Strategic Planning
What’s in a Brand?
By Candace Quinn
Sometimes it’s easier to understand what something is by first understanding what it is not. A brand is not a name. It’s not a logo. It’s not a product, service or business. Marty Neumeier, in his book The Brand Gap, describes it as a gut feeling. Others have described it as a promise, an expectation and, ultimately, an experience that a person—a customer, patient, guest, visitor, physician, or employee—has with your product or service. It may start with the promise you make to your customers about what your brand is through advertising, and then it becomes not what you say, but what those customers come to expect, based upon that promise. Ultimately, assuming customers have used the product sufficiently, it becomes the experience they have with your product or service, either at purchase or in its consumption.
Why does a health care organization need a brand strategy?
As a board, you have no doubt spelled out your commitment to quality improvement, cost management, integrity, compliance and community service for your organization. Similarly, you need to set the expectation that your organization can control what your brand is. Many hospitals and health care systems already have a brand identity—that is, patients, physicians and community members have feelings they associate with your organization and/or its services and programs. A significant part of the brand strategy exercise is understanding what those feelings or expectations are—for example, comfort, confidence, loyalty.
Now, consider a universe of consumer-directed health plans and health savings accounts. Is your hospital’s brand synonymous with your product? If you are Kleenex, for instance, your brand has become the category. Other examples include Xerox and Scotch tape. Do your neighbors consider your facility’s name as being synonymous with “the hospital?” And, even more critically, with “my hospital?” A solid brand strategy will help you reach that point.
If we have an ad campaign, don’t we have a brand strategy?
The existence of an ad campaign does not necessarily mean you have a brand strategy. Unless you have identified what sets you apart from other health care organizations in your market, you don’t have a brand strategy. Scott Bedbury, who gave Nike the “Just Do It” slogan, says branding is about informing and inspiring people. He says great companies look beyond metrics, like profit or market share, to what they want their brand to stand for—how it should be perceived, both within the organization and to the general public.
What are the board’s and senior leadership’s roles?
The board and senior leadership need to lead the branding initiative. If led by the marketing division, it will never make it past the slogan stage. Delivering a brand takes the focus and commitment of every trustee, manager, employee and physician in the organization. Without board and senior management leadership, no brand will become a reality.
Typically, successful brand strategies involve representatives from: the board of directors, the executive team, medical staff, key service-line managers, employees (especially nurses and other caregivers), the community (e,g., support groups, volunteer groups, etc.) and past patients. A brand strategy work group can comprise as many as 30 or more people, but subgroups to accomplish specific tasks need to be much smaller, with good facilitators.
How do we go about identifying our brand?
Tom Peters, author of the book Re-imagine, says branding is both simple and impossible. All you have to do, he explains, is answer these three questions: “Who are we?” “Why are we here?” and “How can we make a difference?”
To kick off a brand strategy, conduct a brand audit. You need to know how your community, patients, visitors, physicians, employees and board feel about your organization and what words they would use to articulate their impressions of your organization—answering Peters’ first question, “Who are we?”
You then need to work within these stakeholders’ expectations and aspirations to determine how each would shape your brand. Next, working within these various expectations, you will need to determine what will set you apart from others in your market—i.e., “Why are we here?”
Finally, you need to determine if, as an organization, you can meet those expectations consistently, answering the third question—“How can we make a difference?”
Mission, vision, values, strategic plan, brand strategy: Where do they connect?
Most organizations’ brands are inspired by their mission, vision and values statements. The organization’s strategic plan will drive the long-term vision for what the organization will do, and the brand strategy should help the organization define why and how they will accomplish those goals. The real differentiator comes when you discover what makes your brand unique, giving it a market advantage.
Consider Nike. The brand is not the “swoosh.” That’s a logo. The brand is not “Just do it.” That’s a slogan. Their brand strategy—what makes them number one in sports apparel—is an attitude: Give the consumer the freedom to just do the sport. Consumers need never worry about their apparel or equipment if they have selected Nike. The Nike promise and the consumer’s expectation align perfectly—provide/expect the highest and most appropriate quality product to support your athletic aspirations.
So, when the Nike strategic (business) plan called for a diversification strategy into athletic equipment, such as golf balls, the brand strategy guided Nike to understand why that strategy was appropriate and how it had the potential to strengthen the brand.
How do we know if our brand has value in the market place—what will we measure to determine if we have hit our mark?
Prior to undertaking this important task, the board and senior leadership should set the expectations for this work. Whether it’s achieving top of mind, increased market share, increased volume, higher preference scores, or successful service expansion, goals should be measurable.
