Branded by Doodling: How Recognizing the Power of Brands Changed My Career

A scribble on a piece of scrap paper reoriented my academic career. Twice. The first time, I was sitting across the desk from a colleague in her office at the University of Wisconsin. I had driven up from Chicago to begin work on a simulation curriculum we were developing to help prepare trainees for the emotional challenges encountered when engaging in global health work. “It needs a name,” we thought. Something that would make it easy to talk about internally as we started a multi-institutional pilot. We began jotting down key words on the back of our notes in search for an acronym, finally coming to a sweet revelation: SUGAR = Simulation Use for Global Away Rotations. Little did we know, but at that moment a brand was born. I was well aware of the power of branding. My wife Susan’s career has been in brand management and advertising, so I knew how facilitating a shorthand emotional connection with consumers through building a brand helped move products, I’d just never imagined it would play a role in my career as an academic pediatrician. But as we were working on developing our simulation curriculum, it soon became clear that an academic product has many similarities to a tangible product in the marketplace. It needs an audience who wants to engage with it to give it value. It should be easy to talk about and get people excited about. Creating an academic product no one uses is analogous to manufacturing a cereal that stays on the shelf. Branding can help c...
Source: Academic Medicine Blog - Category: Universities & Medical Training Authors: Tags: Featured Guest Perspective academic product branding Source Type: blogs