AMI welcomes Tracy Tucker as our new Executive Director. Tracy brings over 9 years of association management experience to AMI. In her role, Tracy will oversee all aspects of AMI management operations, including staff supervision, workplan and budget development, financial management, executive committee support, project coordination, and general member communications and outreach for AMI. Tracy is supported by her team members at AMR Management Services (AMR) which was selected to serve as AMI’s new headquarters office as of January 1, 2010. Tracy holds a BS in Accounting from the University of Kentucky. At AMR, she has had extensive experience with the management of associations in medical and healthcare fields. Prior to joining AMR in 2000, Tracy served as the Director of Donor Relations at the HOPE Center, a homeless shelter for men, where she was responsible for fundraising, donor relations, and volunteer management. She is a member of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE). Tracy will be attending our Annual Meeting in Portland so be sure to say hello and welcome her to AMI!

By: William B. Westwood © 2010

In the Winter issue of the AMI News, I addressed the need for self-employed medical illustrators to develop a “marketing message” for their businesses, in advance of the selection of advertising vehicles (e.g., Source Book ads, direct mail, websites, networking, presentations, blogs or social media), to promote their companies.

For businesses, and especially small businesses, marketing is the “art” of making your products or services memorable and desirable to your clients and potential clients. The creative aspects of your marketing efforts should be guided by carefully thought out goals and objectives that enable you to develop a marketing message which can then be used to position your firm and services in the minds of your prospective clients.

The most important aspect of your marketing message is a USP or Unique Selling Proposition - also called a Unique Selling Point, or a Unique Value Proposition (UVP). Your USP is a summary of what you do and how you do it better or differently than others. It’s what sets you and your business apart from your competition.

An effective USP should summarize and differentiate your business through just a few words or phrases. The foundation of the USP must come from an understanding of your customers--what needs and concerns do they have, what motivates them to make certain types of decisions relative to creative services and why they might come to you instead of your competition. However you express it, your USP should focus on how it benefits your customer.

Medical illustrators all offer very similar services (even taking into account the more recent technique expansions into 3D and animation). So how do you go about setting yourself apart from your competition - your fellow medical illustrators?

Historically, visual creators have used an instinctive approach to putting out a unique marketing message through what we will call a “wordless” USP. This was recently defined by blogger Clint Watson as a “Unique Style of Painting” (or photography) – i.e., “my work style will speak for me”. Indeed, most Medical Illustration Source Book ads simply show several of an artist’s illustrations along with basic contact information for reaching him or her, along with a minimal amount of other information on things like specialties. This approach relies on the artist’s having a distinctive enough illustrative style to entice prospective clients to call.

While this approach used to work well, I would argue that today, the competition is so intense and the art styles so similar (given that most illustrators render in the same types of computer programs), that one must look for other ways to help people choose you to create their artwork.

There is nothing unique about showing similar (to lay viewers) illustrative work and listing the same general attributes that everyone else does. Further, if potential clients can’t grasp the nuances of art skills or anatomy, they need to see something else in your marketing message to make them want to work with you. A properly crafted USP can help you differentiate yourself in any given market segment (e.g., editorial, advertising, medical legal, etc.) and give potential clients added incentive to hire you.

Your USP needs to be compelling and show your target market how your business is uniquely qualified to solve their pain or increase their gain. Such a USP can also be used as a "branding tool” that deploys strategy with every tactical marketing effort you employ, such as a Source Book ad, a postcard mailing, a web site or a presentation, helping you build a strong, lasting reputation. The ultimate goal of your USP and your marketing is to have people say... "Oh, yes I've heard of you. You're the illustrator who..." - and then respond by requesting more information or hiring you for a project. (Keep in mind that you might need more than one USP if you work in several markets with dissimilar clients - e.g. pharmaceutical advertising and medical legal.)

So how do you create an effective USP? There have been many approaches described, and a quick “Google” on the subject of USPs will inundate you with numerous possibilities. I’m going to suggest an approach, but it is only one possibility. Be patient. Developing a USP can take time and effort, and if you work in several different markets, you may have to develop a different one for each market.

Start the process by making a list of all the benefits you can think of for doing business with your firm. (Benefits are the favorable results that your clients obtain by using your product or service. Features are qualities or characteristics of your product or service. If you don’t understand the difference, look it up before you start.) Remember, this process is not about YOU, it’s about THEM, your clients - how you will help them solve a problem, how you will make their work lives better, how you will make them look brilliant or more effective?

