Opinion
Assertions
8/10/09: Don’t get me wrong. As a longtime admirer of
festival pioneer George Wein, I am
thrilled to see a
new sponsor step in to replace 25-year partner
JVC as title sponsor of
jazz festivals in Newport and New York City. I believe
CareFusion has made an
enlightened choice to throw its coming out party as a public company through Wein’s events and four other jazz fests, not to mention that the company’s choice of the sponsorship medium is a “pretty efficient use of brand launch dollars,” as senior vice president
Jim Mazzola put it. I was fully behind CareFusion’s CEO when he explained the
fit between his
medical products company and the
musical genre at the press conference announcing the CareFusion Jazz Festival Series. “Both jazz and the practice of medicine embrace innovation, performance and change. Jazz is also used to teach listening skills to medical students and resonates with our customers,” David Schlotterbeck said.
The interesting juxtaposition between sponsor and property has
earned media attention for the partnership. Literally as I write this, CBS Radio World News Roundup is broadcasting a piece about the opening day of the Newport fest that focuses on the new sponsor and its oddly compelling link to jazz. I can’t remember when a festival sponsorship received similar attention.
But the company
just couldn’t stop there. In its zeal to further explain the sponsorship (it’s not clear to me why the company felt this was necessary), CareFusion has overreached. Consider the following blurb from CareFusionJazz.com:
“There is a clear connection between jazz and medicine. Music is medicine and has the
power to heal. Medical care and music are also fundamentally human, driven and forever changed by the interaction between caregiver and patient, musician and listener. The CareFusion Jazz Festival Series taps the human and healing elements of jazz to highlight healthcare safety and those working to improve care.”
I love jazz, and believe
music carries a great deal of power, but I’m not sure how invested I am in its
healing properties. (If I suffer a coronary in my office, I hope my colleagues will do more than come in and turn on the stereo.)
To make matters worse, CareFusion has gone a
step further than overwrought prose and posted a three-minute
video on its site that marries an
up-tempo jazz band performance with staged scenes of
life in a hospital, including patients being wheeled on gurneys in time to the beat. Never before has the prospect of going in for tests seemed like so much fun. “I’m having an upper GI endoscopy, scooby doo wa wee oh!”
While these are most certainly
well-meaning attempts at generating interest in the program and are aimed at healthcare professionals, not consumers, the folks at CareFusion still could do with a
less-is-more approach, lest these ham-fisted efforts
undermine what could be a very
effective platform for reaching out to key medical and hospital personnel. The
lesson for other sponsors here is to
consider the ways you talk about and tout your sponsorships.
Relevant partnerships don’t require too much explanation and laying it on too thick could
backfire and cause skeptical media types, bloggers, etc. to question why the company is
trying a bit too hard to justify a deal.
Jim Andrews