Dental Marketing Director – Do You Want To Be Allan Smithee?

Dental Marketing Director – Do You Want To Be Allan Smithee?

The Director of a movie is a reasonable place to start when pondering the role of a dental marketing director. A Director is the primary shaping force, responsible for the minutia as well as the broad creative vision.

But what about the movie director (or the dental marketing director) who loses control or who has control wrested away? In movies, the solution (for a time) was to grant directing credit to the fabulous, fictional Allen Smithee. In fact, the only surprising thing is that the industry made it all the way to 1968 before Pseudonym Boy was born.

The Dental Marketing Director and The Creative Product

To a dental marketing director, a marketing campaign is a creative product designed to influence and, if possible, entertain while influencing. But what if the marketing campaign skews into odd directions at the whim of Someone Who Must Not Be Named (boss, wife, collective focused whiny-ness of staff). What if, all of a sudden, ONLY social media is important, and seconds later, ONLY print advertising, and nanoseconds later, ONLY email campaign, ad infinitum and then some.

That’s a lot of stress to put on a dental marketing director, who is somewhat less fulsomely compensated than Spielberg but who nonetheless has a catalogue of work to uphold and defend.

The Dental Marketing Director - Way Cooler than Spielberg

Obviously, a dental marketing campaign must utilize the methods decided upon by the professional dental marketing director, who must take firm control – The Dental Marketing Director, unlike the cinematic variety, cannot take refuge in the Allen Smithee hidey-hole. Man Up, Dude.