Author: P.J.S. Dougherty

Gonzo Anti-Aging Solutions

When I took over editorial direction of Energy Times magazine,
one of my first tasks was our annual Anti-Aging issue.
I assembled my own team of writers to inject new life into the mag. Unfortunately, one of my new writers, two weeks prior to deadline, completely bailed on her story. What a quandary!

But the Natural Health Writer is catlike — he always lands on his feet. At the zero hour, I coordinated a story that sent three writers to undergo three anti-aging procedures. These subjects and the practitioners gave first-person accounts of how the treatments worked. The article was great… It changed the magazine’s editorial direction with gonzo journalism and pictorial presentation. Plus, it integrated nutrition by promoting the anti-aging benefits of collagen, hyaluronic acid, green tea and other nutrients.

The Lesson: Hire the wrong writer, and you might be left high and dry. The Natural Health Writer will never, ever bail on you. Quite the contrary, I have a proven track record of executing zero-hour solutions that exceed the original plans that fell through.

Booming Brain Health: Ginkgo

As Woody Allen once said, “My brain? That’s my second favorite organ.” But for Boomers seeking peak quality of life in their golden years, the brain is priority #1.

Mental sharpness. Cognitive performance. Crystal-clear memory. The Brain Health segment is a supplement industry goldmine. Neuronutrients’ potency in promoting peak brain health is backed by reams of research. At right is a piece I wrote on Ginkgo Biloba, one of the most famous brain-boosters. This PDF is part of a larger marketing book that discusses several other neuronutrients in detail.

The Lesson: Brain health is a booming category. Effective educational marketing materials are the key to supercharging supplement sales in this all-important sector. The Natural Health Writer is a neuronutrient marketing expert.

The Art of Nutrition

"First, do no harm."

In 2010, I worked on the re-branding of Physiologics, a physicians’ nutritional supplement line. This category is poised for explosive growth. To add some sex appeal to the typically bland marketing materials of doctors’ supplements, I incorporated quotes from the Hippocratic Oath, which worked beautifully with the branding of doctors’ supplements.

Quality is a hallmark differentiator that is critically important in the successful marketing of supplements. It’s not easy to write about! For this catalog, we brainstormed a quality theme called The Art of Nutrition. Read the PDF at right for the full story.

The Lesson: My client on this project (a true marketing genius) fixated on discussing quality without using the word “quality.” He was right — when you differentiate down to a subtle microscopic level, you strengthen your brand from the bottom up.

Ginkgo Hilarity

I recently wrote a marketing piece on Ginkgo Biloba. I was pleased with it.
The claims were strong and substantiated; the story was Sexy Nutrition. Part of that story:  ginkgo trees are  200 million year-old “living fossils,” with individual trees living up to 3,000 years. Bafflingly, the client circled these facts in red pen and wrote “substantiation needed.”

What the heck? The Natural Health Writer is all about substantiating supplement health claims. But the Ginkgo facts had nothing to do with health! I shrugged, retraced my research, and started new research to reinforce that my ginkgo facts were strong. They were. The silver lining? On my second round of research I discovered some compelling ginkgo factoids that will make my next ginkgo piece even sexier.

The Lesson: Substantiation is essential, but it’s a slippery slope. If we as an industry start requiring substantiation for non-health related facts, we may end up needing substantiation for statements like “the sky is blue!”

Selling Resveratrol

Resveratrol: substantiated to the nines with seven references!

How do you make a nutritional supplement sexy? It sounds strange, but if you can sell an image, you can sell anything. Especially Resveratrol.

Though commonly sourced from knotweed, Resveratrol’s sexier source is red wine grapes — an origin that sells a mindset of escape. Consumers associate the Resveratrol with romantic images of rolling vineyards in warm, lively, summer months. Not to mention that special feeling of lightheartedness that comes after a glass of favorite Pinot Noir. Resveratrol tips its cap to the good things in life and promises, through these positive associations, to be one of them.

But all the romance is useless without substantiation. My Resveratrol piece to the right balances romance with strong supportive evidence. By presenting relevant figures and credible references, this piece successfully integrates two keys to successful supplement marketing: desire and credibility.

Rx Complement

The Natural Health Writer’s editorial vision made Rx Complement an entertaining custom-published magazine that covered all aspects of Natural Health.

Rx Complement is the most all-encompassing editorial project I’ve coordinated.

Alicia Silverstone made an especially fetching RX Complement cover.

Part of an innovative marketing program, Rx Complement was a custom-published magazine distributed in holistic health practitioners’ offices. It was designed to educate patients on nutritional supplements and natural health while they sat in waiting rooms. The ultimate goal: Sparking patient interest in nutrition as a complementary therapy. This was especially beneficial for health practitioners who incorporate supplements to help their patients.

Landing the Kind Diet author and actress Alicia Silverstone was fantastic, and yielded a fascinating in-depth interview (click to open pdf) about her perspective on veganism, environmentalism, and turning Superhuman.

Click on the cover to view an “abridged” PDF version of Rx Complement that focuses on its nutrition-related articles. (Note: large file, about 25 mb). Full versions available upon request.