You can develop your list by asking yourself some or all of the following questions (write everything down):

• What makes you and your service unique in a given medical art market – what are your strengths, skills and passions? (Focus on benefits – not features.)
• What is the biggest benefit you provide for your clients?
• What would make you buy services from you?
• What need can you fill or address with your medical knowledge and art skills?
• What pain or discomfort does your creative product or service alleviate or take away (Think of Nyquil – “the night time, coughing, achy, sniffling, etc…”)
• What do you do better than the competition (are you more skilled, faster, more thorough, more knowledgeable, more reliable, etc) and why, specifically, does that make a difference to your potential customer?
• Do you have a technological edge, a technique or program skills no one else has, and why would that make a difference in what you can provide your customers?
• Character/personality – is your business based largely on you and how you express yourself, your unique “artistic voice” or creative point of view? Can you capture that in a few words?
• What needs can you identify that might be unfulfilled in a given market – can you expand, modify or enhance what you do to fill those needs, and how can you express that?
• Education – do you do a great job of educating your customers? What benefit does that provide for them (e.g., peace of mind in their selection of you)?
• What goals, fears or concerns might clients have about purchasing your services, and what can you or do you do to address those?
• What about your service makes life better for your clients?
• Who is (in the past or future) your ideal client and what specific characteristics make them ideal?
• Why should any client buy from you?

Once you have your list, distill it down with these guidelines.

1. What benefits on your list make you look unique versus your closest competitors.
2. Which of these benefits is most important to the largest number of your (ideal) clients?
3. Which of these would be difficult for your competition to emulate?
4. Which of these can be easily communicated?

From this set of guidelines you should be able to narrow your search to the top one or two benefits of doing business with your firm relative to your target market. Edit this statement until it is short and to the points and describes your uniqueness. Try to convey a positive feeling with impact and emotion.

From there it is simply a matter of injecting the best benefit or USP into everything that you do. Some of you might remember the original FedEx USP. “On time, every time or it's free.” At the time, this offer was unheard of in the shipping industry and literally built the company based on communicating this unique selling proposition. So what's your compelling offer? Is there something you can do and offer that no one else in your industry can offer? Remember, your USP should address the question, “Why would I buy from you?”. It’s a question your potential clients ask themselves (consciously or unconsciously) every time you market to them. Of course what they are really asking is "what's in it for me?”.

An effective USP communicates your firm's unique ability to fill a void, small or large, in the marketplace. The USP shows your target market how your firm is uniquely qualified to solve their pain or increase their gain.

The following are several USPs that address the "pain" experienced by the consumers in their industries and focus on benefits to the client:

Example #1 - Package Shipping Industry
Client Pain - I have to get this artwork to my New York client by tomorrow morning!
USP - "When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight." (Federal Express)
By guaranteeing that your package will be delivered by 10:30 am the next day they give the client peace of mind and a relief of anxiety.

Example #2 – Fast Food Industry
Client Pain – I want my fast food meals a certain way - not like everyone else..
USP – “Have it your way.” (Burger King)
They build on the premise that it's easy for a customer to request changes. Benefit to the customer: Satisfaction. No hassles (for trying to change the standard burger offerings) and a hamburger that's just the way you like it.

Example #3 – Rental Car Industry
Client Pain – I have to get friends or family to take me to the car rental agency. It takes extra time and I must coordinate with their schedule.
USP – “Pick Enterprise. We'll pick you up.” (Enterprise)
While Avis made a name for itself with its "We're number two, We try harder" slogan that emphasized customer service, Enterprise focuses on one key selling point - customer pick up. Benefit to the customer: Convenience. You don't have to worry about taking a cab or bother with finding some other way to go get your rental car. It comes to you.

Example #4 - Cold Medicine Industry
Client Pain - You are sick, feel terrible, and can't sleep.
USP - “The nighttime, coughing, achy, sniffling, stuffy head, fever, so you can rest medicine." (NyQuil)
Not being able to sleep or sleeping poorly are annoying symptoms that go along with the common cold and without a good night’s sleep the effects of the cold are exacerbated. NyQuil focuses on this one dreaded aspect of having a bad head cold and offers a solution. Benefit to the customer: a reasonably good night’s sleep with the proof feeling “better” in the morning.

