4 Words of Wisdom from LESC’s Valerie Walters

This year’s Mental Health Marketing Conference will be held on October 1st through October 3rd in Franklin, Tennessee. To prepare for their upcoming talk, Kelly sat down with LESC’s CEO, Valerie Walters, to discuss the keys to successful branding in behavioral health.

One of the most important changes to LESC’s brand was re-defining those four letters. LESC used to stand for Lower Eastside Service Center, but now it represents Love, Energy, Safety, and Compassion. “When I think about the words,” Valerie says, “they drive what we do and how we do it. We do it with love. We come in energized every day, and we make sure we provide a safe environment not only for the staff, but for the clients. And we’re really compassionate about the staff and the clients who come through the door.”

LESC’s rebrand needed to reflect their mission, vision, and values. The goal was to get to the heart of who they are and represent that in their marketing. In chatting with Valerie, we pinned down four more words that represent the keys to the success of their branding strategy: Visibility, Resiliency, Results, Impact.

Visibility

Early on in our relationship with LESC, visibility was a primary concern. Valerie felt that Lower Eastside Service Center sounded like a service station, “somewhere you go to take care of your car, not take care of people.” Clients seemed to know the services that made up LESC, but not that all those services fell under one umbrella. Of this silo effect, Valerie says, “Instead of knowing us as an organization that provides a full continuum of care —residential, outpatient, supportive housing, and everything else—people knew each part of what we do but didn’t put it together that this is LESC doing all that work.”

The silo effect was also happening internally, and it was important to build an awareness and complete understanding of the breadth and depth of the many programs and services that LESC offers and refer clients internally. As a result, Valerie explains that she brought her senior management team together and the leaders talked about their individual programs and services; what happens day to day in detail.

LESC’s internal newsletter, Recovery Matters, is another way to bring everyone together.

Resiliency

With the name nailed down, the major question became: “How can we really get ourselves out there, stay focused, communicate to a broader audience, and show people—not just talk about, but showcase—the work we do as an agency for a population that’s underserved? When people see our name, what should they be thinking about?”

When people hear LESC, Valerie wants them to be thinking about resiliency, “meaning that even when you fall down, you come back up again.” During the rebrand, the concept of resiliency was offered by the staff, who saw the core essence of LESC as an organization that never gives up on people.

Resiliency also refers to LESC’s drive to stay up to date in terms of improving their services. That includes branding. In Valerie’s words, “A strong brand stands the test of time.” It does that by adapting to changing landscapes. “We don’t want to become a dinosaur. We want to stay current. We want people to say, ‘This is the place to go. They’re innovative.’”

“So, we have to be consistent,” Valerie says. “Every aspect of business, the product, the services, the people we serve, we have to be a living document and it’s crucial to remain significant.”

Results

One way to ensure a company remains significant is to pay attention to results. “If something isn’t broken, you don’t have to fix it,” Valerie says. “But I always say, even if something isn’t broken, you can improve on it.”

According to recent studies, the main concerns of CEOs today are utilizing and adapting to the AI boom, a tight labor market, and environmental sustainability. In a wildly shifting environment, it would be easy for branding to fall off the radar. But Valerie believes it’s important for marketing to remain a priority. A good branding strategy means “more people are seeing what you’re doing. And I’ve gotten a lot of calls from alumni, from supporters, from board members. They like what they see.”

To Valerie, results aren’t just a brand’s outward appearance, but also its internal marketing and interdepartmental communication, “because if we couldn’t market to ourselves internally, we couldn’t market ourselves externally. So that to me meant success has to be achieved internally before it’s shown externally.”

Impact

For issues like addiction, mental health, and homelessness, success isn’t just about results, but the impact those results have on the community and populations that an organization serves. “That’s why I’m so passionate about rebranding,” Valerie says. “I’ve seen the outcome. For me, it’s a passion, it’s a drive, and that’s how the staff feel, also.”
And most importantly, “We must continue carrying the torch. Do the best of what we do. If we save one life, I think that’s an accomplishment, that’s success for me.”

Kelly and Valerie will take a deeper dive into behavioral health marketing in “Branding from the Heart: A conversation with LESC’s CEO, Valerie Walters” at Mental Health Marketing Conference on October 2nd at 10:50 a.m. You can register at MHM’s website, and take advantage of Kelly’s 20% Friend & Family discount code: MHMFANDF