category / brand energy

Feb
22

Healthcare re-branding: think more broadly about communication

Reply

Consider every single way your healthcare organization communicates its ideas.

We’re in the midst of rebranding a healthcare system. Fundamental to the success of this effort are a few ideas that first must be conveyed and demonstrated to internal audiences. While many months away from launch, we’re already starting to capture all of the different ways the organization communicates its ideas – both top down and across all departments, e.g. medical, finance, nursing, operations, human resources, quality, IT, marketing, service lines, strategic planning, etc.

We’re way out in front with our launch planning because we have so many more communications avenues available beyond what many organizations typically consider. Of course, there are the usual tried and true mass channels. And the ones we pay for. But think more broadly.

Consider each of your departments within the organization and how they get your story, and theirs, out to the world. Begin by highjacking a room. And then start covering the walls. Capture on stickies all of the different ways you communicate, both formal and informal – in meetings, speeches, committees, task forces, retreats, phone calls, texts, reception areas, break rooms, etc. Invite people across every single department to participate.

Branding is ultimately about delivering on the promise of your vision in everything you do. This organization-wide exercise is a valuable means to creating the alignment you need to get there.

Related Posts:

Feb
03

The true power of your healthcare brand

Reply

Healthcare Brands

Everything starts with the desire to be more than you are today. Holds true for your healthcare organization. And your customer’s.

– You want to be a stronger brand. They want to be stronger individuals.

– You want to be more skilled in what you deliver. They want to be able to achieve more than they can on their own.

– You want to deliver a better experience. They want to feel like they’re really cared for.

– You want to be a better employer. They want to be a better parent, sister, brother, individual.

– You want your voice to be heard beyond others. So do they.

Think more deeply about your opportunity. And theirs. The intersection is where magic can happen.

Related Posts:

Jan
29

Maximizing your healthcare system or hospital brand

Reply

Your brand is the platform through which your communities and patients, and in turn, your healthcare system or hospital brand, grow stronger. 

We presented to the Board of a healthcare system client last week. We’re rebranding the organization and were reporting on our Discovery and initial Strategy direction.

To provide context for our presentation we opened with a few slides titled “Great Brands.” This cross-functional senior team, comprised of employees and community members, don’t spend much time thinking about the “b” word, so we wanted to make sure we were all on the same page from the outset of our session.

They found the slides extremely revealing as they challenged their beliefs about brands. As a result, it widened their lens and provided a much richer (and rewarding) picture of their opportunity. Expanding on the few opening slides…

Great Brands bridge brand strategy and business strategy. Using brand to differentiate organizations, products and services to maximize their value and potential – by managing all of the tangibles and intangibles that surround these offerings – successfully achieved when championed by the CEO, embraced by leadership and lived by every stakeholder.

Great Brands create relationship and financial value inside and outside the organization. They create relationship value internally by impacting recruitment and retention, staff connection and commitment, pride in the organization and confidence in the future. Externally, they enhance community health status, influence consumer choice and build loyalty, create leverage by attracting partners, enhancing relationships and allowing the organization to seize new opportunities.

They create financial value internally by optimizing marketing/spend resources, enhancing future cash flows and bond rating and promoting coherent and efficient brand management. Externally, brands influence service volumes, donor attraction and contribution, capital fundraising and higher revenue procedures.

Great Brands are built on a foundation wider and deeper than brand positioning. They are nurtured with connecting Stories, shaped by shared Values, guided by Promises, expressed by way of their Positioning and Personality, and succintly captured through their Tagline.

Great Brands know that actions speak louder than words.  To talk only of their “campaigns” diminishes their opportunity to help communities, patients and ultimately the organization itself grow stronger.  An easy example is Nike + iPod which gives you feedback while you record your run or workout and then lets you track your progress.

In short, great brands provide the energy that drive your communities, patients and organizations forward.

Related Posts:

Jan
18

Health brands’ “ideal-driven” opportunity

Reply

Improving lives = customer and brand energy = brand success.

Great article on mediapost.com – Fastest-Growing Brands Are Ideal-Driven. It recaps the research conducted by Millward Brown and Jim Stengel, former global marketing officer of P&G.

It seems that the common denominator across the 50 brands showing the fastest growth both in depth of customer relationships and financial value between 2000 and 2010 is that they’ve been built on an ideal of improving lives in some way.

By “ideal, they’re referring to a “higher-order” purpose or benefit that the company/brand seeks to contribute to the world, with this purpose being the central driver and determinant of all of its strategies, decisions and actions.

