Branding

Apr 18, 2011

Mayo Clinic goes big on wellness

As a Minnesota Twins fan, I’m currently blessed with the second year of outdoor baseball in our new ballpark, Target Field. Among many of the amazing design features and amenities is the gargantuan scoreboard. Standing 57 feet tall and measuring 101 feet wide, it covers the same space as 1,042 42” televisions, and is nine times larger than the previous video screen inside the Metrodome.

I caught my first two games of the season last week, and one of the best uses of that giant screen were short video clips from Mayo Clinic featuring Minnesota Twins baseball players promoting health and wellness tips. At 5,757 square feet of video, it’s safe to say Mayo Clinic is going big on wellness.

Whenever we are advocating for a certain perspective or trend in healthcare marketing, it always brings us joy to see the Mayo Clinic pursuing the same philosophy. That’s because for so many people in healthcare, the belief (and fairly deserved) is that if the Mayo Clinic is doing it, it must be right. This happened with social media, as Mayo Clinic spokesperson Lee Aase travelled the country helping to convert health systems with cold feet into SM advocates by demonstrating how the Mayo Clinic had embraced this trend. Well, here’s hoping the same occurs with using wellness to build brands in healthcare. Continue reading…

Feb 17, 2011

Article on physician group positioning featured in neurology pub

An article on positioning for neurology practices authored by Chris Bevolo was featured in the second issue of Neurology: Clinical Practice, published by the American Academy of Neurology (publishers of Neurology). The article, “How Positioning Can Help Boost Your Neurology Practice and Drive Business Success,” focuses on the benefits of positioning for neurology practices, and provides an outline for selecting and evaluating potential practice positions.

Nov 23, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving, healthcare marketers

In this week’s SmartBrief blog post, I give five reasons healthcare marketers can be thankful this holiday season. My favorite is #2 on the list, “The number of tools you can use to communicate with the people who need your organization’s services has increased exponentially.” What’s yours?

Sep 22, 2010

Jumping on the brand bus

We’ve been hearing the rumblings for most of 2010, and now more proof is in – brand building is finally becoming a top priority for hospitals and health systems. In the latest issue of Healthcare Strategy Alert from the Forum for Healthcare Strategists, an article titled “State of the Art” shows results from a spring 2010 survey of healthcare marketers. Among the results, a question asking marketers to rate marketing activities as a “major focus,” “minor focus,” or “not a focus,” showed 80% of respondents listing “define a strategy for the brand” as a major focus. This placed branding third highest on the list, ahead of such traditional priorities as “increase selected service line market share” and “improve reputation and visibility of programs.” This survey reflects other evidence – both quantified and anecdotal – that healthcare leaders are taking branding seriously.

Given the low emphasis on true branding by hospitals in the past, this trend is welcome, but not necessarily surprising. Like most industries, healthcare is finally finding some equilibrium after a devastating two years of economic turmoil. We’re not back to “happy days are here again” by any means, but many of the quakes that shocked the system in 2008 and 2009 – such as the debt crisis – have eased, allowing many businesses to begin thinking about growth again. In healthcare, another traumatic event – the passage of healthcare reform – has also brought some stability. Not that healthcare reform won’t mean pain for hospitals and health systems, or that leaders even really know the true impact. But with the dust settled, organizations are finally feeling freer to start planning for the future. Continue reading…

Aug 25, 2010

Wellness and branding: do you want the good news or the bad news?

The focus on wellness as a brand-building and revenue generating strategy for hospitals continues to grow. The August issue of HealthLeaders magazine features the story “Wellness: The Way to a Healthy Bottom Line,” and includes among its suggestions “Success Key No. 2: Make wellness a brand.” The article features this quote from Steven K. Jones, president and CEO of Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, NJ:

“Wellness is good business. It improves health and generates other business for the hospital in the community.” Continue reading…

Jul 28, 2010

Who should be more offended, branders or SM folk?

In a somewhat disparaging “this can’t really be happening, right?” BusinessWeek article called “Twitter, Twitter, Little Stars,” author Felix Gillette manages to slap two disciplines with one fell swoop. In trying to describe the somewhat chaotic rush by businesses to add social media professionals to their staff, Gillette makes this statement:

“The chief social media officer may be supplanting the chief branding officer as the zaniest human resources innovation in memory.”

Wow. Really? I’m not sure who should be more insulted, brand evangelists or social media zealots. Continue reading…

Jul 27, 2010

Ahh, my favorite: a heated rant about billboards

Poor billboards – what did they ever do to hurt anyone? Except for suck it so often. So much money down the tubes. We beat up on “billboards” so often, I’m not sure there’s anything left to say. But here’s a great rant from Steve Davis, whose blog “Health Care Strategist” I follow.

And to answer Steve’s question, “Dumb clients? Clueless agencies?…” I have to say, unfortunately, both.

Jul 25, 2010

Can advertising alone change your brand?

For years, we’ve been lamenting the over-reliance on mass consumer advertising in hospital marketing, and with it, the exaggerated expectations many organizations have for such a tactic. At the same time, and in the same vein, we’re imploring hospitals to take brand building seriously, focusing on the idea that hospital brands are built and improved through the patient experience. “Advertising doesn’t build brands,” we’d admonish, “the experience you deliver does.” And we’d often trot out cases like the Mayo Clinic or Starbucks as examples of companies that have built world-renown brands without any advertising.

So what do we make of the Old Spice Guy? Continue reading…