Rebranding a tradition: March of Dimes updates its premiere event and image.

AS he sat in the lobby of his largest corporate sponsor in mid-2007, the March of Dimes' Doug Staples braced himself for a rough ride.

In previous months, he had mentioned to community relations managers at retailer Kmart that a major change might be in the works. But this time, he traveled to the company's headquarters in the Chicago suburb of Hoffman Estates to formally inform them that the March of Dimes would rename its iconic WalkAmerica fundraiser as the March for Babies.

Since its 1970 launch as the first large-scale walkathon, the event had raised more than $1.8 billion, with Kmart, as the top corporate contributor, accounting for $63 million during a span of 24 years.

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"We were nervous about it," said Staples, the White Plains, N.Y.-based March of Dimes senior vice president of strategic marketing and communications, about discarding a name that had become so widely known. "But when I explained why we are doing it, they just said, 'Great. It makes perfect sense.' I just about fell out of my chair."

March of Dimes officials are hoping to win similar acceptance at the grass-roots level, after making the name change public on Jan. 16 as part of a much broader strategic shift and concurrent rebranding program. It includes a changed logo and a new Web site. How well it works will play a large role in whether the March of Dimes can hit its ambitious goal of growing revenues by at least 10 percent a year, compared to the 4 percent pace of the recent past. In 2006, total revenues ran $236.7 million.

At the heart of the shift, the planning of which began about two years ago, was polling that showed nearly 90 percent of the people had heard of the organization, but only half of them knew what it did. The March of Dimes had a very high profile for more than-two decades after its founding in 1938 to lead the fight to conquer polio. It became less familiar after the disease was eradicated and the focus shifted to birth defects and premature births.

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As a result, March of Dimes leaders decided approximately one year ago to expand the group's scope to general baby health rather than staying confined to pregnancies when something goes wrong. Quietly, they changed the official name from the March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation to the March of Dimes Foundation and then retained the Kansas City marketing consultant Barkley to redesign the imagery.

"We want moms to know that we are here for all babies and have a lot of great information for them," said Staples. "We are not only for people who have a problem during pregnancy."

In part, that meant casting aside the WalkAmerica name, despite the nearly four decades of brand equity behind it. The fundraiser has regularly accounted for about 45 percent of the March of Dimes' total revenue, with the take rising from $96.7 million In 2004 to $116.52 million in 2007.

"There is always risk in change, especially for something that has been around for a long time," said Staples. "But it has gotten kind of diluted with so many other walks out there, so it doesn't have as much impact as it used to."

One of the risks pointed out by brand consultants Joel Baumwoll of Brandoctors in New York City and Mike Carr, director of NameStormers of Lago Vista, Texas, was the potential to pull the March of Dimes into the heated politics of abortion. To both of them, the title March for Babies could create the false impression that the neutral March of Dimes had joined the pro-life side. Mike Swenson, an executive vice president at Barkley, said this potential complication had come up during the process of choosing of the name, but that focus group testing had not shown it to be a problem.

Overall, Carr termed the name change a bit risky. "People would give their right arms to have that kind of brand equity (of WalkAmerica)," he said. "There is no way you can establish that kind of presence in today's environment ."

But he acknowledged that March for Babies would generate buzz. "If they manage the spin properly, it does give them an opportunity to tell their story to an awful lot of new people," he said.

Baumwoll considered it "pretty clever" to incorporate the word march in the name, because of the tie to the organization. Moreover, he added, "A march is more powerful than a walk. March implies people who have strong feelings about the cause,"

Any pitfalls in the transition would be "manageable," he added, as long as the message was pressed home to the thousands of people Involved.

Along that line, Staples said, the organization had sent a heads-up mailing to approximately 30,000 top volunteers, followed by an email blast to 2 million people who have previously participated.

In another major component of the rebranding, the March of Dimes launched MarchofDimesBabies.org, with general information about baby health. The home page is covered with lines of small, light gray text that cover 200 commonly-asked questions about pregnancy, everything from why the mother's hair gets thicker to the chances that a baby will have Down's Syndrome if the mother is older than 35.

The eye-catcher is that the lines turn black to show a baby crawling around and playing.

In venturing into general baby health, March of Dimes will bump up against entrenched players, including the Mayo Clinic, New York Presbyterian Hospital and Parenting magazine. Babycenter.com, owned by Johnson & Johnson, was far and away the leader with 4.05 million unique site visitors in December, according to comScore Media Metrix. By contrast, the regular March of Dimes site drew only 225,000 visitors, down 25 percent from December 2006 and lagging at least 10 other general baby sites.

Other sites also employ various techniques to draw and retain readers. Babycenter.com, for example, sends emails every week to women who sign up telling them what to expect at particular stages of their pregnancies.

Against that marketing power, Staples said the March of Dimes hopes to gain traction as one site that is an impartial source of knowledge and not selling anything.

As the other major piece of re branding, the organization was adopting the color purple for its materials and changing the logo to all lower case letters in a softer font. "The public service advertising is more intimate and friendly, and we hope this change will help people see the March of Dimes as a more approachable organization that they can feel comfortable joining," said March of Dimes President Dr.Jennifer L. Howse.