This post, Balihoo Halloween 2009, can be read on our new blog by clicking this link.

I find myself thinking a lot about teeth lately. No, I’m not dreaming about my teeth falling out due to some Freudian anxiety. The topic of pearly whites has been on my mind heavily since May, when Balihoo formally launched a marketing program with Nobel Biocare’s top dental practices. I could easily ramble for pages about the topic of marketing dental implants and other fee-for-service dental procedures in this blog, but then, well, I’d be rambling. So I will stick to the salient points.

1. The public is not well educated on dental implants. Meanwhile, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 22% of Americans age 65+ have had all of their natural teeth extracted. Are dentures their only option? No, there is a fixed prosthetic product that mimics their natural teeth and deters bone degeneration. Voila! - dental implants! No more dealing with PoliGrip! The FDA cleared dental implant procedures in 1982, but my mind only recalls Apple Macintosh, cellular phones and Prozac when I think of inventions in the 80s. It’s time to go to market.

2.  If marketing direct-to-consumer is considered faux pas in the healthcare industry, how will the American public learn about this procedure? Our TVs, magazines and billboards are peppered with advertisements for Lasik surgery, pharmaceutical drugs and even Botox. Come on, even Bob Dole went on air promoting Erectile Dysfunction. When B2C media campaigns are executed tastefully for dental implants, our dental practice clients are not only seeing an increase in patients filling their chairs, they are doing a service to their community by educating them on a quality of life enhancing alternative to dentures. This brings me to point #3…

3. Enhancing your quality of life. I have nightmares of my grandmother putting her dentures in a sock in a dresser. She was embarrassed by them. Baby boomers want to feel young for life; have their steak and eat it too. And with this age group being the fastest segment of online adopters, you better believe they are researching healthcare online. If nowhere else, dental implant specialists should market this procedure in a website well-optimized in the search engines and engage in pay-per-click campaigns.

4. With innovations like sedation dentistry and lasers, these procedures are virtually pain free. Check out the testimonial video clips from these two practices with which we work: http://MySmileToday.com and http://NoDentures.com.

The Wall Street Journal published an article on August 11 titled “Dentists Step Up Marketing as Patients Skip Their Visits.” I end this blog with the following thought by Dr. Wong, a general dentist interviewed in the article, “You can’t go to the office and just be a dentist anymore; you have to go to the office and be a dentist and a CEO.” In other words, you need to go to the office and be a dentist and a marketer.

It’s 6 am, and I have a hankering for a Korean taco. I don’t even know what comprises such a food, but I want it. And I’m going straight to Twitter when I get to the office to check out why it’s all the rave and to locate the blessed taco truck that boasts such culinary mastery.

On Monday morning - which usually starts as a groggy blending of gunfire in Afghanistan while conversing with Hilary Clinton and Felipe Calderon about Cleveland State’s upset against Wake Forest, as NPR sputters out the radio trying to rouse me from sleep - I awoke to a news story convincing me to visit L.A. and track down a Korean BBQ taco truck that notifies its fans of its current location via Twitter. Kogi - the previously mentioned Korean taco restaurant on wheels - owes much thanks to viral Internet marketing.

Kogi’s cult followers continually check Twitter for the truck’s whereabouts and daily specials, and they often wait in line for hours to try the CIA top-chef’s blending of Korean kimchi flavors with Mexican spicy. They also post videos on You Tube and publish odes to Kogi on My Space. Click here to read the full story from NPR.

I recently attended a convention for one of our retail flooring clients, and their corporate marketing team held education sessions on Web 2.0 marketing. What does Facebook and Twitter mean to a 60 year-old second generation Carpet One owner who has advertised in traditional media for 50 years? Look at Kogi. The Kogi chef even admits that without Twitter he could still make great tacos, but he wouldn’t have anyone to sell them to.

I’m not posturing that my Carpet One owner should expect the dramatic increase in traffic that Kogi enjoys from online viral marketing. But I do think it’s worthy of some experimentation. For instance, the Carpet One owner could post a before-and-after video on You Tube of a customer’s home after installing her new Carpet One flooring. Our owner could start a Twitter profile and Facebook page for his business and ask his staff to follow them, as well as any of their friends and family and maybe acquaintances who bought flooring there. Throw links up on the Carpet One website to the video, Facebook and Twitter profiles, and have a sales manager start a blog that talks about your engagement online. The networking spawns organically, creating a sort of Twitter effect.

Upon approaching Fish Lake runway in a purring Cessna 185, the valley nuzzled in at a 5,700-foot elevation deep in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area conjured up memories of the Atlantis discovered by Dagny Taggart in “Atlas Shrugged” when the main character crashes her plane in the Colorado Rockies. Alas, a truly remote place. No electricity. No running water save the creek near the old Forest Service cabin. No LED bulbs flashing in billboard signs save the ones in our head lamps. No advertisements can find me here.

