category / branding

Feb
22

Healthcare re-branding: think more broadly about communication

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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.

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Feb
16

Healthcare re-branding: 5 internal energizing must-do’s

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When it comes to your healthcare re-branding, it’s important that leadership exhibit the same behaviors that your communities and patients now expect from your brands: actions speak louder than words.

For any re-brand to be truly successful (measured in both relationship and financial terms), your internal audience needs to buy in to the story of your brand. Too often, brand vision, values and promises are rooted among senior managers, but don’t permeate the rest of the organization. What’s required is more articulation, more communications and more demonstration of your branding to your entire internal audience.

Here are five important requisites for success:

1. Paint a compelling, inspiring and tangible picture for the future that will energize the organization and inspire high levels of optimism, commitment, engagement and performance.

2. Introduce a branding strategy that will bind the organization together, while supporting individual hospital and service line identities and answering the question, “What do we (all of us and each of us) stand for?”

3. Prepare the Senior Team, Directors, Managers and Physician Leaders to enthusiastically and effectively champion to all employees your vision for the future, your strategy and your brand positioning.

4. Establish an on-going, two-way communication process to check progress, communicate successes, solve implementation problems and sustain enthusiasm.

5. Utilize all available formal communication vehicles to inform, inspire and engage internal audiences.

At the end of the day, your most effective brand guidelines – for building brand value – are people. They, not manuals, are the only way to truly maximize your healthcare organization’s brand energy.

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Feb
03

The true power of your healthcare brand

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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.

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Jan
10

Healthcare marketer tip: better questions for better branding and marketing

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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.

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Dec
18

Healthcare marketing without borders

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Are brand and marketing at the center of your healthcare organization’s attention? In this extraordinarily competitive and challenging healthcare environment, I’d suggest they should be.

This really came to light for me while meeting with a prospective client. Regardless of which way you looked out from the tenth floor of their offices, you’re in view of a competing healthcare provider. But beyond competition, there are a few other forces at play that lead to re-thinking the traditional siloed approach to marketing:

• Unlike other industries and organizations where employees are tightly aligned around their corporate brands, e.g. Whole Foods, Google, Zappos, to name just a few, healthcare brand and marketing delivery are often subject to the performance of dispersed, individual (often unemployed) care providers.

• Patient service revenues continue on the path of being generated outside the inpatient side of the business, calling for stronger operational integration and communication.

• The customer experience, so important to fostering longer-term relationships and enhancing overall brand value, is rarely informed and shaped by “marketing.”

• Customers are now co-steering your fate. They’ve evolved from passive receiver to active investigator and empowered influencer. They can access and interface with the organization through numerous channels. And they have new alternatives to traditional providers in terms of new upstarts, intermediaries, resources – changing the rules and redefining consumer value.

Given these forces, I’d suggest that brand and marketing management need to become a team sport. An organization-wide effort where brand and consumer are at the heart of business strategy. Where all are enabled and compelled to foster relationships (internally and between organization and community) and grow total enterprise value. And the marketing department just happens to be the hub of this collective effort. So…

• Tear down the walls (to paraphrase one of our President’s) to move brand and marketing to the center of the organization, and the CMO to the proverbial “table” alongside the other “O”s (Chief Operating, Financial, Nursing, Medical, HR, Quality…).

• Lead with brand as an organizing principle for the organization and as a basis for guiding business forward, beyond simply a brand-building communications function detached from strategy.

• Consider a broader definition of marketing to include the relationship-making or breaking patient experience. So regardless of what door someone enters your healthcare system, there are points of consistency in brand delivery.

• Work as a cross-functional team, with marketing as the linchpin, to create continuous value for the consumer. Value that is beyond marketing communication to marketing that involves, enables, and unifies.

• Align internal audiences around a common purpose (through the lens of your brand), so they make your mission their own.

Just some ideas to think about as you peer out your own “tenth floor” window. Wherever that might be.

