Junto ("june-toe") is sponsored by Franklin Street, a branding and full service advertising agency specializing in health and wellness. We call the blog Junto in homage to Benjamin Franklin, who created the first "Junto" brainstorming group, which established the first American public hospital.
Take a moment to think about the following brands: Nike, Apple, Coca-Cola, Exxon, McDonald’s. What do they all have in common besides giant war chests, near-global ubiquity and a preference for questionable business practices?
Consistency. There’s a very good reason why every Apple retail store looks exactlythesame, or why every McDonald’s bag faithfully adheres to the red and yelow color scheme. True, consistency can be boring and predictable, but it also works. It preys on our collective need for familiarity, creating a simple set of symbols for complex associations.
By keeping your brand identity consistent, you are removing one of the most important barriers between you and your market. Repetitive exposure to the same symbols allows your consumers to quickly and easily recognize your core message. This is why all your communications—whether it’s an ad campaign, a website, or the waiting room—must be visually consistent with each other. Your brand changes from being an unknown entity to a familiar presence. Familiarity builds trust. When people trust you, they are more inclined to listen.
There are other consequences to ignoring brand consistency. Your customers should be able to follow a clear path between your collateral, your advertising and your physical spaces. Without those clear links, your organization risks credibility and appears disorganized. At worst, consumers might think you’re new to the market, causing them to avoid you altogether.
Take a look at a few non-healthcare examples of consistent brand identities:
You can clearly see the narrative thread that connects every aspect of Apple. Consistency has turned their brand identity into a brand experience, which is one of the reasons why they’re one of the most valuable companies in the world. Note how their advertising, website, products and retail spaces align harmoniously to present a unified image—an image that is unmistakably Apple.
Similarly, there’s a very good reason why Pepsi has been unable totopCoca-Cola ever since their ridiculous 2008 logo change—and it’s coincidentally the same reason why New Coke was such an utter disaster. For the most part, straying from your core brand identity will inevitably end in nothing but tears, lost revenue and confused consumers.
Healthcare marketing is no different. Brand consistency leads to trust and acceptance. So when Centra—a leading three-hospital system in Virginia—added a new hospital and expanded to serve 13 counties, we created a visual identity that unified the system but allowed flexibility for growing service lines.
After Centra’s new identity launch, research showed staff morale, name recognition and patient volume for key services increased. In fact, consistent brand extensions actually proved to strengthen the overall brand and helped increase recognition. Finally, consistent branding strategies helped Centra save money on brand development and overall marketing expenses. After all, tweaking a brand identity with every new service line or center of excellence may mean you have to work harder to help consumers make the connection with your hospitals. And why do that, especially in lean times?
Know a brand that’s growing effectively? Or an extension that’s stretched a little too far from the brand? Please share.
When you think of Harley-Davidson®, do you think of a premium woman’s brand?
Maybe you should.
According to NBCU, which does an annual brand power index study, Harley tops the list of brands that are doing all the right things to connect with women.
Harley’s new “My Time to Ride” campaign documents women from across different lifestyles and life stages learning how to ride a motorcycle. The webisodes are instantly engaging and do what great branding does: marry the product with a higher emotional state. In Harley’s case, it’s freedom and confidence.
Most health systems cater their brands to women. (She’s the healthcare decision-maker in the house, after all.)
So what can we learn from Harley?
1. Be real. The 2012 Trendwatching study talks about “Maturialism.” Consumers have zero tolerance for brands that handle them with kid gloves. They want frank, honest conversations. The “My Time to Ride” campaign does this brilliantly.
2. Use multiple platforms. Harley connects with women in traditional ad campaigns, on-line via webisodes, and social media. Harley also offers directories for women to find mentors and group riding events. As you plan your next campaign, challenge yourself to go beyond print, radio and TV. How many different ways can you connect with your audience? (Often, these secondary level tactics produce surprising buzz.)
3. Engage your audience. Inspiring campaigns are one thing. But nothing can replace the sound and feel of a real Harley-Davidson®. So Harely hosts Garage Parties, opportunities for women to join other non-riders to learn the basics of motorcycling. (Men are off-limits at these events, by the way.) Health fairs, screening events and symposiums, once passé, now have new opportunities for healthcare marketers, and social media helps keep the conversation going. Give your audience an opportunity to connect with your physicians and healthcare providers.
Do you ride a Harley? What do you think of this new campaign?
Have a surprising brand that can inspire the healthcare marketing conversation? We’d love to hear from you.
According to a study from Deloitte, 80% of people will travel outside their community for perceived higher quality of health care.
Many community hospitals are challenged with the perception that they are good for the common illnesses and broken bones, but can’t handle the major stuff.