That last comment was but a fleeting thought in my mind, as I realize that I, too, am a consumer and advertising reaches me even in the elk-run, wolf-dominated surroundings of Fish Lake, Idaho. I represent a rather coveted demographic - young married female homeowner with two incomes and no children (I’m a “DINK” - dual income no kids). I am becoming more and more difficult for marketers to reach.

I no longer simply read the newspaper and watch network primetime news. I read news online through The Idaho Statesman and The New York Times; I watch John Stewart and Steven Colbert; I listen to NPR on the local radio. “Google” has become a verb in my vocabulary. As the market continues to fragment down the long tail, reaching me requires using advanced market research, indexing tools and the Balihoo Agency Edition to know what media vehicles are available to me in my market.

After a day of fishing for cutthroat in Moose Lake, hiking 1,000 feet into the Bitterroots for the delectable local treat called huckleberries, I sit among the slowly swaying spruce and subalpine fir and return to my mind’s musings on my position as a consumer. Some great brands come to mind that have served the outdoor sportsman…

In my current state of being, I thank Patagonia, The North Face and Arcteryx for giving me durability and warmth in the bitter cold of the Bitterroots. The outfitters with their 25-deep mule train sharing this valley are all adorned in Carhartt. How did we discover and all cohesively choose these brands? Consistent marketing with an integrated approach across several media types, importantly an online presence. I raise my glass to the marketers of those brands for building an image that supports their quality. I must also thank those marketers for finding me.

Sports have always made for great analogies. I grew up with a father who could relate any life circumstance to the game of baseball. “Well, Betsie, choosing between eating that bowl of cereal or my liver and onions is like a center fielder who gets hit a short fly ball in a one-run ball game in the bottom of the ninth with runners on second and third and two outs. He could hold up and play it on the one-hop to allow one run but assuredly save the other, or he could lay out for it and possibly be the hero of the game.” (I told him I was going to play the one-hop and eat cereal.)

Given that my father mildly exhausted baseball as an analogy and metaphor, I’ve decided to describe the Balihoo culture through the game of soccer. About six weeks ago, nine brave Balihooers and I committed to playing in an indoor soccer league. Six grueling games later, we achieved our first “W” - that’s right, our record is five losses to one win.

We’re batting a .200; no Magglio Ordonez, but let’s not talk baseball. Our Balihoo soccer team - Balihoosiers, we call ourselves - must be commended for the style, the savvy, the culture we have brought to that indoor turf field. We show up every week on a Friday night after a rigorous week at work to play a technical game that requires sprinting seemingly endlessly after a ball that hardly ever goes out of bounds and therefore hardly ever stops moving. We sweat. We breathe awkwardly hard. We turn red in the face.

But like the culture we adhere to at the Balihoo office, my teammates and I give gallant individual efforts that have proliferated with each game and developed into teamwork. Our little soccer team is a start-up among teams who have been playing for years. In a short period of time, we have learned when to give each other support, when to run into space to create an opportunity, when to take a risky shot on goal. And last week, we learned how to win.

Albeit our last two games may result in losses considering the caliber of teams we face, we will have had a winning season by our own standards. The Balihoosiers proved that our passion, work ethic, character and sense of humor (we’re good at laughing at ourselves) can be applied in anything we tackle, or kick for that matter. Exerting ourselves in 45 minutes of play also makes for a good reason to celebrate after the game.

In reflection of a week spent in New York City at Ad:tech, I feel excited, confident, hip to industry trends, raspy, and a bit exhausted. I speak, with my raspy-nearly-shot voice, on behalf of my company and my three colleagues who joined me in representing Balihoo at the advertising trade show attended by thousands from all over the country and the world. (We were the only representatives from Boise, Idaho…ok, likely all of Idaho.) This show proved a great success for Balihoo.

Our Web-based tools designed to create efficiency for media buyers made major headway at Ad:tech. Thank you to all show attendees who visited the Balihoo booth. Among the media buyers who tested Balihoo’s online directory, my favorite keyword search has to be “polymer.” This keyword pertained to actual campaigns run by a media buyer. Our search engine brought back the following top-four results:

1. Polymer Composites (print journal)
2. Journal of Vinyl and Additive Technology (print journal)
3. ANTEC (events conference)
4. AZoM - Metals, Ceramics, Polymers and Composites (website)

Pleased with the results, this particular media buyer signed up for our Beta on the spot. Media buyers, if you did not already do so, sign up to use our free Beta at www.balihoo.com.

We enjoyed meeting a variety of publishers, representing a plethora of ad space for sale across all mediums. We are eager to get them into Balihoo to update their media properties in our online directory. Publishers, remember – this is a free service to you! Sign up at www.balihoo.com, or email me at brichardson@balihoo.com.

For those of you questioning the distortion of my photos, I share these thoughts: manual dexterity and digital camera savvy came second to delivering an exceptional message about Balihoo. Let’s just say I had some flash and focus trouble. Perhaps the blurred images actually capture the intensity of the trade show, their movement representing not only the show, but also New York City’s energized vibe. Hmmm…worth a try, anyway!