101-Rebranding and How an OMS Practice is like a Bee Hive

This is a transcript of episode 101 of our podcast Oral Surgery Admin's Time Out Podcast: Practice Management Success Tips, which you can listen to below or find wherever you listen to podcasts. If you enjoy it, please leave a 5-star review.

Host Audra and Guest Linden discuss how the Society of OMS Administrators rebranded from JAWS Society to Society of OMS Administrators and how the new logo, including the honeycomb icon, was selected.

[ticking clock intro]

[Host Audra Lansdown] Welcome to the Oral Surgery Admin’s Time Out Podcast, for Practice Management Success Tips. This podcast is brought to you by the Society of OMS Administrators.

[energetic break music]

[AL] Welcome! We hope you are having an excellent day and we are glad you have joined us for one of our FIRST podcasts for our Society of OMS Administrators or SOMSA for short.  It is only fitting that we take our first time-out on this podcast journey with a little background and details on how SOMSA came to be and where we hope to take our organization.

[energetic break music]

[AL] Let’s start with introductions for all of our listeners. My name is Audra Lansdown and I’m from College Station, Texas.  I’ve been with Brazos Valley Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery for over 15 years and joined SOMSA in 2015. Currently, I serve as the Vice-President for SOMSA and I also serve on our education committee! I have the pleasure to host with us today, Linden Mueller, our executive director.  Linden, can you please tell us a little about yourself.

[Co-host Linden Mueller] Sure! I’ve been in association management for over 7 years now, and about 6 and half of those have been with SOMSA. Before finding this career, which I really enjoy, I taught university composition and English as a Second Language composition courses to non-native speakers at my alma mater here in Springfield, Missouri, and English as a Foreign Language, grammar and other language acquisition courses at University of Giessen in Germany.

[AL]I guess we want to pull all of our listeners in today and kind of explain a little bit that we’ve recently we have gone through a re-branding campaign.  Formerly known as JAWS, SOMSA was created to reach more Oral & Maxillofacial administrators. This was a difficult decision but ultimately we had exhausted all of our organic resources to expand our membership. The board felt it was necessary to join with a marketing company to help soar to the next level with our membership and our resources. Linden, you were involved in that process. Can you kind of explain a little bit on why we chose to rebrand?

[LM] Yeah, the JAWS name is really meaningful. It’s an acronym for “Joining Administrators With Support,” and it relates directly to the field of work our members are in, which is really great. Our early logo even stylized the J in JAWS to look like the mandible bones.

But it’s too opaque. Potential members and their doctors couldn’t tell exactly what our organization was about from our name, and that really became an obstacle for growth. And we were often confused with that shark movie! [both laugh]

[AL] Good reminder! Linden, I know we went through a campaign to choose, and we ultimately went with a company to choose GPM to become our partner. Can you explain that process and how we became connected with them?

[LM] Yeah, of course, this is such a great story. The Marketing Committee, led by Chair Courtney Schneider of Amarillo Oral Surgery, solicited requests for proposal from several marketing companies, and we heard four pitches last year. It was a difficult decision, but the Marketing Committee recommended Golden Proportions Marketing to the board, and the board accepted the committee’s recommendation. GPM is a full-service marketing company specializing in dental practices, so they are familiar with our industry, and they’ve worked with organizations like ours before. They did some market research for the pitch, and that really impressed the committee and that really made them stand ahead of the other three pitches that we heard.

[AL] I agree, I agree. It was one very nice proposal that the put in front of us. Can you go into how you all went through and chose the logo?

[LM] Well It all started with Courtney and me running a speed-dating style slide show for the Marketing