Satilla Regional faced a similar quandary when they asked for our help in marketing their cardiac services program. Despite outperforming 75% of all hospitals nationwide in the emergency treatment of heart attacks, many locals believed they needed to go out of town for heart needs.
Using research on how and why consumers choose and evaluate healthcare providers, we developed a solution that spoke openly and honestly to Satilla’s audience. When it comes to your heart, use your head, became the campaign theme.
We featured one of Satilla’s cardiologists as a spokesperson for the campaign. Based on research we’ve conducted in markets all over the country, we knew physicians can be excellent spokespeople for hospitals, creating a halo effect for providers. Consumers feel that physicians can choose to practice medicine at many hospitals, so if they are choosing this particular hospital to practice, it must be of high quality.
We also featured testimonials of former cardiac patients and the life-saving care they received at Satilla. Television and web videos wove the softer, more emotional factors that lead to trusting Satilla for cardiac services.
We’re still tracking results for the campaign, but early numbers suggest the campaign is reaching our audiences’ hearts and minds.
What’s your take on using physicians as spokespeople? Curious about our clients’ take on STARK laws? Drop us a line — we’d love to hear from you.
Great branding campaigns are, ultimately, campaigns of great story telling.
Stories are the best way to impart information. People forget facts. They remember stories.
Before the written word, oral storytellers shared history, which was passed to other generations.
Peter Guber writes about the art of storytelling as a persuasion tool in Tell to Win.
Nike, Disney, Coke, Chick-fil-A. Just Do It. Magic. Refreshment. Cows telling us to eat more chicken.
Storytelling.
Now we’re in the age of Story Building.
Your audience contributes to your branding.
She tells her friends about the great experience she had at your hospital.
How your nursing staff calmed her husband’s fears.
How the physicians saved her husband’s life.
She does this on the phone and on-line.
She’s so grateful for the miracle of her husband’s recovery that she takes to Facebook, a modern day Paul Revere, letting everyone know your brand is expertise, compassion, life-saving, life-giving.
Her friends write back: Thank Goodness for that hospital, those nurses, those physicians.
One Facebook post turns into 100 comments.
Friends of friends contribute to your hospital’s story, building onto it, line by line, as if surrounded by a digital campfire.
Now: How do you support this story building? What do you put in place at the launch of your next campaign to encourage story building?
The challenge: Storytelling is in your control. Story building isn’t.
That’s also the opportunity.
What brands do you think do a great job with story building?
We’ve spent months curating predictions and trends that are most likely to impact marketing and communicating healthcare brands. Below are five key trends brands should embrace in order to engage with today’s healthcare audiences.
Just 44% of Americans believe their home is worth more than their mortgage, and only 22% of likely U.S. voters believe the country is headed in the right direction. With so much uncertainty and feelings of disillusionment, today’s audiences have no time for organizations that talk down to them. They want frank, honest conversations more than ever from brands.
Implications for healthcare brands: Health systems can’t be skittish about engaging prospective patients and caregivers. This means more on-line communications where straight talk via blogs and open door conversations via social media. Traditional branding efforts should evoke honest dialogue: more real life instead of make-believe. Our audiences can handle adult conversations about their healthcare; in fact, they demand it. Meaningful calls-to-action are hallmarks of Maturialism in 2012: make an appointment, speak to a nurse, or attend a screening or event for early diagnosis and prevention.
DIY (Do It Yourself) Health
Health is the new wealth. Tech innovations will keep fueling our audiences’ desire to take charge of their health. (There are already more than 9,000 mobile health apps available and Ford is now testing in-car health monitoring technology in their cars.) This trend dovetails one of the tenets of the Affordable Care Act: keeping patients well and out of the hospital.
Implications for healthcare brands: Health systems have a huge opportunity to lead the charge for wellness, not just treatment. This means new approaches to traditional community health events and screenings. Healthcare had been a low interest conversation, a “pay attention only when I need it” philosophy. Today, our messages have a sticky factor as audiences clamor for how to live and feel better. Yet, healthcare providers account for only 2% of all social health buzz. It’s time for health systems to pony up and engage to the DIY Health crowd.
In the age of Siri, access to information isn’t a problem. It’s finding the right answers and solutions that’s the challenge. Our healthcare audiences are seeking trusted guides to deliver enlightenment. With our audiences’ time and attention at a premium, though, they are seeking out gurus on topics. These gurus take a patient approach to sift information and distill in meaningful ways to audiences.
