Amid Massive Manufacturing Demand, Another Need Arises: Clear Messaging

Advanced manufacturing is in the spotlight as more agile technologies are able to quickly meet the needs arising in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additive manufacturing (3-D printing) is headlining many efforts these days as on-demand manufacturing rises to meet the demands of pandemic. These efforts are admirable, as industry and makers alike are rising together to use 3-D printing technology to provide stop-gap supply of much-needed personal protective equipment (PPE).

But they’re also often lacking something important: cohesion of message.

In the drive to “do something,” many are veering off course, simply doing “something” even when that “something” isn’t actually helpful. Among the many lessons 3-D printing is learning in these unusual days is one truly critical need: clarity.

With so many companies and individuals keen to put their 3-D printers to use, a singular rallying point can be difficult to find for credible direction. Noteworthy examples have been arising to connect manufacturer with medical point-of-need, as well as with validated 3-D printable designs.

Many organizations are setting up operations to use their resources to counter the spread of novel coronavirus.

Still others, though, are seemingly using this message as more of a marketing opportunity. And there’s enough overlap of these two in similarly-worded press releases to create muddied waters

Those companies using “COVID-19” as a rallying cry where only their proprietary material or technology can be used provide an unfortunate counterexample to those actually working in the best interest of a world in pandemic. This creates more noise that makes it difficult to sift through to discover viable — and often more humbly presented — solutions.

Yes, the headlines are rife with 3-D printing these days. Yes, there are silver linings to the business of 3-D printing to be gleaned from this prominence. But let’s go over this again: this situation is not a marketing opportunity.

“I can tell you that, in the field of communication, there is a lot of noise,” Elena Palieri, Managing Director of Alterego Creative, the agency that facilitates communications for Italian 3-D printer manufacturer 3ntr, told me in a recent interview. “Thanks to social media, today it is certainly easier to evaluate serious producers: they are the ones who silently carry out their operations and communicate only case histories and concrete, useful and certified contributions, they have different topics and do not ride the Covid wave to gain visibility.”

With this age of social media, communication is more abundant and real-time than ever before. It’s up to those whose voices are loudest in the rising cacophony to speak responsibly.

One key to effectiveness both in the development of solutions and in communications is simple: collaboration. Several entities working together toward a common goal can lend not only their resources but their voices (and press releases, social media, etc.) to rise above the noise as a harmonious message.

Such collaborations are arising, for example, in the 3-D printing of nasopharyngeal (NP) testing swabs as different additive manufacturing technologies such as stereolithography (SLA) and Multi Jet Fusion (MJF) have proven effective in clinical trials and increasingly in real-world conditions.

Notable in these collaborative efforts is that the NP swab sites name the partners responsible without spotlighting them: in the spotlight is an effective and available swab. For both PrintedSwabs.org and FAST Spiral Nasopharyngeal Swabs, the sites are easily navigable with clear forms those in need of testing equipment can fill out and submit quickly. Partners (with some significant overlap between these two) are obvious, but their positioning on the sites serves more to inform than to stand as a marketing platform.

Such response is on the rise globally, and efforts like these are fortunately becoming more visible as well-known — and well-trusted — brands become attached to them. Palieri has seen the efficacy of such operations as well in Italian 3-D printing efforts, as she describes the difference between effective, validated announcements and noise:

“Made in Italy additive manufacturing represents a great resource on a global level, not only in this particular and difficult situation, but must be carefully transmitted and communicated with messages aimed at educating the public, informing them about the concrete potential of this technology with useful tools and notions, and real examples (this defines the more serious companies) and not only with content created to collect likes (this unfortunately defines the less serious companies).”

There may well be a time for accolades later, and certainly leaders are emerging in these efforts. We can applaud them later. In the immediate, the need isn’t for ego; this pandemic isn’t about you. Nearly 300,000 human lives have already been lost the world over.

This isn’t the time for competition. This isn’t the time for marketing platforms. This isn’t the time for a rallying cry about a company. This is the time to raise the profile for what can be done, more than who’s doing it. We should know who’s doing it so we know where the resources can be found, for trust and traceability, not because we have a spare pedestal.

This is the time for collaboration. This is the time to put differences aside and roll our collective sleeves up — and get to work.

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