Health and well-being brands that made the top 50 list include:
• Dove (personal care)
• Innocent (food and beverages)
• L’Occitane (personal care)
• Method (household cleaners and personal care)
• Natura (personal care)
• Pampers (baby care)
• Sensodyne (oral care)
• Seventh Generation (household cleaners and personal care)
• Stonyfield Farm (organic dairy products)

Health brands – which at their core exist to make lives better – should own more places on this Top 50 list. It starts with finding your energy. Stepping back and reconsidering your story and the big idea that defines you. Your more heroic purpose. And then letting your actions follow from these beliefs. Which ultimately become a platform for customers (and your brand’s) continuous growth.

Related Posts:

Jan
13

Blast from the past: 10 brands to watch in 2001

Reply

I was going through some old files and found the January 2001 issue of (now defunct) Brand Marketing. This is actually pretty surprising, as I’ve rightfully earned the nickname of “the great purger” of old files at Trajectory.

The cover article is ten brands to watch in 2001. And the sub-head reads Brand Marketing picks the consumer products and services most likely to make an impact this year. It’s their top picks for the biggest potential newsmakers. Not necessarily the most successful, but those judged to make the biggest impact.

Here they are. Hot off the presses (so to speak), with summary rationale for their inclusion on this list:

1. amazon.com – given its diversity beyond books, personalizing the on-line experience and strong bent on customer service. Truth be told, I’m a big fan.

2. america online – having just acquired Time Warner, the 23 million subscriber company was trying to vault ahead in the multimedia world. FYI, it’s subscriber base (as of 6/10), was 4.4 million.

3. AT&T – which was just breaking up (again) in 2001, splitting into four companies (business long-distance, consumer long-distance, wireless and broadband) and introducing it’s new Boundless ad campaign. Is it’s equity any clearer today?

4. hillary clinton – just having inked an $8 million deal to write her White House memoir, her new appointment as U.S. senator from New York and being hailed as one of the political brands with the greatest potential to impact the country.

5. firestone – once one of the most venerable brands in the tire business, was actually fighting for survival given the deaths that were linked to alleged failures of its tires. Some speculated that it wouldn’t survive the year. It did.

6. napster – was responsible (operative word being “was”), for 150 million downloads a month.

7. nokia – was the world’s largest maker of wireless handsets, and for several years “has been focusing on how consumers actually use the devices after realizing that they were moving from pure functionality into design and fashion.” Funny reading this now.

8. onstar – the 600k drivers of GM vehicles who were already subscribers has new increased tenfold to six million.

9. revlon – things were looking bleak in 2001, following a decade-long decline that witnessed some fuzzy and dated imagery around the brand.

10. xfl – remember this upstart league brand (backed by WWF Entertainment) that was going to challenge the dominance of the NFL? probably not, as they played one season on 2001.

To paraphrase Walter Cronkite, “and that’s the way it was” back in 2001.

Related Posts:

Jan
10

Healthcare marketer tip: better questions for better branding and marketing

Reply

Your healthcare brand is only as strong as the customers you create. The customers who you advance through your marketing beyond what they can do on their own, and beyond the reach of competitors.

One important key to unlocking this value is the power of a BETTER QUESTION. Obvious questions yield answers that are more affirming and validating. Better questions lead to new perspectives, new insights, new ideas. They provide answers that lead you to “wow, I never thought about that in this way before”,  ”never imagined they felt this way before”, “never imagined they looked at their world this way before”, “never imagined we could provide value along these lines before.”

Better questions help you to see, think, believe and then give you the power to act in new ways.  They’re questions that peel away at the outer layers of an issue to reveal new things about category, company, customer, connections and communication – to yield inspirational new insights and ideas.

Here are three tips to get to more provocative questions, and more inspiring answers:

1. Force new connections. It gets people out of the category and their comfort zone, but provides a frame of reference for them to relate back to.

2. Think short story. Ask a question that must be answered in the form of an elevator-like “short story”.

3. Personal instead of place. People have visions, values and feelings, places (organization’s) don’t. Make your questions personal.

Better questions lead to better brands, better marketing, better customers. Who then create better brands. And so it goes.

Related Posts:

Dec
31

Creating new energy in the new year.

Reply

Wishing everyone a fulfilling and prosperous 2012.