Implications for healthcare brands:It’s not enough to purchase third party health information, plug it into a website and expect it to be perceived by healthcare audiences as valuable and useful. Healthcare brands must play the role of gurus: sifting and filtering information and sharing it in ways that don’t overwhelm audiences. Because healthcare audiences vary so widely in need, healthcare brands should use multiple platforms to connect with audiences. This means Facebook strategies geared to new moms, blogs and support discussion groups for people living with COPD, and monthly lectures on trends in heart care.
Attitudes towards aging are changing, with people of all ages taking a positive view of growing older. As the demographic and culture changes, along with medical advances, audiences will redefine what “old” means and when it occurs.
Implications for healthcare brands:Traditional healthcare services like orthopedics and cardiac services will benefit from appealing to the youthful spirit of audiences 50+. This means more emphasis in messaging on how healthcare brands get patients “back to a busy, full life.” Because older adults today don’t view their age as a barrier to youth or vitality as did generations prior, healthcare brands can benefit from their willingness to actively seek out medical treatments that keep them on the go.
The universal archetype of masculinity is over. The old rules that define a man’s role in the home and office do not apply in today’s world. More women are out-earning their husbands and men accept it. In fact, 77% of all men say they are comfortable with their wives earning more than them and 72% are okay staying home to take care of the children.
Implications for healthcare brands:Because men accounted for over 75% of the recessionary job losses, they are running more errands and homesteads while the spouse works and brings home the paycheck. For the coveted healthcare age cohort of 55-64, men use the Internet equally as women to search for healthcare information (74.7% to 75.4%, respectively). Women, once the default demographic for healthcare messages, should no longer be considered the sole target audience for all healthcare campaigns. More health systems are developing programs and services around men who are tuned in to healthcare messaging–and responding to it–like never before.
Communication Trends
Strictly speaking communications, we see the continued growth of mobile and web-based video as tools for healthcare brands in 2012. Consider these facts:
Smart phone web-based searches have quadrupled in the last year and now 1 in 3 mobile searches are for local brands (like hospitals!).
Smart phone usage is expected to double within 5 years as mobile overtakes the PC as the most popular way to get on the Web.
Americans spend on average 2.7 hours per day “socializing” on a mobile device.
eMarketer estimates that US online video ad spending will grow by a compound annual rate of 38% in a five-year span ending in 2015, making this by far the fastest-rising category of online spending.
By 2015, video ad spending will reach $7.1 billion, up from $2.6 billion in 2011. In the past year alone, growth was 52.1%.
What do you see as the trends that could positively or negatively impact your brand? What’s next?
As a guy writing this blog, I realize the headline above could be considered piggish.
But it’s not.
If you haven’t heard of Hot Mama, it’s a chain of clothing stores that has Disney-like brand loyalty.
Their secret? A highly focused customer experience tailored to moms who want to feel sexy and beautiful.
Hot Mama stores are designed so that kids playing with the in-store video games are always in view, no matter where mom is in the store. Their retail consultants are trained in matching customers’ body types with denim and other clothing for fit and feel and embrace what women are feeling at different stages of momhood.
Even their Facebook presence is stylish, fun and a great example of customer engagement.
What can we bring into healthcare marketing from Hot Mama?
1. Story building. Traditionally, branding was the art of story telling. With the rise of social media, our audiences want to participate. In turn, they build the stories with the brand. Story building is the new art of customer engagement, a chance for healthcare brands to enhance their brands by inviting participation. Check out how Hot Mama makes store openings and sales exciting on Facebook and consider how to bring more zest to your health system’s status updates.
2. Design an experience. True, many hospitals were designed around the doctor and not the patient, and you may not have the pull to invest millions in environmental design. But if you’re in marketing communications, you probably have the wherewithal to shape a great experience with your website, social media channels and other digital campaigns. On the web, you’re often limited only by your imagination. What can you do to design a great experience for your healthcare audiences?
3. Thin slice your audience. The death of a great campaign is trying to appeal to a wide audience. Be narrow with your focus, or “thin slice” your audience and micro target them with messages and promotions. Hot Mama chose not to sell to a lot of women in order to give full focus to a certain type of woman at a certain time in her life. The more you can focus your messages and campaigns, the more likely you are to say something that is “sticky” with your audience.
What other ways can we parlay Hot Mama’s success into healthcare? What other brands outside of healthcare should we be students of and learn from?
Earlier this year, BridgeHealth, partnered with Franklin Street to develop a campaign for their unique role: “the premier provider of access to Centers of Excellence in the US and beyond for planned major surgeries.”
From direct mail to brochures to email campaigns, Franklin Street developed a complete advertising campaign.
Earlier this year, Good Samaritan Health System in Lebanon, Pa., partnered with Franklin Street to develop a brand campaign for the hospital, emphasizing its mission of “Powerful Medicine. Comforting Care.”
