition”. Therein lies much of marketing communication’s discipline, framed to look merely like standard writing guidelines.

All this nostalgia for The First Law of Sequence of Tense has risen like a Godzilla of sourdough because I’ve been thinking about this construct of marketing as storytelling; in that viewfinder Strunk’s principles fairly leap out and scream: good communication tells a story. Period!

So I’ve decided to take this clunky, little theory about Strunk as my marketing guru a little further – i.e. push the metaphor until it pops like – things that pop – and actually translate Strunk’s rules into their marketing analogues. There’s ten of them so this is post #1 of 10:

Choose a suitable design and hold to it

This principle is all about positioning – the position of a (pick one): company, product, service, is the combined result desired from all the messaging, an ersatz suitable design (aka goal) for all the forms of communication with the target, be they (again, pick one): prospects, customers, investors, regulators. Since the mid-1980′s, with the increasingly urgent focus on quarterly results, I see this principle sacrificed over and over. Such decisions reek of desperation and degrade the accrued value of the brand that all prior marketing spend targeted.

The frequent objection to this is “we don’t want to be limited to one position because we have more than one (and again): product line, audience segment, marketing need. Alas, the issue is with the term “position”. Your position is not the specific words with which you communicate to all those audiences. The position is about what “rung of the ladder” (thank you Trout & Ries) you want occupy in your target’s mind. Splicing the language of your communications so that you convince your various audiences to do your bidding is a task for messaging and other marcomm activities. But your position is the gyroscope that levels all communication properly. Think of it as the CEO of your communications strategy: you don’t actually want her/him speaking to prospects…but they supervise and influence how you speak to them.

Well that’s all for now I guess. Next time I’ll address Strunk’s principle “Make the paragraph the unit of composition.” How the heck is that about marketing, you ask? As soon as I figure that out you’ll be the first to know!

It’s the Story and the Telling of the Story…

vshart — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:58:20 +0000

That’s actually a line from one of my own poems. And you’d think by now I would have “gotten” that message; that for me as a creative person who also has to make a living, that’s all there is – telling the story. I’ve been telling stories my whole life – as teenager writing quick iambic pentameter poetry for the high school literary magazine; as an advertising and marketing professional selling cellular service, digital technology, financial services and on and on. And now as a writer-for-hire and a poet/playwright.

That’s all there is – in life, business, creative works – the beginning, middle, end. And at the end it’s not just about “what happens” in the story but how do we want the listener, viewer, audience, prospect, client to feel. And what actions do we want those feelings to provoke.

I’m quite red-faced about this epiphany and feel like Bill Murray in “Scrooged”; when Carol Kane as the Ghost of Christmas Present wallops him with the toaster oven to emphasize how the knowledge he needed (love) had been in his face the whole time.

Telling the story of your character, business, service – it’s essential and I heard it and preached it to my clients and friends whenever they stood still long enough. Yet I have been the cigarette-huffing physician counseling patients to quit smoking. Oh well, I’m a blue ribbon performer in the better-late-than-never department!