Differentiating a ‘known well but not well-known’ US healthcare system
Differentiating a ‘known well but not well-known’ US healthcare system
Underscores our ability to identify how an established and respected organization can evolve to increase relevance and have more impact as a brand.
Deliverables
- Brand strategy
- Messaging framework
- Research
- Customer journey
- Team alignment
Business Problem
From the outside in, it can be hard to discern what makes Henry Ford Health System unique and distinct from other healthcare providers. In fact, from a consumer perspective, US healthcare in general can seem like an undifferentiated category where providers are seen as interchangeable and important decisions are far too often made based on convenience - or mere force of habit.
Idea
Using our comprehensive and participatory Master Planning Process, we aligned the leadership team around a clear understanding of the core DNA of the Henry Ford Health System brand and then facilitated a number of workshops across the organization to align key stakeholders as we developed the brand framework for the master brand and its specialty sub-brands: Orthopaedic, Cardiac, Primary, Neuroscience and Cancer.
We conducted a full landscape analysis to identify gaps that needed to be closed, created ‘human’ journey maps to determine the patient, healthcare professional and donor journeys and developed a new brand architecture to define how to organize and express the five specialty sub-brands under the overarching master brand.
Finally, the brand framework was translated into a brand narrative to convey the brand strategy in a compelling storytelling form.
My first and foremost challenge as the Chief Marketing Officer of a large, integrated healthcare system was to engage my many stakeholders around a new brand strategy.
Impact
The new strategy for the Henry Ford Health System was instrumental in re-branding to Henry Ford Health and the development of a new, modern logo. The new positioning has been embraced by the organization and has been a key driver in revising communications, operations and fundraising. As a result, brand awareness and consideration scores since implementation have continued to increase at a significant rate.
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