Example #5 – Cleaning Products
Client Pain – Having to use lots of paper towels to sop up even small spills, which takes time and energy from busy housekeepers and moms.
USP - “ The Quicker Picker-Upper” (Bounty)
Many products, such as paper towels or toilet tissue, have similar qualities. Bounty makes their mark by saying that their product absorbs spills faster. Benefit to the customer: Time-Savings. You get the dirty work done sooner and can get on to other more important matters.

Don’t let your business suffer from lack of clarity and focus about what you provide for your customers. Set aside time regularly to engage the USP development issue, play with it, have fun with it! Bring other people - family and colleagues - into the process, ask some of your customers why they do business with you (the answers may surprise you!), and as you find words or phrases you like, try them out. Not only will your USP become helpful in branding and growing your company, it will also provide business clarity and focus for you. So be bold, push the envelope, go for it!

By: Vanessa Ruiz

For this edition of Recent Graduate Perspective’s we invited Vanessa Ruiz to write about her unique professional transition from graduate school and her exceptional blog, Street Anatomy.



Vanessa Ruiz

Imagine taking human anatomy to the streets. Where a teenager could walk past an 8-foot heart stencil spray-painted on the side of a solid brick warehouse. Or where passengers waiting for a subway train could spot a tiny sticker of an anatomically correct stomach clinging to the train door. This is how I saw the city, every surface an opportunity to educate people about their bodies. Taking anatomy outside the confines of textbooks and atlases and placing it in the unobstructed view of the public. This is where the vision for Street Anatomy began.



Muscle anatomy spray paint stencil by Ryan Gerdes (© 2009 Ryan Gerdes, reprinted with permission)

Of course, illegally spray painting the sides of buildings with giant anatomical stencils was not the career move I, as a first year graduate student at the UIC’s Biomedical Visualization program, was willing to take. I didn’t need “vandalism” listed as a skill on my resume next to Photoshop and Illustrator.

So I thought, what’s the next best way to showcase the work of medical illustrators and bring anatomy to the public? It was 2007, the height of the blogging fad. Blogs were the new way to easily share knowledge with anyone willing to listen and it seemed like the perfect platform for my vision. But, what if there were already people out there, namely other medical illustrators, blogging about anatomy and the profession? I set about doing an extensive search on Google and out of the millions of blogs listed on the Internet; there was not one blog dedicated to medical illustration. In fact, medical illustration had barely any presence on the web at all. How could it be that so many other artistic professions had so many dedicated websites with so many members openly sharing knowledge, while medical illustrators showed no sign of outreach whatsoever? Through that discovery I gained the motivation to start the first blog on the Internet dedicated to medical illustration and anatomy in art—Street Anatomy.

During the winter break of my first year in graduate school, with no knowledge of starting a blog and no previous writing experience, I created Street Anatomy. It began with posts about medical illustration history, medical-legal illustration, the latest medical imaging software, etc. Interspersed between these longer educational posts were quick filler posts featuring interesting anatomical visuals and artists who use anatomy in their work.

As I obsessively began to check the traffic statistics of my site, as almost everyone with a brand new website can confess to, I began to notice a trend. The posts with the most traffic and popularity across the Internet were those containing the most creative art featuring anatomy. That’s when I realized that the public didn’t want to read lessons on the intricacies of medical illustration. They wanted to see creative uses of anatomy in art and design.

From then on, the purpose of Street Anatomy changed from that of teaching to that of showcasing and inspiring. For my remaining time in graduate school I would continue to passionately blog, oftentimes at the expense of my schoolwork. I searched for anatomy in art, advertising, fashion, street art, tattoos, sculpture, and even interior design. All of which were difficult to find at first. But as time went on and anatomy became much more of a design trend, the sources became plentiful and I was forced to choose what I posted with a more critical eye.

As graduate school wrapped up I realized that, although I thoroughly enjoyed illustrating, there was no way I could compete with the incredible work not only of my peers, but also of the artists I featured everyday on Street Anatomy. During my second year I had the opportunity to visit Abelson Taylor, a top pharmaceutical advertising agency in Chicago, which is where I was first exposed to the job of an art director. Getting the opportunity to do design, work with other artists, and above all, actually use my undergraduate degree in biology, seemed like the perfect career.



Morgue Chocolates by Stephen Shanabrook (© 2006 Stephen Shanabrook, reprinted with permission)

I set my sights on interning as an associate art director for AT and while the opportunity almost slipped away due to the reluctance of AT to take a risk with another intern, my program director, Scott Barrows, convinced them to invite me for an interview. I came in with my portfolio pieces thoughtfully picked out and my skill set and experience ready in mind. And while my portfolio was nice and my skill set like that of any other fresh medical illustration graduate student, my interview surprisingly focused around Street Anatomy. My interviewers were impressed that I was up-to-date with the latest trends in medical art and animation. But what they liked the most and what led to my being hired was that my blog was visible proof of my dedication to a long-term project. A trait, which I now have learned, can be invaluable in the advertising world.



