Realizing the Benefits of a Healthy Brand: Case in Point

As we established in our article, Do I Have a Healthy Brand?, investing in your behavioral healthcare brand provides a number of positive outcomes. These include:

• Organizational vision, direction and unity
• Promote growth (patient volume and/or revenue)
• Increase referrals
• Improve staff recruitment and retention
• Improve community awareness and support
• Increase stakeholder involvement and
• Encourage new sources of funding

The list could go on and on. And while it’s easy to say you’ll achieve these benefits, I’d rather share an example of a brand that has firsthand experience of the advantages.

A healthy brand in action

A client we’ve worked with since 2009, Signature Health, provides a variety of mental health and addiction treatment services. While their mission to help people was honorable, their generic, fragmented brand wasn’t distinguished from other organizations in the region. With no real sense of direction or vision, they did what most others did – saw the patients who happened to find them and billed Medicare and Medicaid.

When the CEO/founder approached us, he knew that the behavioral healthcare industry was about to experience a series of changes resulting from the Affordable Health Care Act. To prepare for the inevitable evolution, he wanted to be able to walk into the offices of a CEO of a huge healthcare network, a Managed Care Organization (MCO), or a government agency with more confidence in his brand. He wanted to be taken seriously. Don’t we all?

From a brochure to a (re)brand

At first, he simply wanted a new brochure, but my team quickly transformed that idea into a new position, name, logo and unifying message. These essential brand assets weren’t just plucked out of thin air. No, they came out of a comprehensive brand assessment that helped our client rediscover who they are, who they serve, what value they deliver and what their staff wanted/needed as they moved forward.

To a large degree, the new name and brand were crafted by the entire organization. We were there to help pull the information and insights out, yet the brand ultimately came out of the responses from staff, clients and partners. And that’s precisely why the new brand – and the vision that empowered it – was so easily embraced by everyone.

The significant results

As you can see, the results in the years following our client’s rebrand prove the case for investing in a healthy brand.

 

 

 

Did the new brand do all of this? Probably not. But the healthy brand, and the process that created it, encouraged and enabled the mindset for growth.

Three main things were essential to them achieving this level of success:

1. The brand assessment – My team gathered feedback from essential audiences: Executives, staff, patients and other key stakeholders. We never limit feedback to just the owner or C-Suite level executives. It must cover the entire organization.
2. Internal and external alignment – Once we presented the new name, logo and messaging, we ensured everyone bought into the thinking and rationale behind them. Brand decisions cannot be made in a silo.
3. Strategic planning – With a new brand in place, the organization was able to create cross-functional goals, strategies and tactics that connected to the greater vision and achieved great results.

 

 

We’re here for you

Are you ready to realize the benefits of a healthy brand, too? We can help you build, maintain and promote a strong, healthy brand. We design solutions that everyone – from the inside to the outside – within your organization can support. Book an appointment with Kelly