Thoughtful brand-builders should learn a few lessons from car maker GM's struggle for survival. Lesson #1: brand proliferation, once thought a strength, can quickly become a crippling weakness as too many brands clamor for limited resources and finite consumer attention.
One author suggested that GM retreat to two, possibly three brands - volume, luxury and heavy duty - Chevy, Cadillac and, maybe, GMC. Retreat to the core, to a position you can defend and, more importantly, a position from which to grow. Great advice, for GM and perhaps for marketers in the health care provider space too.
Many health care marketers struggle with the same issue, as facilities and service-lines claim a right to their own identity. Before you know it, there's a GENERIC Cardiac Center, the LOOKATUS Oncology Institute, and a METOO Neuro Complex. Multiply that by the number of hospital campuses and major "name" donors; it doesn't take long for resources to be spread miles wide and an inch deep - too thin and too diffuse to be anything more than names on letterhead.
The typical suburban hospital offers literally thousands of discrete services, and marketers owe their organizations some frank clarity on the issue and its implications. Clarity about a brand's limitations. Clarity that it's not possible to insert into the marketplace's collective consciousness specific, memorable messages about each sub-brand and every service. Clarity that, even if you thought it was a good idea, resources are, now and forever, insufficient. And, most importantly, clarity that consumers really don't care all that much anyway.
Most of us live our life in what I call a state of active "scary information avoidance." We don't open our mailbox each evening in breathless anticipation to read some message about "stereotactic radiosurgery for inoperable brain tumors." We don't care, we never did care and you can't make us care...until something - our own diagnosis maybe - flips us into an "information-seeking" state.
And that's when and where your branding forces should be marshalled: a simple, powerful, over-arching, across-the-system, all-the-time brand, supported with "just-in-time" information when a life event happens. The right information, delivered at the right time, to a consumer who has a reason to care. Otherwise you're just practicing the branding equivalent of carpet-bombing.
Brands are nothing more than what an organization is willing to deliver, and actually capable of delivering. Not names, logos, institutes or centers. Something razor-sharp, memorable, almost insidious.
GM must simplify its brands or die. You may have the luxury of time. Don't waste it.
One author suggested that GM retreat to two, possibly three brands - volume, luxury and heavy duty - Chevy, Cadillac and, maybe, GMC. Retreat to the core, to a position you can defend and, more importantly, a position from which to grow. Great advice, for GM and perhaps for marketers in the health care provider space too.
Many health care marketers struggle with the same issue, as facilities and service-lines claim a right to their own identity. Before you know it, there's a GENERIC Cardiac Center, the LOOKATUS Oncology Institute, and a METOO Neuro Complex. Multiply that by the number of hospital campuses and major "name" donors; it doesn't take long for resources to be spread miles wide and an inch deep - too thin and too diffuse to be anything more than names on letterhead.
The typical suburban hospital offers literally thousands of discrete services, and marketers owe their organizations some frank clarity on the issue and its implications. Clarity about a brand's limitations. Clarity that it's not possible to insert into the marketplace's collective consciousness specific, memorable messages about each sub-brand and every service. Clarity that, even if you thought it was a good idea, resources are, now and forever, insufficient. And, most importantly, clarity that consumers really don't care all that much anyway.
Most of us live our life in what I call a state of active "scary information avoidance." We don't open our mailbox each evening in breathless anticipation to read some message about "stereotactic radiosurgery for inoperable brain tumors." We don't care, we never did care and you can't make us care...until something - our own diagnosis maybe - flips us into an "information-seeking" state.
And that's when and where your branding forces should be marshalled: a simple, powerful, over-arching, across-the-system, all-the-time brand, supported with "just-in-time" information when a life event happens. The right information, delivered at the right time, to a consumer who has a reason to care. Otherwise you're just practicing the branding equivalent of carpet-bombing.
Brands are nothing more than what an organization is willing to deliver, and actually capable of delivering. Not names, logos, institutes or centers. Something razor-sharp, memorable, almost insidious.
GM must simplify its brands or die. You may have the luxury of time. Don't waste it.
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