Here are some life/work tips (my humble opinion) that will make for a great year:

1. Be passionate. Everything starts with the desire to be more than you are today.

2. Have vision. All meaningful change begins here.

3. Keep your eyes wide open. Truly see everything that’s going on around you.

4. Good Company. Surround yourself with positive, and great, people.

5. Focus. You can’t be everything to everybody, but you can be invaluable to some.

6. Great everyday. Do something (it doesn’t have to be big) that truly makes a difference every day.

7. Follow-Through. Do what you say you’re going to do.

8. Get started. Take the first step.

Here’s to a great year!

Related Posts:

Nov
23

New healthcare brand energy: Reading Women’s Health Services

Reply


The more energy people sense from a brand, the greater its attraction and opportunity to create future value.

In this case, the brand is Reading Hospital and Medical Center’s Women’s Health Services. And it’s one of those rare times I’m writing about Trajectory client work.

Because Reading’s changing the game and creating new value for women. Who in turn, are carrying this healthcare brand forward and creating more value for the organization.

Reading’s created a comprehensive suite of Women’s Health Services for women at every stage of their lives. And combined with their highly personalized (uniquely branded) method of care – has created excitement inside and outside, changed attitudes and moved the needle on patient referrals and volume.

Marketing has played an important supporting role. It’s voice is personal, sophisticated, respectful and reassuring. Borne out of a lot of rich conversation with care givers and target prospects. It also creates value in and of itself, by being collaborative, enabling and unifying through its multi-channel delivery.

Congrats to Reading Women’s Health Services. They’ve really taken the lead in changing the game, and everyone’s winning.

Related Posts:

Sep
13

Healthcare brand differentiation actually requires different

Reply


Our communities can count on us to provide inferior levels of clinical care and quality of care. Clearly, not a positioning you’d want to stake out among your communities.

But neither are the usual suspects of providing a higher level of care to our communities. Providing world class care close to home. Putting patients first. Because instead of staking out meaningful points of difference versus area competitors, all you’re really doing is getting lost in the noise. Truth be told, what healthcare organization doesn’t exist to provide higher levels of care? To put patients first?

It’s curious that when we talk to healthcare executives and their teams and ask them how they stand apart from others, we rarely get clear answers. And consensus is rarer still. But if you can’t be clear about what makes you different, how can your employees, communities and prospective customers. And how do you align product, people, processes, place and promotion when you don’t have the destination in mind.

Differentiation actually requires being different. Understanding your points of parity (category benefits), but also being able to identify meaningful points of differentiation (where you can excel and deliver) and based on understanding your target customer needs and behaviors.

Once you’ve landed on your unique energy, it’s critical to inject it with emotion and edge to inspire both inside and outside. Take for example, the repurposed statement “providing a higher level of care.” But add some color, and you can quickly get to, for example, “setting the bar higher” or “the passion to lead.”

Who would you be more inspired to work for?

Related Posts:

Aug
23

Making the case for improving the healthcare brand experience

1


High-energy brands deliver uniquely branded experiences that distinguish the organization and surprise and delight customers.

From Accenture’s online journal Outlook is this article From Patient To Customer: Improving The Patient Experience. It’s written by Anil Swami, Accenture’s global lead for Consumer Experience Management/Service Strategy domains.

His premise is that the customer service bar keeps being raised due to the improving service quality offered by other kinds of companies with whom patients interact. Companies that readily come to mind, for me, include online retailers Zappos and Amazon, physical retailers Apple and Best Buy, service providers Geek Squad and American Express. Given these experiences, our expectations are raised as we make cross-sector comparisons.

Within this context, hospitals will have to move beyond their traditional sphere of merely providing medical care. They must put in place the operations and processes to satisfy patients through differentiated experiences that engender greater loyalty. The key, according to Anil, is to “approach patients as customers and to design the end-to-end patient experience accordingly. This fosters longer-term relationships and enhances the provider’s overall brand value.”

The benefits of this approach are evident in a recent pilot by a prominent US academic medical center. Initiatives focused only on improving clinical procedures weren’t enough to keep patients satisfied, or to lure them away from other regional hospitals. But innovations designed to improve the patient experience showed positive results (abbreviated here):

• making information more consistent (through self-service portals)
• providing access options (to different demographic groups for receiving communications and accessing information)
• creating effective communications and education (through web-based multimedia education programs)
• offering personalized service (through different kinds of hospitality services)

Many hospitals (given the economic and political climate) have been focused on improving efficiency and reducing costs. But the author’s conclusion is that to be effective and successful in the future, hospitals need to deliver memorable service experiences in addition to offering world-class clinical care.

Makes sense. Are these healthcare brands really any different from the myriad providers across other industries who use customer service as a way to distinguish their organizations and create wow experiences for their customers.

Your thoughts?

Related Posts: