Inset: How does one deftly navigate a message stream about an evidence-based finished good or branded ingredient, through the murky waters of Enforcement Bay, and potently influence target consumer groups, creating legions of brand zealots?

Setting: EB Health Media Relations, Multiverse Headquarters, New Client meeting room. New client: Dom Fantastique. 4.44.81; 15 April 2010.

EB Health VP Business Development, Susan Klinger: “Good morning and thank you for requesting this meeting. We have been looking forward to this meeting all week, because we believe you have a fantastic product and we happen to like to drink it…very much! Our team would like to have you identify your media relations objectives—your wish list.”

Dom Fantastique CEO, Isabelle Prost, MD: “Bonjour EB Health Media Relations. We are very proud of our brand of Fantastique champagne grape juice, the ever-growing customer base and market share, but most inspiring for us is the clinical research evidence base we enjoy for our alcohol-free beverage. We have been sponsoring clinical trials in France, Canada and the U.S., for the past seven years, within significant university research centers.

“We have found in these clinical trials that Dom Fantastique exerts a significant and reproducible effect on vascular and liver function, oxidative stress and the inflammation cascade. We have had our studies published in not just ‘peer-reviewed journals’ but peer-reviewed journals with an impact factor in the top 25% of their journal category. Lastly, we have received incredible consumer stories of improved health, departure of symptoms, and even undetectable disease despite irrefutable medical evidence to the contrary, just months earlier.

“This suite of evidence is incredibly inspiring and also incredibly challenging to maintain in a ‘corked’ state, as our sales and marketing team relentlessly pushes to get the clinical evidence into all of our messaging streams. I have been keeping them in check, playing the FADSA (Food and Dietary Supplement Agency) card. We’re not a drug, we don’t want to look or talk like one, and even though we have several clinical trials we are very distant from having the evidence base accorded to an approved drug. How does your firm suggest we do it, and still be ‘legal’?”

Susan Klinger: “Merci beaucoup, Dr. Prost! We have a very simple answer: All editorial and no conflicts. I’ll defer to Dr. James Cook—who has a PhD in Nutritional Sciences and a Masters in Journalism—from two prestigious institutions—to continue and clarify.”

James Cook, PhD: “Thank you Susan. Thank you, Dom Fantastique, for meeting with us, as I am certain that we have a powerful solution for you. Susan’s reference to editorial is simply that. If the message translated from the evidence base you have amassed—and unique to your brand—is conveyed NOT by your label, digital site, advertising, or even in person promotions, but by others messaging about Dom Fantastique and what it has been shown to do, you are immune from FADSA sanctions. If you had data showing that your beverage cured the most insidious disease AND it was shared with the Multiverse through one story by a journalist—in any medium—no agency could touch you…as long as that journalist had NO economic or other ties to Dom Fantastique. Not a press release but actual editorial about Dom Fantastique. He or she would need to be a truly independent journalist. Given all of the evidence you have and continue to pursue, and all of the media and top journalist contacts WE have, the editorial flow could be ceaseless. It is that simple.”

Isabelle Prost, MD: “C’est fantastique! Let us toast to editorial sans conflicts! Merci, EB Health Media Relations.”