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In today's marketplace, the big guys are taking over the small guys, the small guys are banding together to become big guys, and the solo service provider is offering health care from Ato Z.
While all this change makes for good business-page reading, it has not been without consequences. Organizations, once secure with their identity, are struggling to understand what version of the company emerged from the latest acquisition. Employees ask, "Who are we now?" and consumers ponder, "What can I expect from them?"
A health care branding challenge has emerged. As change becomes the status quo, health care organizations face the challenge of reinventing their (corporate) brand identity-no easy task. Building a strong identity in the health care category comes with a special set of branding challenges.
A successful branding strategy must address how to:
Reshape consumers' perceptions of the health care organization by signaling a new future-focused strategy.
Consolidate and coordinate existing identities.
Preserve the equity residing with keystone health care identities and leverage those equities to build trust and equity in the new identity
Incorporate the values of the organization to reinforce "living the brand."
Not Just a New Logo
Today's health care environment requires a branding process that focuses on building brand equity with health care consumers. Brand equity is the value of the loyalty between a consumer and a health care organization. The equity exists in the minds of the organization's constituencies (consumers, physicians, payors) and is the collection of perceptions associated with the organization-good or bad.
Contrary to common belief, most organizations or products do not build brand equity with big advertising budgets. They do it by consistently providing quality products and services, nurturing customer relationships, and delivering consistent, meaningful messages. To build value, an organization must start with a solid branding strategy and...