Boston Scientific aims to end Guidant brand

When Boston Scientific Corp. closed its $27 billion deal for Guidant Corp. last month, the Natick medical device maker planted its flag in the multibillion-dollar business of implantable defibrillators, the tiny and highly profitable machines that keep the heart from suddenly stopping.

It also ended up with a challenge: How to deal with the Guidant name.

The Indiana company was the second largest maker of implantable defibrillators in the country, but its reputation and sales took a sharp dive last year after malfunctions were reported in its devices. Thousands were recalled, and several patients died.

Now, as Boston Scientific folds Guidant into an expanding empire, it is launching a campaign to make the Guidant brand disappear, and to win over doctors who implant the $30,000 devices Guidant manufactures.

''Guidant has made some mistakes, which they readily acknowledge, and we need to repair our credibility with our customer base," said Boston Scientific chief executive Jim Tobin.

Today the campaign begins in earnest, as more than 6,000 heart specialists arrive in Boston for Heart Rhythm 2006, the world's most important medical conference on heart rhythm problems.

They'll be greeted at Logan International Airport by Boston Scientific's blue logo on signs near the arrival gates. The company's billboards have been posted in the vicinity of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Within the hall, the green Guidant logo, which in previous years flew high over the floor of the convention, will be reduced to appear in small signs beneath a Boston Scientific banner. By the next series of major cardiology conferences later this year the Guidant logo will have vanished altogether.

The program is part of a carefully orchestrated, yearlong campaign to stuff the Guidant brand into the attic and replace it with Boston Scientific. The plan reaches deep into the company -- the Guidant executive in charge of the heart-rhythm devices was replaced even before the deal closed. It covers aspects of the business as small as the way receptionists answer the phone. The official greeting will change from ''Guidant, a Boston Scientific company" to ''Boston Scientific."

Such moves are not unusual for companies trying to re-brand products, especially those with a damaged reputation.

''Where there is already a negative image established, you want to migrate away from that and toward a brand that was known and trusted," said Robert Passikoff of Brand Keys Inc., a New York market research firm. ''It's what mutual funds do when they don't do real well. They just change their names."

Although Guidant's recalls were triggered by short-circuiting problems in its devices that could be dangerous for patients, many heart doctors say they do not consider Guidant's technical issues more significant than those faced by its major competitors, all of which have reported problems in recent years.

''I think their technology is as good as it ever was, and comparable to the other major manufacturers," said Dr. Jeremy Ruskin, a Massachusetts General Hospital cardiologist who implants defibrillators. ''What Guidant is dealing with now is a perception problem. It's a public relations issue they have to overcome."

That perception problem, however, has had a real effect on Guidant's revenues, cutting dramatically into sales of its defibrillators and pacemakers last year, although the numbers have recently begun to recover.

Dr. William Maisel, a Harvard-affiliated cardiologist who implants defibrillators at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, said news of the Guidant recalls changed which brand of defibrillator doctors and patients requested. ''Over the past year I got a lot of referrals that are accompanied by a request for a certain brand of device. That's completely new over the last year, because of all the bad press," he said.

Unlike consumer product companies, which wage multimillion dollar advertising wars to convince consumers to use products like Coke or Pepsi, medical device makers chiefly need to polish their brands' reputation among doctors, both specialists and those who refer patients. Such public relations work is delicate, because doctors are expected to base their decisions only on hard facts about the medical benefits of devices.

''We spend a lot of time looking at [data], and we don't use something unless we're convinced it's the best," said Ruskin. He and Maisel said they use Guidant's defibrillators as well as those made by competitors Medtronic Inc. and St. Jude Medical Inc.

Boston Scientific's public relations campaign aimed at doctors follows an advertising blitz that began April 24, the first business day after the company closed the Guidant acquisition. Boston Scientific ran full-page advertisements in nearly 30 newspapers around the world, chiefly in locations where its employees are concentrated -- Boston, Minnesota, Ireland, and Puerto Rico. It also took out ads in three major medical journals, and advertised in three Capitol Hill publications to reach the federal regulators who oversee its devices.

In Minnesota, where Guidant's defibrillators are made, the company bused 3,000 Guidant employees to an indoor soccer arena to watch a four-minute video called ''We Can and We Will," featuring warm greetings from chairman Pete Nicholas and chief executive Jim Tobin, who also flew to Minnesota to address the company's newest employees in person.

The campaign comes amid a broader push by the company to boost its public profile, as a quiet medical device maker becomes a global healthcare brand and one of the leaders of Massachusetts industry.

The company has advertised in Fenway Park, and in the stadium where the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings play. It has stepped up its philanthropy initiatives, and just signed on as a major sponsor of the Boston Heart Walk, which benefits the American Heart Association.

''If you scroll back maybe three years, we were a $2.5 billion company. Now we're $10 billion. We're kind of like a teenager, we've grown very quickly -- we need to grow into our shoes a little bit," said Tobin.

The campaign to phase out the Guidant brand is also driven by a bigger ''master brand" policy Boston Scientific instituted a few years ago. After spending several billion dollars on acquisitions and keeping the original brand names of the firms it acquired, it found that doctors were becoming confused about which products it made. ''We were a coat of many colors, and people didn't understand that all the patches added up to one company," said Paul Donovan, senior vice president for corporate communications, who has orchestrated the company's overall branding strategy.

Tobin said the re-branding is ''only one element, and probably not the most important element" of winning back the confidence of doctors, many of whom say Guidant could have staved off its problems by releasing what it knew about malfunctions sooner.

''The most important element is clear and useful communication," said Tobin.

Stephen Heuser can be reached at sheuser@globe.com.