Jul

Insight for health brand marketers: inspiring action through “why”

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.

This is Simon Sinek’s simple, smart idea presented through his TED talk: How great leaders inspire action. He calls his idea the ‘golden circle.” And it explains why some leaders and companies are able to inspire while others are not. It’s a concept that can’t really be boiled down to it’s essentials any further. But its value is big.

All companies know what they do. Most can identify how they do it. But far fewer (like Virgin, Harley Davidson, Six Senses, Innocent, Lululemon – my examples) can really identify why they do it – articulating why they really do what they do.

And “why” reflects how people make decisions (within their limbic brain, which controls our feelings) supported with the information (the “hows and whats”) people need to know to make them.

Simon’s ideas can just as effectively be applied to brand-building. And in some cases, might effectively replace the vision and mission statements which tend to sit and collect dust on corporate shelves.

Jul

Health brands creating new value: Allina Hospitals & Life Time Fitness

Here’s a good example of two health brands collaborating to create new, and important, value for communities and patients.

Allina Hospitals & Clinics and Life Time Fitness are launching a new partnership to advance preventative health and wellness initiatives and awareness. It includes the introduction of Life Time’s myHealthCheck at Allina.

The collaboration will focus on several elements:

– Life Time plans to provide its comprehensive health and wellness assessment, and health promotion program, myHealthCheck, to Allina physicians, nurses and staff as a first step towards integrating health and wellness with health care

– Allina physicians are expected to be connected to Life Time destinations in Minnesota in order to provide medical education and counseling to Life Time members and staff, and medical services for Life Time endurance events

– The organizations plan to explore innovative opportunities to inject health and fitness expertise into traditional health care delivery

– Allina and Life Time will partner to provide integrated community health and wellness programs to the community with the goals of reducing overall health care costs and improving access to preventative health and wellness education and services

You can read more about the partnership here.

Jun

Health brand insight: Medicine’s future – an app for that?

Empowering the patient. Enabling the physician. Enhancing wellness. Curing the well, before they get sick.

Daniel Kraft is a Stanford and Harvard trained physician-scientist with over 20 years experience in clinical practice, biomedical research and innovation. These are key themes from his talk at TEDxMaastricht, where he offers a fast-paced look at the next few years of innovations in medicine – powered by new tools, tests and apps that bring diagnostic information right to the patient’s bedside.

Inspiring, exciting and fascinating what’s on the horizon!

Jun

Health brand inspiration: purpose, profits & pursuit of health (TOMS)

From a simple project by Blake Mycoskie in 2006 to help get a small group of kids in Argentina new pairs of shoes, TOMS has since redefined what it means to bring about social change (and health) through business.

With their One For One™ business model, a pair of shoes is donated for every pair purchased. The success of their bandage-style shoes (more than 1 million pairs distributed in over 20 countries) proved it’s possible to truly be led by purpose and be profitable. TOMS has also proven that social media is the catalyst for digital activism be it on Facebook (942,116 likes), Twitter (732,763 followers), guerilla marketing or blogging.

Now, TOMS is expanding beyond shoes (leaving this “descriptor” behind in its brand name) and transforming into a truly one-for-one brand. Similar to its “one for one” BOGO (buy one, give one) model, TOMS is expanding its brand into a second product line (eyewear) to give the gift of sight to those in need.

TOMS new collection of sunglasses, priced from $135-$145 a pair, come in three styles and will be sold in the same way as TOMS shoes – for every pair of shades sold, TOMS will help give sight to a person in need through medical treatment, or sight-saving surgery (such as cataract operations) through a partnership with the Seva Foundation, and prescription glasses. The TOMS website also offers the option to upload a photo for a virtual fitting.

Why glasses? Helping save vision is a solvable problem, and Mycoskie feels it’s an issue where TOMS can make an immediate impact. And it certainly flows from their mission and model of solving great human needs worldwide. TOMS Eyewear will begin with initiatives in Nepal, Tibet, and Cambodia. Seva has been in the business of sight restoration for over 30 years – and has given help to nearly three million people globally.

I’m a huge fan of TOMS (could you really not be?). It’s a company…
• built around a massively important (and attracting) central energizing idea
• propelled by a cult-like culture
• driven by a purpose to solve a real problem
• providing a uniquely branded experience
• empowering customers through their actions
• ultimately creating (and fulfilling) a global one-for-one community of like-minded participants.

Please share your point-of-view.

Jun

L: a lesson in high-energy health brand creation

First, build your company around a central energizing idea. If possible, add a “heroic” purpose. Like “supporting women globally by focusing on their sexual empowerment.”

Then, support these two traits with actions that reflect your unshakable beliefs. Case in point is LA-based L, founded by Talia Frenkel, a longtime photographer for the Red Cross. The company creates the highest quality condoms for the modern consumer, and “represents a movement for consumers’ choice to support better sex, a better cause, and a better world.”

Central to their mission, for every condom purchased, one is distributed in a developing country. Supporting the mission, L partners (creating participants rather than just followers) with developing organizations to support women and HIV prevention through peer-to-peer outreach and partnerships with grassroots women leaders.

The for-profit company has teamed up with Direct Relief International, and is also working to cultivate partnerships with smaller like-minded nonprofits in AIDS-affected areas. Not to forget the importance of relevancy to high-energy brands, consider the staggering numbers surrounding the AIDS epidemic – as more human life has been lost to AIDS than all the wars, famines, floods and deadly diseases on the African continent combined.”

