Hospital Branding

This week’s Modern Healthcare magazine, long a leading industry publication for healthcare and hospital executives, recapped the number of “mega-mergers” taking place in the industry during the first quarter of 2017.   The article cites four such mergers between eight $1 billion healthcare organizations.   According to a managing director of a larger international financial advisory firm in the healthcare industry, this is a trend that is likely to accelerate as hospital companies want “regional, if not national, reach to be more attractive to patients and insurers.” Additionally, the article cites that many academic medical centers are operating at near capacity and are seeking community hospital partners to take patients requiring less intensive cases.   This is opposite of a few years ago, when these same large academic providers were partnering with community hospitals to generate more referrals for their highly specialized programs that require volume to ...

Do you have headlines, copy, banner ads or other tactical elements that seem to be bouncing back and forth between you and your advertising agency?  Are you frustrated that your communication blends into the marketplace and doesn’t allow your organization to stand apart in a meaningful way?  Do internal stakeholders seem nonchalant over your new “branding” campaign or communication initiative? If you answered “yes” to any or all of the above, it might be time to rethink your strategy versus yet another redo to an existing concept or strategy that is either off course or has run that way. Too often, agencies and clients go round and round on creative executions and can’t quite pinpoint what it is that isn’t working.  Worse, yet, is the old “I’ll know it when I see it” conversation, that agencies seem to be hearing more and more these days. Keep this in mind:  If at three it’s not in sync, it’s time to rethink.  After a third revision, it’s not the execu...

When you check your newsfeed of your favorite social media site, there is always one – okay, many – of your friends, family, or co-workers whose updates are annoying enough to make you cringe. It may be posting a picture of every meal they eat, or sharing too many cat videos, a bad joke, or (especially this time of year) their political views. As much as you may “like” this person in real life, their actions have probably left you hovering over the unfriend button more than once. Individuals aren’t the only ones on social media who can be annoying. Brands are right up there. A report from Sprout Social titled, “ Turned Off: How Brands Are Annoying Customers on Social ,” contains some very interesting insights from a consumer survey centered around this topic. As you may have guessed, there are a number of things brands do to rub their audiences the wrong way, including: posting too many promotions, trying to be funny when they’re not, and not replying to their audience’s messages....

Summer is typically that season when, between vacations and short attention spans, your brand pretty much runs on autopilot.  Hello fall and the brisk change in colors and temperatures.  Suddenly, it seems that everything is due at once and demands on the marketing department have gone full throttle. Before you jump right back into it, now is the perfect time to give your brand a check-up to make sure it’s healthy, vibrant, and able to keep pace with the changing market.  The year-end is fast approaching, budgets are due, and performances will be measured. A suggested brand check-up is below and I recommend you schedule it on an annual basis.  There is just too much happening in the industry today to risk having your brand be at risk for the ills of “same ol’, same ol’.” Cleanse, clear your head, and breathe : The best prep and start for your brand check-up is to clear your head and breathe.  There are several hospital marketing conferences coming up (S...

Branding in healthcare organizations is still predominantly associated with how and where consumers see your brand.   It could be digitally, on traditional media, or your brand architecture displayed on signs and buildings.   But the total brand experience goes well below “see” level and must immerse your stakeholders in order to drive preference and create consumer loyalty.    The emergence of immersive marketing and its impact on brand value has caused marketers to recognize the value of being sensory driven as much as data driven.   The Huffington Post recently surveyed 1,600 companies and learned that 84% believe that experiential marketing activities and events are important, or very important to their organizations.    One of the companies that responded added,   “people are inherently social, and there is nothing that can make a more powerful statement about your brand than the ability to bring people together physically through immersi...

Branding in healthcare organizations is still predominantly associated with how and where consumers see your brand.   It could be digitally, on traditional media, or your brand architecture displayed on signs and buildings.   But the total brand experience goes well below “see” level and must immerse your stakeholders in order to drive preference and create consumer loyalty.    The emergence of immersive marketing and its impact on brand value has caused marketers to recognize the value of being sensory driven as much as data driven.   The Huffington Post recently surveyed 1,600 companies and learned that 84% believe that experiential marketing activities and events are important, or very important to their organizations.    One of the companies that responded added,   “people are inherently social, and there is nothing that can make a more powerful statement about your brand than the ability to bring people together physically through immersi...