My perspective on a business filled with humanity and desire to help. Help those
who sometimes find it hard to say what hurts them.
On advertising
The Children's Clinic started in the fall of 2014. Together with our franchise owner Yaroslav Zablotskyy, we decided to have my wife and business partner Cvetelina Ducheva focus mainly on pediatric dentistry. She had been treating a few children back at our old clinic, but with her pregnancy she redirected them to other colleagues. Several years later, with her being a mother of twins and having a new large and modern clinic, the idea about a project focused on children seemed fantastic. Back then, narcosis was not offered as an alternative for children anywhere and the complex approach to treating children was missing. Our task was to create it: prophylaxis, early minimally invasive intervention, integrated orthodontics and, if necessary, anaesthesia. With a perfectly equipped operating room and the opportunity to work with kids on weekends, we were ready to start.
A few years later, the pediatric practice had grown tremendously, time on weekends was becoming scarce, and we needed a new solution. Up to that point, we owed the visibility of the project to Cvetelina's PR activities, press appearances and various marketing messages. We had not used any real advertising. Neither did we need it – we were overloaded anyway, nor were we ready to work with the increased numbers it would bring. We started a project for a new and huge children's clinic with ten dental chairs and two operating rooms, and in the meantime we enjoyed the dream of every marketing person: a temporary monopolistic position in the market. There was no real competition in what we were doing for children. The flow of new patients seemed endless.
Unfortunately (or maybe not...) this didn't last for long. First, a number of large clinics "discovered" pediatric dentistry and started (ready or not) massive entry into the area. Our former head doctor, who is still our partner, left us to start her own separate project. We experienced internal team turbulence as well (check "The Chronicle on Administrators"). Monopoly was over and I had a children's clinic to develop for the market of pediatric dental services.
My bad experience with creating a star and focusing the whole treatment process on a particular person, was sobering. I did not want to repeat the same mistake. If my wife, the mother of my two children and my partner since 2002, had left me, what could I expect from someone else?
I needed to promote my brand and the services of Peter Duchev KIDS. Here comes the essential question: how to stand out from the mainstream and create a memorable ad that doesn't attract interest because of a price advantage and does not make false promises?
We are about to find out...
