Re-Branding Grows Medical Center 62% in One Fiscal Year

Mosiac LogoBack in 2001 the original “Central Oregon Partnership” played a significant role in the startup of Prineville-based Mosaic Medical, then known as Ochoco Health Clinic. Over the years we have continued to quietly work with the management of Mosaic, and have watched admiringly as their clinics have grown from the initial one in Prineville to the three they have today, including Bend and Madras. Over those years, Mosaic has held the title of being the best kept secret in the region, where affordable health care is concerned anyway.

In the latter part of 2007, we sat down with Mosaic’s management and talked about the need to reposition their organization. That repositioning would primarily take the form of re-branding, which would include a new name, new tag line, new mission statement, and the development of a targeted marketing program. Thanks to the fine work of the Sublime Design Group, this was accomplished by the summer of 2008, and our longstanding silent partner quickly broke out of its silence. People began to listen.

What a successful partnership it has been - for us and for the people we serve! This fiscal year Mosiac is on track to record 47,000 patient visits, up from 29, 000 the year before. That’s a mind-boggling 62% increase in patient visits, a huge increase by anyone’s standards.

What Mosaic contributes...

Mosaic’s contributions to the community include:
• Providing access to quality, affordable healthcare to the uninsured and underinsured.
• Providing a treatment option for Medicare-insured patients.
• Providing Medicaid-funded treatment to low-income children.
• Coordinating access to dental care for low-income individuals through the voluntary efforts of area dentists.
• Coordinating access to mental health care for low-income individuals through partnerships with county mental health offices.
• Coordinating access to low-cost prescription drugs through local pharmacies and manufacturers
• Coordinating access to discounted lab and x-ray services for uninsured patients.
• Providing interpreting services to meet the needs to meet the needs of area residents who do not speak English.
• Reducing the burden on emergency rooms by seeing uninsured patients for chronic health conditions who would otherwise have no recourse to any facility but the emergency room for medical care.
• Providing medical services to inmates in local jails—a role which allows counties to maintain compliance with state and federal regulations while relieving them of the difficult burden of finding medical providers to care for this hard-to-serve population.

Mosaic is led by Charla Dehate, it’s focused and effective Executive Director. She’s as fine a manager and leader as anyone we know, and it’s no accident that Mosaic has become the region’s leader in providing affordable health care.

Congratulations to one of our favorite partners for their outstanding contribution to the health of our region. May your successes continue, although in the interest of your sanity, preferably at a slower pace.

Marketing a New Brand

If you are launching a new brand or re-brand, there are a few things you should know. Just after launch, you will need to spend the majority of your marketing resources gaining awareness for the new brand. The emphasis on your new brand identity can taper off over the next six months or so, while you increase your specific marketing messaging. (See our handy branding transition graph).

The time your transition will take depends on how well your message is publicized and how quickly your audience accepts the new brand; media treatment of your new name, tagline and logo will give you a gauge. The transition process and expected response are considerations you should discuss with your creative agency during the branding process. We have done re-branding projects that were seamlessly accepted by the media and key audiences within weeks, while others moved more slowly--and the difference is not always determined by how entrenched and long-lived the previous identity was!

As your new identity gains awareness, you can shift your focus onto specific marketing messages promoting your services, products, programs and so on. Eventually, the bell curves of branding and marketing will settle out to a predominance of marketing messaging, while maintaining a baseline brand reinforcement component.

Time to Freshen Your Image?

Any brand, corporate or non-profit, needs a lot of nurturing and care to stay healthy and effective. Even the best brands require considerable and near-constant TLC in order to maintain stability, avoid staleness, survive constant cultural fluctuations, and compete effectively for top-of-mind awareness among targeted consumers. Not only that, if your brand's turf has recently been invaded by a powerful (and potentially threatening) upstart brand, the stakes only climb higher, and suddenly you find your maintenance efforts shifting to a full-on defensive effort. Best to anticipate this kind of competition with a good offensive plan, staying on top of your brand effectiveness.

I recommend putting a regular reserve into your budget for a professional brand audit every few years. A brand audit, conducted by a professional, assesses the effectiveness of your brand at every touchpoint and delivers to you concrete recommendations on how to strengthen your brand. Is all of your print collateral consistent in style, font and logo treatment? Do all of your staff and board members understand your brand and represent its tone and personality? How can you best ensure that your target audience understands the benefits you offer them, and how you are different than your competition? Your brand is your greatest asset. Period. So it is worth every penny, every minute spent to keep it healthy, contemporary and strong. You simply cannot effectively market a weak brand! Businesses that ignore their brands will find customers ignoring their business.

Equity

“Innovation,” wrote Management icon Peter Drucker in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, “is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship...the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth.”

Before you change your brand, however, you need to get an idea of what's good among your current brand elements that you'd be nuts to get rid of? The share of the market your brand gives you, as expressed by these elements is your “brand equity.”