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Dec
09

Re-energizing a storied brand: Arnold Palmer

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Being able to help steer the future direction of the Arnold Palmer Brand is a dream assignment. Fortunately, that honor is ours.

Icing on the top of a really big cake that we’ve been enjoying since we started our work, was this front-page article in the 12/5 Ad Age – Arnold Palmer takes a swing at positioning his brand for the future.

There are few sports figures that have earned the level of respect and admiration that Arnold Palmer has. Beyond his achievements on the golf course, his brand has played a role in our daily lives for more than half a century.

When you meet Mr. Palmer and spend time with his team, and begin to talk with employees and business partners, you quickly come to understand why. And they relate back to some important principles:

• Timeless values and ideals never grow old. That’s why they’re timeless.

• The importance of an authentic and emotional, simple and repeatable story as a foundation for growth.

• Regardless of how compelling a story, quality products are ultimately critical to success.

• While considering new ways to surprise and delight customers, you must remain true to your original identity.

• Your brand is the cumulation of everything you say and do, no more and no less. Everything matters.

I truthfully can’t say enough about how special this experience has been. For many reasons. But at the end of the day, what really blows us away, is how humble and kind the people are at Arnold Palmer Enterprises. And as usual, this tone emanates from the top. Good life lessons.

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Nov
16

Thank you Amazon (a lesson in building brand affection)

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My Kindle Fire arrived today. In and of itself (at least for me), pretty exciting.

But it’s the email I received afterwards from Amazon that makes me an even bigger fan than I already am.

Subject: Regarding your recent purchase.

Dear eric brody,
We wanted to let you know that the price on the Marware MicroShell Folio Cover for Kindle Fire has dropped. You previously paid $39.99 per unit, and the price has been reduced to $29.99. As a result of this price change we have added a $20.00 promotional certificate to your account, which will be automatically applied to your next purchase on Amazon.com. You can use this balance the next time you order an item shipped and sold by Amazon.com.

Thank you,
Kindle Support

———————–

Now, this might have been baked into their plan from the start. In which case, really smart. But I’ll give Amazon the benefit of the doubt. The result is a win-win for both customer (me) and company (Amazon).

I’m a surprised and even more delighted customer. A customer who will actively sing their praises (as I’m doing here just minutes after receiving the email). A customer whose relationship with Amazon is strengthened. A customer who feels some genuine affection (a rare feeling these days).

In turn, Amazon has inspired and garnered some great word-of-mouth (which we know is trusted a lot more than other forms of marketing). It’s created another evangelist. Which beyond lifting their reputation, might grow their fan base and lift sales.

At the end of the day, it’s a symbiotic relationship. Company and customer helping each other move forward. As all successful brand-customer relationships are.

In this case, the result of a simple email.

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Sep
13

Healthcare brand differentiation actually requires different

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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?

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Aug
23

Making the case for improving the healthcare brand experience

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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?

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May
20

Health brand insights: peer-to-peer health care

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Where are the trailblazers in mobile health heading? Peer-to-peer health care: wherein engaged patients and caregivers take an active role in tracking and sharing what they have learned.

Here is Susannah Fox’s (Pew Internet Project) presentation from the recent What Really Works Mobile Health conference at Stanford University. She discussed what people are really doing online – “how they are gathering, sharing and creating health information and what it means now that a majority of adults have on-the-go internet access.”

Fox Mobile Health 2011

Some facts from her presentation:

• Six in ten US adults gather health info online
• 59% go online wirelessly, with a laptop, mobile device or tablet
• 48% of wireless users look online for information about doctors or other health professionals, compared with 31% of internet users who do not have mobile access

And two important (not yet mainstream but growing) trends:

• the “mobile difference” – give someone a smart phone and they become more social, likely to share and contribute
• the “diagnosis difference” – having a chronic disease significantly increases an internet user’s likelihood to say they both contribute and consume user-generated content related to health. Learning from each other, not just from institutions.

Does this ring true for you? How much have you personally connected with others, shared and contributed as it relates to health conditions?

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