Branding and Occupational Health

Considerations in Brand Development

Conclusion

As consumers we are constantly surrounded and influenced by brands. Virtually every product on the market now has a brand name and a brand strategy devised to contribute to the brand’s success and to differentiate it from similar products in the same category.

By definition, a "brand" is whatever consumers immediately think of when they hear a product’s name. It is their impression of your company based on their collective experiences or information of your organization—in a nutshell, it’s your reputation with customers. A more complex explanation is that branding is the development of an associative memory in combination with a recall cue, which identifies and differentiates one seller from their competitors. The recall cue must be associated with a memory that is already anchored in the mind of the consumer, and the consumer must recognize your product or service and understand what it can do for them. The classic example of an associative memory is Pavlov’s dog: ring the bell and the dog salivates.

Development of an effective brand allows the organization to create a distinctive presence in the market and compete more effectively by leveraging its organizational strengths. This invariably improves its financial position and, in the case of healthcare organizations, its ability to negotiate with MCOs and other payers.

An effective, well-managed brand can add tremendous value to your services, but only when it is communicated effectively. It must be an intrinsic aspect of every marketing and business strategy, and consumers must have a crystal clear understanding of what your product or service is and how it benefits them.

Brands and branding also benefit the consumer. The more choices consumers have, the more they depend on brands to facilitate and simplify their selections. Consumers save time by buying brands they know and trust. Customers favor brands with the best reputations, since buying the best rarely has any downside to the purchase.

Brands also help to give customers an identity by promoting feelings of association with a group of like-minded individuals. The closer the brand is to an individual (products that are consumed or used on the individual—and nothing is closer than healthcare), the more important the brand becomes.

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If branding (on some level) influences our consumer purchases, why isn’t it more frequently used by healthcare providers? While some providers have benefited from a branding strategy, this business tactic has largely been underutilized by the industry, mostly because the majority of healthcare managers have not been educated in brand management and they don’t understand how to develop a brand or use it to their competitive advantage. In actuality, your program already has a brand—some reputation with customers or impression in the market—it is just a brand that was not necessarily developed or managed by the organization, and which may or may not be to your competitive advantage.

In today’s mature occupational health market where programs compete fiercely against each other for market share, most programs have gone unbranded and compete on price, reducing their valuable services to a commodity. In the absence of a well-developed branding strategy, the typical occupational health program has no game plan for differentiating their services in the marketplace on anything other than price. Healthcare (and occupational healthcare in particular) is ripe for brand development.

Developing a brand requires a careful assessment of your customers, your program, your competition, your market, and your position in that market. You will need to conduct a thorough SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) on yourself and your competition, combined with a careful assessment of customer impressions and preferences. Superior branding is a refinement and pinpointing of your overall strategy based on your strengths, current or desired market position, and customer insight. While your brand position should be relatively simple, identifying, developing, and managing your program’s brand most decidedly is not.

Frequency and consistency of the brand’s message also contribute to the branding strategy, but only when your message is firmly tied to an emotional anchor. In addition to identifying what your customers think of your program (and your competition), you must also review all of your business and service activities to ensure that they consistently and frequently support your branding strategy.

Besides frequency, consistency, and clarity, other elements that play into the branding strategy are the brand name, brand mark (distinctive colors, choice of font, symbols or logo), trademarks, and copyrights. While an occupational health program might not use all of these, most can be effectively deployed to get maximum mileage out of your marketing and branding strategy. For example, do all of your marketing materials utilize the same colors and have the same look and feel? When someone sees one of your marketing or advertising pieces is it instantly associated with your program, and does it reflect your branding strategy? When someone hears the name of your program, what is the first thing that comes to mind? What is the first thing they associate with your program? Are these associative memories the ones that you want them to have, and do they work to your program’s advantage by accurately reflecting your position in the market?

Other key considerations in developing your branding strategy are:

Develop a Brand Position Statement: This is the position you want your program to occupy in the market. This should be a succinct one or two sentence summary of your strengths. This is not the advertising tagline (although the tagline should support the brand statement), and is actually never seen by the public. Like your reputation, your actual brand position is known and perceived but is not something that can actually be seen or touched. Your brand position statement is your focal point, your True North around which all your efforts center. It is the consistent message you communicate to your customers through all of your business activities, not just the ones associated with marketing and advertising. Everything you do (direct and indirect) should support the message.

To develop an effective brand position statement, it is critical to understand your market, your place in that market, and what your customers want. You must have a vision for your program and its brand position. You must also keep your position fresh, current, and "on target" with the pulse of your customers and the occupational health market. Developing and cultivating a great brand takes leadership, vision, a good sense of timing, and the ruthlessness to outmaneuver your competition.

Identify your Strengths/Differentiate your Product: Is your brand position really different from your competitors? Do customers place value on that differentiation? Is the differentiation defensible, or can it be easily replicated in the market? If your branding strategy is not unique and can easily be imitated, you need to go back to the drawing board. This is also true if your brand’s position holds no particular meaning or value for your customers.

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Keep your Message Simple: The brand position should be brief, making it easy for customers to identify, remember, and associate with your program.

Frequency and Consistency are Essential: No strategy will be successful unless it is repeated and repeated frequently and consistently. Customers are barraged with products and information. In order for your message to be heard, let alone remembered, you must constantly reinforce your branding strategy through all of your actions and all of your marketing activities. An associative memory that responds to the recall cue will never be established in the minds of your customers in the absence of frequency and consistency.

Alignment with your Mission and Values: Your brand position should coincide with your program’s mission, vision, and values. Again, your brand position is your True North for all of your business activities, not just your marketing strategy.

Synchronicity with Parent Organization: If you are part of a larger delivery system you must take that system’s marketing activities into consideration. You may not have free rein to select your name, colors, logo, tagline, or other significant elements that participate in brand development. If these elements have already been determined for you, your brand positioning statement must work in tandem with them. Your branding strategy should also take into consideration the reputation and market position of your parent organization. If your branding strategy is a radical departure from the parent institution’s, it will not be successful. And if your hospital has not developed a brand, that doesn’t mean you can’t do it for your program; you just need to verify that what you develop complements the activities of the larger institution.

In today’s highly competitive occupational health market, branding is both an art and a skill that can be effectively used to distinguish your services from those of your competitors. Over time, branding will allow you to move away from price wars and the devaluation of your services as a commodity. Customers and payers will formulate opinions and an associative memory about your program no matter what you do, but those associations may not be to your advantage, and certainly will not be as highly developed as those you proactively manage. By carefully and strategically developing your program’s brand you can create the image and position that you have determined will leverage your strengths and enhance your market position, while simultaneously creating the kind of associative memory and name recognition you want your customers to have. 

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