You can watch Talia’s inspiring story here:

Our Story from LovebeginswithL on Vimeo.

L seeks additional nonprofits to partner with to help support its mission. It also runs a Campus Club to encourage the involvement of (and thereby empowering) students at colleges and universities.

Should your organization align with L? Would your customers rally behind it? For information, you can contact L here.

Jun

K-C: a health brand combining purpose & creativity to create new value

One trait of high-energy brands is purpose beyond profit.

On the purpose front, says Jack Neff, in his Adage.com article Creativity Marks This Spot: K-C Thrives in Tiny Neenah, “K-C’s marketers really do touch and improve lives, and they do it all in a highly creative manner that gets noticed.”

He points to the following examples of K-C’s balance of purpose and creativity. At the same time, however, K-C also delivers on another high-energy brand lever of creating highly spreadable communication. Some examples:

• Whoopi Goldberg creating a series of webisodes-turned-ads featuring women in history with light-incontinence issues (who admits suffering the condition herself)

• fashion designer Patricia Field designing sanitary pads

• Tyra Banks devoting a show to U by Kotex feminine pads

• Oval and fruit-slice-inspired wedge-shaped Kleenex packages that helped reverse a decline in household penetration. And then using traditional and social media to induce a million people to send samples of a softer Kleenex to friends last fall and winter.

• Depend, which is now is replacing what looked like adult Goodnites (which has helped millions of kids outgrow bedwetting with minimal embarrassment) with what look more like men’s and women’s underwear. It adds some dignity to what the marketers describe as a “heroic” brand, and it has its own anonymous social network where experienced users help new ones cope.

• Kotex and Poise, which marketers long assumed no one wanted to talk about publicly, have found quite the opposite. Marketing became the therapy in some cases, as talking openly about “light bladder leakage” allowed more women to recognize they had the problem, that it wasn’t so unusual, and that they could buy the right products for it, said Melissa Sexton, director of integrated marketing planning on K-C’s adult- and feminine-care businesses.

What other health brands balance purpose with profits? And at the same time, create infectious, spreadable communication?

May

Health brand energy equals customer energy

As in any relationship, you’re only as strong as your significant other.

No different when it comes to your health brands and customers. Your organization’s, product or service brand energy is directly proportional to that of your customers. Because your brand can only grow stronger if your customers do. It’s very much a symbiotic relationship.

In effect, customers are your brand’s “strategic brand partners.” You link your future to theirs, through the value that your brand delivers. The more they advance, the more you advance. Side note, this is why it’s so important to periodically take the pulse or your customers – their lives, how they view the category and your offerings, where and how you fit and how they feel about you.

Remember that your future’s are intertwined. Elevate your customers and you’ll elevate your brand. Ensure that your must do’s equal their needs. Your differentiators equal their wants. And that your true distinguishers equal their most important aspirations.

May

Health brand insights: peer-to-peer health care

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?

May

Disney: integrating healthy experiences into its fun family hotels

I’ve written in previous posts about the integration of health into hotel stays (Westin and New Balance).

Disney’s first specialty offering, brand-new health and wellness suites, will debut this fall at Disney’s Contemporary Resort. These suites will feature 100 percent cotton sheets, bamboo floors and non-allergenic wrapped mattresses, along with bathrooms that will include tea tree oils and rainwater showers for a relaxing, spa-like experience.

In addition, guests will also be able to indulge in seasonal and organic fresh foods at the concierge lounge, or enjoy a yoga session or a relaxing spa treatment at the resort’s newly renovated wellness studio. Finally, guests will also have the option of having cardio fitness equipment brought right to their rooms.

Disney’s core brand idea (or DNA, mantra, essence…) is family fun entertainment. More than a slogan, these three words should serve as a touchstone for business and brand decision-making. So, is integrating health into the Disney experience consonant with this brand idea? Share your thoughts.

Apr

lululemon: a health brand with a bigger promise

The idea was to have the store be a community hub where people could learn and discuss the physical aspects of healthy living from yoga and diet to running and cycling as well as the mental aspects of living a powerful life of possibilities.

This is how Chip Wilson, founder of international retail phenomenon lululemon, describes his first store, which he opened in 1998 in Vancouver BC. He goes on to say that “unfortunately for this concept, the store became so busy that it was impossible to help the customer in this way in addition to selling the product.”

There’s a great lesson to take away here about lululemon, which underscores their success: while their business might be selling yoga-related apparel, the business of their brand is about enlightening, creating community and enriching people’s lives. Here are just a few reinforcements:

1. Their mission is creating components for people to live a longer, healthier, more fun life.

2. Their “public-facing” manifesto, which is just as much about their customers as it is about them.

3. Yoga serving as the vehicle to create community, happiness, energy and change. Every week, lululemon stores and showrooms push their products aside, unroll yoga mats and turn their spaces into instant yoga studios. Classes are complimentary and lead by instructors from local community studios.

4. Helping employees and their customer community with goal setting, which is a big part of lululemon culture. Every employee is encouraged to set personal, health and career goals and is given goal setting training. They provide this framework (below) and this downloadable worksheet on their site.

I really like what lululemon stands for. Obviously, so do many others given their dramatic growth. It’s a high-energy brand with a strong point-of-view, that creates interest and excitement, is experiential, participatory and responsive and provides life-enriching value in ways that others do not.

What’s your pov?