Patient stories across several service lines showcased Good Samaritan’s technology and top-notch care.
Check out the campaign below. How did it work for Good Samaritan? See our blog post about the campaign. For additional info, give Melissa Speir a shout.
Today’s guest blog post is written by Steve Atkinson is the former HR Director at a Fortune 500 company and current part-time professor at VCU’s Business School.
We all get the importance of having strong brands and we even acknowledge that our employees play a pivotal role in a brand’s success.
But recent changes in healthcare necessitate a closer look at our internal culture because it’s going to impact our health system’s reimbursements.
The Affordable Care Act has established incentives for hospitals that focus on both quality of care and maintenance of high levels of patient satisfaction. Medicare reimbursements will partly depend on patient satisfaction.
As a consumer of healthcare and former Director of Human Resources for a Fortune 50 company, I’m thinking there is some work to be done to get health systems congruent with highly positive patient experiences.
Ask yourself this question: Can patient satisfaction be consistently high without satisfied and productive employees?
Personally, I don’t think so. Healthcare workers have a direct line of sight to the patient that can make or break patient satisfaction, and workers can be a gold mine of information that can improve patient care and, ultimately, satisfaction. Further, leadership can do a number of things to set the tone for high patient satisfaction, most notably working to build a culture where the inside behavior is consistent with the external brand message. Branding plays a special role in service organizations because strong brands increase a patient’s trust in service delivery. Jeff Bezos of Amazon said it well: ”Your brand is what they say about you when you’ve left the room.”
It’s time to think about your internal brand and whether your employees are indeed modeling what you stand for in the marketplace. Where might you start? A first step is a brutally honest look at current reality:
What is the current organization like?
What key behaviors do we display or not display to each other and to the patient?
Do we live the stated values of the organization?
Do Operations, HR, and Marketing talk honestly to one another about getting the internal behavior aligned with the external brand messages?
Is everyone on the same page?
How do our employees feel about their work and the organization?
How does this impact patient satisfaction?
Developing an accurate assessment of today requires committed leadership. Change starts at the top.
Does leadership have a clear picture of the future and do they communicate it in a compelling way?
Do employees understand what your brand represents and what the competition is doing?
Do they care?
Does the organization structure operate effectively?
Does everyone understand their role in making it work?
Do you have the right employees with both the talent and passion for their work?
What is your approach to recruiting, on-boarding, and retention?
Are there clear behavioral expectations/values, consistent with your brand that guide employee behavior? Are employees ambassadors for your brand? Does leadership consistently model these behaviors? (The Mayo Clinic, for example, has an extensive, multi-year enculturation process designed to instill the organization’s values into every associate.)
Do work processes and systems help or hinder the delivery of high quality service and employee satisfaction? (Ask your employees – they will tell you.)
Do employees have the needed resources and authority to serve the customer? Do they feel valued? Are they satisfied with their jobs and supervision?
Is this a true service culture with disciplined execution and performance accountability? Does your compensation system reward the right behaviors?
How well are the key elements of the organization (strategy, structure, culture, staff, and systems) aligned to support one another?
Customer experiences create the brand, and building the brand from the inside out requires an honest look at the whole organizational system. It’s hard work, but I am sure you agree it’s worth it.
Steve Atkinson is a Senior Consultant with Pure Culture Consulting in Richmond where he works with clients to align and develop their organizations to best support their business strategies.
Articulating a brand platform and positioning can be challenging work, but the benefits to a well-defined brand outweigh any short-term pain and suffering. After all, brands like Apple, Ford and Target succeed by knowing who they are as brands and replicate that brand through product, price, service and design experience.
There are many paths in discovering your health system’s brand essence, but one of the tools we find very helpful (and fun, too), is the This or That? exercise.
For example: Is your hospital a Walmart or Target brand?
There’s no right answer, of course, but the feedback you get from internal stakeholders will be enlightening and encourage debate.
Other examples:
Thought-starters:
Are you cosmopolitan or tried and true?
Do you focus more on packaging than the product?
Thought-starters:
Is your organization conservative, moderate or liberal-minded?
Are you recognized for technology or spokespeople (like physicians)?
Thought-starters:
Are you known for heritage or reliability (or both)?
Do you appeal to the “everyman?”
In healthcare marketing, it’s easy for us to get caught up in the high tech/high touch debate. The fact is, men and women want both from their healthcare providers.
As you hone in on your brand’s position, investigate the emotional and intangible qualities of your organization. It’s in the emotional landscape that we make connections with our audiences. Great brands know and harness this truth. Good luck discovering yours!
