A good friend of mine, Philip Guiliano of BrandActive (a fantastic brand implementation firm), forwarded on this blog on customer experience, Customer Innovations - Driving Profitable Growth. At first glance, it seems like a great resource. Check it out.
On June 20, Foote Health System of Jackson, Mich., became Allegiance Health. Behind the scenes, GeigerBevolo worked extensively with the organization to develop this new brand identity.
GeigerBevolo began name exploration and logo development more than a year ago, in anticipation of the organization’s 90th anniversary. GeigerBevolo also helped develop a brand hierarchy and nomenclature system that emphasized simplicity and a patient-perspective across the system’s many facility sites, clinics and services.
A locally owned and locally governed health system, Allegiance Health serves the south central Michigan region near Lansing. Its 411-bed system features a full range of inpatient and outpatient services, state-of-the-art surgery facilities, a 20-bed Heart Center, an outpatient surgery center for same-day procedures, a new hospice residence and recently renovated Emergency Department.
To ensure consist application of the organization’s new name and identity, GeigerBevolo helped create an online guide for brand standards. The healthcare branding firm also designed many of Allegiance Health’s communications elements such as stationery, brochures, newsletters, vehicle graphics, building signage and a new Web site.
Special care was given to announcing the new brand identity to the community. A teaser and reveal campaign was used to help build excitement for both internal and external audiences, followed by a public campaign paying tribute to the heritage of the organization. Campaign components included television, print and radio advertising, a video program, a community benefit report, and more. To view the new Web site and video, please visit www.allegiancehealth.org.
…and I liked it!
My stomach was rumbling late this morning. It was time for food. I thought to myself, “Where to go… where to go?” Suddenly my hankering for a tasty sub kicked in. I grabbed my keys and my trusty iPhone (I can’t just call it a cell phone) and took off down the street. As I approached my destination a dude with a mohawk screeched his bike to a halt beside me. He leapt off, locked it up and tore into the restaurant to grab his next batch of deliveries. In the blur I could barely make out the good old Jimmy Johns slogan on his back, “Subs so fast you’ll freak.” After all, if I could have easily processed the message it certainly wouldn’t qualify as freakishly fast.
From the computerworld.com article, iPhones trickle into the enterprise:
I have nothing against iPhone. It’s great,” says Manjit Singh, CIO at Chiquita Brands International Inc. “But we’re a BlackBerry shop, and I don’t think iPhone brings anything new to the table. It has a great user experience, but that’s all.
I think the Geico caveman said it best when he said, “Uhhhh, what?!”
Most hospitals and healthcare systems undoubtedly use a clipping service — someone to monitor the media and send “clippings” when the organization appears in a paper or other media outlet. While important, hopefully this isn’t the only way healthcare marketers “listen” to the word on the street. What the media has to say is one thing. What patients, visitors, employees and partners have to say is another. (more…)
Last week I attended the “Power of Impressions,” a terrific conference sponsored by the Beryl Institute. The majority of the participants were marketing leaders from healthcare provider organizations around the country, and one of the hot topics was the publishing of the HCAHPS results by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
Chris Bevolo, partner and director of client strategy at GeigerBevolo, will speak at Illinois Society for Healthcare Marketing & Public Relations conference on October 19. He’ll discuss experience innovation and the iPod Mindset. Aimed at those charged with driving marketing and new business results in healthcare organizations, Bevolo’s “iPod Mindset” described a philosophy that leverages innovative thinking to create compelling and differentiated experiences for patients and other consumers of healthcare services.
Earlier this year, Bevolo spoke about innovative healthcare marketing at the Iowa Society of Healthcare Marketing and Public Relations’ annual conference and at the Forum for Healthcare Strategists’ national conference. Both events followed the release of GeigerBevolo’s paper, “Competitive Differentiation Through Innovation: How Healthcare Providers Can Build an Innovation Strategy.” Bevolo and representatives from two of the paper’s featured case study participants hosted a panel discussion and workshop on this topic at the Forum for Healthcare Strategists’ “Customer Based Marketing Strategies” conference in Orlando. The prior afternoon, Bevolo presented “The iPod Mindset: Innovation and the Patient Experience” in Ames, Iowa.
In June this year, Bevolo also shared healthcare marketing fables at the Minnesota Health Strategy & Communications Network’s (MHSCN’s) Summer Conference and on alternative approaches to brand research, is scheduled for June 15 at the South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations (SDAHO) summer conference.
“Developing successful marketing campaigns and breakthrough service innovation requires intimate understanding of the needs and wants of the customers you serve. But traditional means of assessing those needs - focus groups and surveys - often fall far short of providing valuable insight,” Bevolo reviews. SDAHO’s conference attendees learned how leading healthcare organizations are using newer methods, such as ethnography and metaphor-based interviews, to inform more powerful brand strategies.
MHSCN’s members enjoyed a fun, yet informative subject appropriately fitted with their conference’s “Once Upon a Time…” theme. This concept embraces the notion that all communicators are storytellers and to be effective, healthcare communicators must understand the role of the story in their culture, learn how to build a good narrative and develop proven techniques for reaching a wide-range of audiences.
Bevolo has been a keynote presenter and featured conference speaker on the topics of innovation, patient experience, branding, strategic design and positioning for Minnesota Health Strategy and Communications Network, Minnesota Medical Group Management Association, Nebraska Hospital Association, Public Relations Society of America’s Minnesota chapter, Wisconsin Forum for Healthcare Strategy, Fairview Health Services, The Beryl Institute, and other organizations. Bevolo has served as a judge in local and regional design and marketing competitions, and has published a number of articles and papers. He is a member of the Minnesota Hospital Association, Minnesota Health Strategies and Communications Network, and the Society for Healthcare Strategy & Market Development.
For more than a year, we have been pushing innovation as a key to competitive differentiation for healthcare providers, focusing on the creation of unique and compelling experiences. (See “Defining Market Moving Innovation” for the latest installment). And from what we hear at conferences, client meetings and in other conversations, the idea of innovation is a compelling one to all of you fighting the healthcare marketing fight. The problem comes in moving from the place of idea to one of action. And unfortunately, experience innovation (or service innovation, put another way) still isn’t a primary driver of marketing strategies. The reasons we hear are many. But perhaps the most consistent reason we hear sounds something like this: “Look, we can’t even get our service delivery to a satisfactory level. How can we try to create unique or compelling experiences when we can’t get the basic stuff down right?” (more…)