You will know that you have an effective brand strategy when your physicians, management, employees, community members and patients all use the same words to describe what they believe to be your brand and when that brand becomes the reliable brand of choice. When your brand becomes synonymous with the word “hospital,” or your service becomes synonymous with cancer care, heart care, or emergency/trauma care, for example, you have successfully established a meaningful brand.
Still not sure? Consider the Nike example again and contrast Nike’s success with Spaulding, which produces similar products. Yet Spaulding has not devoted as much attention to brand as Nike has, and Spaulding has undergone divestitures, product launches and failures and multiple reorganizations.
In 1987, Nike laid off 25 percent of its workforce, and Bedbury led the organization through the development of a brand strategy. Nike took the steps described above, launched the “Just Do It” campaign internally in June 1988 and externally the following August. Today, nearly 20 years later, Nike is a world-wide brand, dominating all its product categories, as Peters says in Re-imagine.
What are some health care brand strategies?
Depending on how you describe your target market, the opportunities to have a meaningful brand strategy are varied. Perhaps you want to own the market segment that is primarily focused on the latest technology and expertise. In this case, your message to the community might be: “Don’t worry about what your health care needs might be, choose our brand, and we’ll deliver the technology and expertise that you need.” What will that mean to your consumers? That too, will vary by market area and by what your brand is measured against. Another brand strategy might be to take what you already own in the consumer’s mind, (such as a top-notch nursing staff, convenience and/or compassion), and add a missing element to round out the brand.
Does the brand evolve over time?
A true brand matures more than it evolves. “Evolving” usually means change. For example, Nike started out as an athletic shoe manufacturer. Clearly, the organization has diversified and grown significantly, and its product selection changes and expands almost daily. Yet, rather than evolving, the brand has merely matured. The brand is stronger than ever, and regardless of the product, consumers have the same expectations, employees share the same message and product promotions reinforce the brand message. Slogans, ads, products and spokespeople come and go, even with Nike, but adherence to a powerful brand strategy remains the guiding star.
What else will we have to do in our organization?
Everything that has been explained up to this point is the easy part. The hard part is managing the brand definition. Jean-Marie Dru, president and CEO of TBWA/Chiat/Day-Worldwide, a global advertising agency with major offices in New York City and Los Angeles, and author of the books Disruption and Beyond Disruption, makes this point: “Apple opposes, IBM solves, Nike exhorts, Virgin enlightens, Sony dreams, Benetton protests ... brands are not nouns, but verbs.”
As you weigh all the management decisions, you will need to ask yourself repeatedly, “Does this advance the strength of the brand?” “Is this what our customers—internal and external—expect from our brand?” “Is our brand translating into such advantages as more patient volume, less expensive recruiting, generations of loyal patients or attracting world-class physicians?” —as just a few potential examples.
Your brand is only as strong as each and every encounter a patient, visitor or physician has with your organization. Your brand is only as strong as the experience the patient is having right now in the emergency department; as the former patient is having right now on the telephone with the billing office; as the family is having right now on the pediatric floor.
What impact will the emphasis on transparency and consumer involvement have on the hospital?
Neumeier says, “The growing importance of a brand has a flip side: its growing vulnerability. A failed launch, a drop in quality, or a whiff of scandal can damage [the brand’s] credibility.” Health care brands may find themselves scrambling in this next era of transparency. As data—albeit largely difficult to understand by patients, community members, and even employees—become more available, and as the media try to interpret these data for consumers, health care brands could be challenged.
Take, for example, the brand that positions itself as the market leader in caring and compassion, but once their patient satisfaction scores are released, it becomes clear they are not the leader in their market. Or, for the organization that boasts the latest and greatest technology and expertise, what happens when infection rates show that, while the organization does have state-of-the art technology, another organization has even better outcomes? The Leapfrog Group and other patient advocacy groups are reviewing outcome-based performance measures and releasing this information on the Internet. How long will it be before your patients find these data? And what about pricing? While low-cost branding is unlikely, transparency will force hospitals to defend their pricing strategy, and the strongest brand will likely require the least defense.
This new era of instant knowledge, unlimited access to information and aging baby boomers who will consume health care at increasingly and potentially alarming self-directed rates will undoubtedly force the health care industry to use time-tested branding strategies to guide consumers to their resources. Aligning this information with brand messages and brand experiences will create a winning combination for the communities a hospital or health system serves.
Candace Quinn is CEO and senior strategy consultant of Brand=Experience Consultants, McLean, Va. She can be reached at (703) 297-9461, or at www.brandequalsexperience.com.
This article 1st appeared in the May 2007 issue of Trustee Magazine.
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