Anatomical heart paste-up by street artist Orticanoodles, London (© 2009 Orticanoodles, reprinted with permission)

I’ve risen from intern to art director at AT in two short years and can say that I’ve used every skill I learned in graduate school. I get to work with the top medical illustrators and animators around the world, I get to create novel ways of presenting medical education, and above all I get to use the critical eye I gained from my experience with Street Anatomy to inform my design and artistic choices as an art director.

Since 2007, Street Anatomy has grown exponentially in the number of visitors and has spread across the Internet. Over the years I’ve taken on contributors who also share a passion for anatomy in art and now manage a team of four talented individuals. Anatomy is literally everywhere these days—even on the brick walls and subway cars of the cities—and Street Anatomy will continue to showcase it in all its forms.

Review by Anneliese Lilienthal
Revise Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Digest a Daily Dose of Wellness Wisdom

by David S. Kidder, Noah D. Oppenheim, and Bruce D. Young, MD.
Published in 2006, ISBN 1594865138”

While enjoying the first weekend of 2010 in rural southern Vermont with my family, I visited a small local book store to peruse their collection. On this occasion I picked up a book which I noticed had a small medical illustration on the cover. It was a devotional focusing entirely upon health.

The repetition of daily devotional readings is meant to provide a more continuous focus in life on the subject matter at hand. In a spiritual devotional one might find passages of scripture, questions to provoke personal reflection, or commentary on living with one's faith. This health devotional has short passages for 365 days of the year, and allows you to start on any given Monday (Day 1 of Week 1). Further, the book aims to draw a personal awareness to our health and wellness through a wide variety of medical readings.


This devotional highlights seven categories; Children and Adolescents, Disease and Ailments, Drugs and Alternative Treatments, The Mind, Sexuality and Reproduction, Lifestyle and Preventive Medicine, and lastly, Medical Milestones. Each week highlights a different subject from these seven categories. Day 1 of week 1 starts off rather appropriately with Children and Adolescents and the “Apgar Score.” The first week continues with, Immunity on Tuesday, Morphine on Wednesday, Circle of Willis on Thursday, Ovum on Friday, Amino Acids on Saturday, and Celsus: Calor, Dolor, Rubor, and Tumor on Sunday. Each reading is one page in length with only a few paragraphs. At the end of the reading about 2-3 interesting facts are provided. In addition to the 365 readings, there is a comprehensive index of all the material covered. As you work through the devotional, a bright orange ribbon in the binding helps mark your place and progress.

Another interesting element is that the book has small medical illustrations on some of the 365 entries! I thought, “I wonder if I know who did these?” Well sure enough many of the names and companies were familiar (all the image credits are listed in the back). Most of the work was selected through stock image companies, but they do list the actual artist or company who originally created the work. Hmmm, are you looking up the book on Amazon now?
Being early 2010, New Year's resolutions were still on my mind so I decided to buy this book, the idea of a health devotional had really piqued my interest. How many of us have jobs that fully satiate our passion for general health and medicine? Who finds that there are not enough hours in the day to explore and learn everything they hoped to? The intellectual devotional for health provides a chance to help feed that desire and interest for continuing health discovery and knowledge (or at least help your team win on trivia night).

As I write this it is March, I am just shy of a ¼ inch through the book. While I can't reflect on what is still to come, I can say, I have been motivated to do the readings just about every day. The material so far has been interesting, fun, easy to digest, and easy to fit into my day. Sometimes the readings reinforce what I already know well, others elaborate on topics I'm only vaguely familiar with, and then there are other readings that are entirely enlightening. Personally, the book is like a bedtime snack, one last taste of medical knowledge before I head off to sleep. I should note, in the daily readings you will undoubtedly come across passages on topics you are well acquainted with, and I make no promise that you won't find fault with those very near and dear to your heart, but as a whole, the health devotional is a terrific trove of medical snippets.

So if you are looking to “Revise Your Mind, Complete Your Education, and Digest a Daily Dose of Wellness Wisdom” or just gather more facts for trivia night, then this is a great selection to add to your already groaning bookshelves of medical and art texts.