Marketing Mavens

They're ubiquitous. Got debt? Got beer? Got change? You fill in the blank. The dairy campaign has been copied so often, there was even a "Top 100 Got Milk? Ripoffs" poster.

"Ellen" from Cambridge Who's Who was delighted that I had finally called back after leaving me seven polite and identical voice messages the past few weeks. And, after a three-minute interview during which she established that I've been doing what I do professionally since the second Reagan administration, Ellen had wonderful news for me.

One morning, my daughter Lucy, who was six at the time, asked me a question out of the blue. "Daddy?" she asked with a thoughtful look on her face, "When's the day before tomorrow?" I hadn't had my first cup of coffee yet, so it took me a moment to process the question. "That's today," I said. And then it hit me. I smiled. "Lucy, you just invented a whole new way to say the word today."

This week's announcement that Merck is closing its research lab here in Cambridge, Mass., is a close-to-home reminder that hard times are still very much upon us. In the device world, budgets have been trimmed and head counts reduced. Customers are delaying or scaling back new purchases, especially for capital equipment. Physician interaction guidelines have been tightened. So … are you still having fun? Before you grab a life preserver and head for the ocean, here are seven reasons to stay with medical device marketing, despite the heady allure of, say, the oil industry.