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How to Build a Health Care Brand Strategy Directive

By Tracy Stanko — Senior Vice President, Director of Account Service

Strong consumer brands don’t happen by accident. They are shaped and driven by a clear brand vision and flawless, consistent execution over time. Health care brands are no different. Every word and image you choose to communicate your brand to key audiences needs to be evaluated based on its potential to enhance the brand.

As a marketing professional, you may be the driver of the brand, but you have a lot of passengers on board. Physicians, nurses and employees are the brand to patients, and your customers’ experiences with the people in your organization either reinforce or compromise your brand image. So, whether you’re establishing a new brand or re–positioning an old one, it’s helpful to get everyone walking and talking the brand consistently through a tool called the Brand Strategy Directive. Here are some thoughts on how to put one together.

Elements of a Brand
In shaping a brand, health care organizations need to take into consideration the following elements: Attributes, Competencies, Values and Personality.

• Attributes/Brand Descriptors: Attributes (or brand descriptors) are words that characterize and describe your hospital or health system. Simple words build brands and, as a result, brand descriptors are genuine, clear, and easy-to-understand. They are not industry jargon-type words. Select a handful of descriptive words and use them consistently in all communications about the organization. The repeated use of these selected words will define and reinforce the brand to your various audiences. Brand descriptors should be included in a hospital graphic standards manual, along with examples of how copywriters and others should use them. (EXAMPLE: “Parkview Hospital is always ‘expert.’ It is never ‘multi-disciplinary.’”)
• Competencies: Core competencies make your hospital’s position credible and believable. These are the special services or performance standards that make your organization competitive, and while each competency may not necessarily be unique to the market, it is the combination of these that differentiate your organization. Use these core competencies as key messages in your marketing and employee communications. EXAMPLES:
  
  

  Academic Medical Center	Community Hospital	Health System
  Teaching Hospital Physician Leadership Research-based Medicine	Wellness Education Caring Nurses Quality Heart Care	Convenient Locations Wide Range of Services Primary Care Network

  
  
• Ongoing and repeated use of key messages will, over time, establish your organization's strengths firmly in the minds of all stakeholder groups.
• Values: Values are the distinctive beliefs and standards your organization espouses and acts upon. Corporate values are a deeply personal organizational asset and are intrinsically communicated and modeled by its leadership. Use your organizational values as a guide in the brand development process, as they can be a competitive advantage in what has become almost a commodity marketplace.
• Personality: Brand personality is the distinctive style and tone of communications that is unique to your organization alone. Brand personality helps customers understand what the hospital is and what it is not. It is developed through consistent use of creative images and copy over an extended period of time.
For example, is the personality of your hospital “friendly care?” “High-tech service?” “The science of health care?” Find that voice and make sure that it speaks in all of your marketing communications.

These elements (attributes, competencies, values and personality) will provide your hospital with the words, images, graphic standards and voice necessary to successfully launch, sustain and preserve its brand. They should be the basis for all marketing communications, advertising and public relations, as well as sales & direct marketing, employee communications, event marketing and corporate sponsorships.

Branding Methodology
A brand is made up of identity and image. Identity is the name, logo and tagline that your hospital uses to represent itself in the marketplace. Identity also includes the use of a consistent visual style and key messages that form the basis for organization’s marketing communications. Image is the perception that results from the patients’ and physicians’ experiences with your organization’s services and products. Image and identity together form what the hospital stands for and what differentiates it from competitors.

If your hospital is going through a branding process, the following steps will help you through brand identity and image development:

• Establish a Position. Brands must be placed in the minds of consumers according to a position, such as “best,” “first,” “only” or “niche.” The position should be true, relevant, believable and, ideally, unique. Authenticity is the crucial element of any successful brand position—don’t say you’re the best if you’re not.
• A brand position is defined in a Positioning Statement, a succinct statement that drives all communications but is only known to internal audiences.

  EXAMPLE:

  Western States University Medical Center is a pre-eminent academic medical facility, treating the region's most complex and difficult cases. WSUMC provides access to some of the country's finest physicians and medical programs, offering a superior level of care through leading-edge research, technical innovation and medical education.
• Select the identity. Finalize the name and logo that will serve as a symbolic connection for consumers. Then test it. Testing through market research is a critical step in the process. It doesn’t matter whether the hospital CEO likes the name and logo; what matters is whether or not the identity you’ve chosen resonates with the consumer and effectively communicates the personality of the brand. Conduct focus groups and let consumers tell you what works, what doesn’t.
• Develop the Image. Through a strategically driven creative concept, your hospital or health system needs to establish an emotional attachment with customers and prospective customers by bringing the organization—and its benefits—to life. The right creative concept gets the audience to stop and pay attention, involves them in the message, appeals to their emotion, and demonstrates the core benefit to the consumer and how it is significant in the consumer’s life.

Brand Asset Management
Supporting a successful and powerful brand requires brand asset management, starting at launch. The establishment of a brand-based culture across the organization is essential, as no amount of advertising will be successful if an organization’s own employees don't recognize, appreciate and repeat the brand.

In addition, a consistent and strong brand can support premium pricing and contribute to profitability. (Brand Leadership, Aaker and Joachimsthaler.) The right brand asset management strategy also helps protect customer loyalty and can help your organization attract and retain one of its most important assets—quality employees.

Brands are built over time, not overnight. The key to branding and brand building is consistency over time—consistent identity, position and creative execution. Be careful to limit your brand, staying with messages that are simple and narrow in the mind of the customer. Limitation is the essential part of the branding process and, combined with consistency, it is what builds a successful brand.

With diligent brand management, you will have something approaching a brand in three to five years and, like the best of consumer products, an enviable measure of brand loyalty from your customers.