I have been fortunate to have countless opportunities to promote products and services in unique markets and in unique ways. Yet, the marketing of the HFA brand, affiliates, and our numerous services has provided the most interesting set of challenges.

Product marketing for beverages, automobiles, or desktop computers can be a bit easier than the marketing of complex services such as ours. Coca Cola packages a can of Diet Coke in trade dress colors, buys retail shelf space, prices competitively, and promotes heavily. General Motors creates unique styling and features for its brands and then promotes incentives to lure targeted consumers to showrooms. Apple and IBM offer differentiating features and benefits to attract their consumers to their own retail channels.

In order to grow, it is important that we distinguish our agency from others. While we do not create and promote “things” such as beverages, cars or computers, we do give our communities a highly respected cross-affiliate system of care that provides children, families, and our Strategic Partners the widest array of human services in the northeastern United States. This distinguishing “market positioning” is consistent with our Strategic Intent.

Marketing means uncovering what the customer needs to succeed and then creating a strategy that meets those needs. Each of you has the opportunity to meet customer needs of our Strategic Partners, our children, and our families. HFA affiliates deserve to have their needs met day in and day out by support groups such as Marketing. So, the bottom line is that each of us is a truly a marketer of HFA expertise.

The HFA Marketing team is always uncovering and widely communicating some of the compelling stories many of you create with children and families. Next time I will define some marketing strategies we use to tell these stories.