Ketchum Unveils Well-Connected Checkup

NEW YORK, Dec. 13, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- As consumers assume greater personal responsibility for their health than ever before, many are seeking products and services that provide added health and wellness benefits. To help marketers understand whether or not consumers are connecting with their brands, global public relations agency Ketchum has launched the Well-Connected Checkup, a proprietary research tool that pinpoints a brand's health and wellness characteristics, including its assets, deficits, and competitive strengths and weaknesses. Armed with this customized data, companies can define a clear position in the growing health and wellness category and develop communication strategies that enhance brand preference.

"Ketchum's Well-Connected Checkup creates a bridge between what a brand offers and what consumers want," said Leslie Schrader, senior vice president and director of Ketchum's Consumer Health & Wellness Practice. "Consumers are spending almost 20 percent of their monthly spending budget on brands with health and wellness benefits. Understanding a brand's health and wellness proposition is vital to connecting with consumers and, thus, driving sales."

Ketchum's Well-Connected Checkup identifies category-specific factors that are most important to target consumers, including the following:

• What health and wellness means to target consumers;
• What media sources, both social and traditional, these audiences find most credible and use most often; and
• What brand characteristics and values are most important to them

Using these findings and other proprietary information, Ketchum then helps a brand fine-tune its health and wellness messages to better resonate with its target consumers. The Well-Connected Checkup will provide a brand with these benefits:

• Create a scorecard for brand performance in the health and wellness space;
• Assess the influence of a brand's health and wellness image on usage and loyalty;
• Pinpoint which health messages will appeal to the target consumer and where and how those messages should be delivered; and
• Provide a brand with actionable health and wellness communications recommendations to connect with its target consumers.

The Well-Connected Checkup was created by Ketchum Global Research Network in coordination with W. Douglas Evans, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Public Health and Health Services at George Washington University.

"To help consumers make healthy choices, a brand needs to clearly and authentically define and communicate its health and wellness proposition," Evans said. "This research provides the opportunity to empirically test consumer perceptions and map out how brands are positioned in the health and wellness space."

As the latest offering from Ketchum's Well-Connected brand-building specialty, the Checkup takes a strategic and methodical approach to deliver individualized health and wellness insights that drive consumer awareness, preference, and ultimately connection with brands.

Ketchum officially launched the tool at the recent Marketing Pharma & Healthcare to Women Conference in Chicago, where Schrader and Laura Yost, group manager of public relations for The Clorox Company, presented "The Health and Wellness Brand Checkup: Are Brand Reality and Consumer Perceptions Ever the Same?"

About Ketchum

A communications innovator and the 2010 Large PR Firm of the Year (Holmes Report and PR News), Ketchum is a leading global communications consultancy and, operating as Ketchum Pleon, is the largest, most diversified agency in the U.K. and continental Europe. With five global practices – Brand Marketing, Corporate, Healthcare, Food & Nutrition, and Technology – and specialty capabilities that include Access Communications (high- and consumer-tech PR), Concentric Communications (experiential marketing, events and meetings), MMG (clinical trial recruitment), Ketchum Global Research Network, Ketchum Pleon Change (change and workplace communications) and Ketchum Sports & Entertainment, Ketchum leverages its marketing and corporate communication expertise to build brands and reputations for clients. For more information on Ketchum, a unit of Omnicom Group Inc. (NYSE: OMC), visit www.ketchum.com. 

SOURCE Ketchum