While equity qualifies as an obvious, if not common-sense consideration during brand freshening, there are many case studies of brand equity slipping under the radar of project teams, to the obvious detriment of the brand and its targeted consumers. Be mindful of those elements which are most crucial to existing brand familiarity, and alter them with caution and reasoned, informed consideration. Rebranding/brand refreshing is necessary as styles and the marketplace change, and can have powerful and positive effects in the hands of a skilled team. Branding professionals worth their salt will clearly identify, however, stylistic elements that will help make a seamless transition.

When re-branding an air ambulance service, our agency created an entirely new logo that departed from the older, outdated logo. This was necessary due to trademark requirements and because the provider needed a logo that differentiated it from the scores of other air ambulance services out there. However, we agreed with the wisdom of the staff that the triangular bumper sticker/window cling needed to carry over, as it was distinctive and recognizable. The new logo went onto a slightly altered triangular sticker design. This is an example of carrying over an element of brand for the sake of a smooth transition. There is danger in either ditch: not keeping your brand fresh and distinctive on the one hand, and making radical changes too quickly on the other.

Appropriateness

Any change to a brand must be done with an eye toward fitness of purpose. Appropriateness must be defined by the results of good research. Research must be executed with rigor, due diligence, and a commitment to finding answers to hard questions. And, at times, there can be situations where informed research serves mainly to guide what can still be an predominantly intuitive creative process. In other words, brand management is both a science and an art.

When hiring a professional or agency to conduct a brand audit and/or to rebrand your organization, look for: A) An excellent, organized process that includes your input at every step and B) A substantial portfolio of branding work (logos, names, taglines) as well as excellent testimonials/references.

Research & Reasoning

Good research drives everything. Good research isn't gospel for a brand freshening, but it is a valuable guide, and should give rise to much creative stimulation and valuable questioning. You and your agency should ask many, many questions during the research and discovery phase. Good research fosters a base for sound reasoning, rationale, and objectives, and can help immensely with determining what will be appropriate for a given project. Good research may tell you that a change is needed, or to leave things well enough alone.

If your brand is stale, you are going to lose potential customers and you risk loss of market share as fresher brands get more attention. If your brand is communicating something different than what you are, you are not going to attract the target customers you want. Invest time in assessing your brand—not only logo, name and tagline, but all the touchpoints of your brand, including every experience people will have through advertising, interactions with your staff and especially what others say about you. Remember that your brand is not what you think it is, but what they think it is. Make sure you are effectively sending the right message with a fresh, effective brand!

Social Media for Healthcare: Are You Ready?

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, blogs—marketing is changing at breakneck speed, with social media poised to eclipse more traditional forms of advertising. Social media has already overtaken email, and therefore email marketing, in popularity. According to a report from Nielsen Online, “member communities” such as Facebook and MySpace are now more popular than email, and are visited by 67% of the world's online population. Brand Republic reported finding that one in 11 minutes spent online is on a blog or social network. That means that more people are communicating via social media outlets than on email!

A lot of discussion is going on out there, and it is important for health care businesses and organizations to enter the dialog in order to keep track of and influence public perceptions, to educate key audiences and to market themselves comprehensively. While traditional advertising tends to be intrusive, social media marketing is collaborative and consumer driven and is therefore often seen as more genuine. The absence of your voice could be to your detriment, but be careful. Jumping into this world unprepared can damage your brand, leaving a cybertrail of less-than-desired conversations circulating around the blogosphere. Additionally, throwing time and money at social media without careful planning your strategy is just as bad as—well—throwing your money at any advertising medium without due diligence.

Sublime recommends the following steps to prepare your organization for the leap into cyberspace:

First, sit down with your marketing agency and assess your current marketing plan. How well is it working? Would a social media campaign fit well with the rest of your plan and potentially reach your target audience in new and effective ways?

Second, if you decide to enter the social realm, you need to have your agency conduct a social media audit (or find an agency that can). Your audit will start with an inventory of tools you have in place, such as blogs, FaceBook pages, Twitter accounts and so on. The audit then looks at ways to leverage what you do have, as well as recommending the addition of tools you need, culminating in a social media plan for your business.

Third, once your channels for communication are decided, it's time to build their content, and this comes back to good old fashioned copywriting and design...emphasis on GOOD! Technology will not make up for poorly written blog posts, or FaceBook profiles that read like a second grade primer. An outdated logo or one that is not clearly consistent with your brand will fail to engage, just as it will fail to engage in print advertising and other traditional media. The “rules” of good design and copywriting are eternal and apply no matter the technology.

The realm of social media holds a lot of promise and opportunity for the health care industry, but it is not a place to venture if you are not prepared. You can get ready by assessing your current marketing plan, getting a social media audit and plan, and then building solid blogs, profiles, etc. One thing seems certain, social media marketing is not just a trend; it is here to stay. Learn how to wisely harness its potential and you will be too!

Kelly Walker, Sublime Design Group