Learn how to build and manage your brand's health to enjoy the long-term rewards of brand equity

1. Managing Your Brand’s Health to
Enjoy the Long Term Rewards of
Brand Equity
Joel English, BVK
Suzanne Hendery, Baystate Health

2. Congratulations
• The good news is that you have
accomplished something by creating
a strategic Brand Strategy!

3. It Was, No Doubt The Result Of
Hard Work To:
• Educate leadership on what branding
is and isn’t.
• Create a customer-centric brand
foundation through research.
• Engage the organization in living the
brand.
• Communicate it in a successful way.
• Determine means to measure your
brand’s health.

4. Defining Brand
A brand is a combination of functional,
intellectual and emotional
characteristics that defines a certain
image or personality which, in turn,
drives a level of affinity (usage)
among certain customers.
functional
emotionalintellectual
affinity usage
certain

5. Organizations can conduct business
without strong brands, but this leaves
them vulnerable

6. The
Promise
The
Architecture
The
Experience
...is that part of the brand/consumer
dialogue where the organization actively
communicates what consumers can
expect when they interact with the
brand. The statement must be
believable, meaningful, differentiating,
and supportable by the organization.
This statement determines the brand
rules by which the entire organization
operates.
...refers to the structure
of your brand family.
The naming convention
that an organization
uses for all of the
brands in its brand
family helps to support
both the brand promise
and the brand
experience. Names set
expectations regarding
the brand dialogue
before, during, and
after the experience.
The Brand Dialogue
...is the dialogue the
brand has with
consumers as they
experience the brand. It
relates to how the
organization
operationalizes the
brand promise. The
goal is to create a
customer experience
that matches or exceeds
the promise made.
BRAND
A brand is a set of expectations and experiences created in
a consumer’s mind through a dialogue. The more
meaningful that dialogue is, the stronger the brand.
Source: Klein & Partners

7. You Know The Following:
• Brand strategy is a business strategy not a tactic.
• Spending on a building brand equity is a long
term strategic investment, not a short term
expense.
• Brand management is a discipline that extends
well beyond the marketing department.
• CEO as Brand Champion
• Brands built on personality/portrayal have less
leverage than those based on a branded
experience.
• The most common breakdown in brand
development is in an inside out brand, the second
is to not operationalize it.

8. • The bad news is that a lot of hard
work is still to come.

9. Keeping Your Brand Alive and
Well:
• Keeping Senior Leadership engaged and
on script.
• Branding is discipline and process not a
campaign.
• Making sure that experience matches the
promise.
• Making sure that the promise is accurately
and consistently conveyed in
communications.
• Keeping it relevant.

10. Keeping Your Brand Alive and
Well:
• Keeping internal politics from diluting
or killing the brand
• Being “nibbled to death by guppies”
• Adjusting brand/architecture to
address new component
• Maintaining the integrity of results
measurement

11. Case Study
Baystate Health
Springfield, MA

12. Where Do You Start?
(the underpinnings of the Baystate brand)
1. A Vision
2. A Mission
3. Measurable Goals/Strategic Plan
4. Operating Principles (Service Standards)
5. Service Recovery Program
6. Reward & Recognition Program
7. Commitment from Senior Management

13. Baystate’s Brand
Year 1
1. Commitment
2. Consultant
3. Research
• Exec Interviews/Brand Workshop
How would org benefit? consumers? What defines a
strong brand? Perceptions, the experience, core
essence, target segments, uniqueness. How will success
be measured?
• Consumer Brand Survey (quantitative)
Attitudes, perceptions, experiences (you/competitors),
uniqueness, preference, confidence, loyalty
• Focus Groups (qualitative) of Consumers, Employees,
Others)
How can we exceed your expectations? Nomenclature,
architecture

14. The Benefits of Branding
What Our Physicians Said…
“15 years ago, when people thought of ‘Baystate,’
they thought of Baystate West the shopping mall,
now we have an identity as the medical center, the
leader. It’s generally favorable, and I think it’s
advantageous to use the same name for all of us--
Baystate, throughout the entire system so that they
know we’ve got primary care docs, facilities, acute
care hospitals, a children’s hospital, a cancer
center, etc.”

15. Baystate’s Brand
Year 2 Checklist
1. Brand Committee
• strategy from research
• brand promise (test)
• Logo/nomenclature
2. Operations Sub-Committees
• action
• timing
• plan, accountability and budget
3. Visual/Message Audit
• logo and graphic standards
• key messages
• training

16. Baystate’s Brand ‘Promise’
1. Brand Image (Research)
• Who you are today (from both internal
and external perspectives)
2. Brand Identity (Promise)
• Who you and your customers want you
to be
• The essence of the brand
• Aspirational but achievable
• Enterprise wide
• From your customers (not your boss!)

17. Brand Promise Elements
• Articulates your promise in the context of
3 dimensions
• Functional benefits
Single-minded for dependability
• Emotional benefits
All emotional, ‘those you love will say’ wow’!
• Self-expressive benefits
Nike expresses, “I am a performer.”
• The most defensible brands blend all
dimensions

18. The Brand Promise Test
• Is it valuable?
• Is it believable for you?
• Is it differentiating?
• Is it durable?

19. New Name & Graphic Structure
2. Baystate
name

20. Baystate’s Brand
Year 3 Checklist
1. “Living the brand” internal plan
• orientation
• performance reviews
• training
• events and recognition
• communications (speeches, mtgs, ltrs, etc.)
2. External communications plan
• operational changes in place
• integrate brand in all messages/advertising

21. Baystate Branding
Time Frames
Name Changed
Baystate Health Oct 1, 2005
Baystate Medical Center “
Baystate Children’s Hospital “
Baystate Health Ambulance “
Baystate Mary Lane Hospital Jan 31, 2006
Baystate Medical Practices Apr-June 2006

22. The Brand in Action

23. Baystate’s Brand
Year 4 Checklist
1. Evaluate ROI
• Adapt to environment
• Develop organizational structure to
manage brand long-term
• Conduct additional research
(name recognition and recall, awareness,
preference, “best reputation measures,”
customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction,
recall of branding attributes, messages)

24. Hard-Earned Baystate Brand
Lessons
1. Customers own the brand, but we manage it
2. Experience is the most important driver
3. Ask your customers
4. Beware of the silk purse/sow’s ear problem
5. A brand strategy is like naming a child
6. Research: don’t ask the question if you can’t
live with the answer
7. The best brands own the high ground—your
customers and employees must be proud of
who you are and what you stand for…always.

25. Key Lessons Learned
• Keep Senior Leadership engaged
• Get the Board on board.
• Have your CEO be your brand
champion.
• Practice the 28 day rule.
• Have marketing at the Senior
Leadership table.

26. Manage The Brand Experience
• Multi disciplinary experience design team
including marketing opportunities,
clinical/nursing leadership.
• Take on small/self contained experience
design assignments.
• Employer branding strategy linked to
consumer strategy.
• Attract the right kind of people/reward them.
• Survey employees to determine negative
word of mouth.
• Script employees.

27. Is the Promise Accurately
Conveyed?
• Don’t over promise – a little aspiration is
OK – a lot can be disastrous.
• Focus on creating standards… templates to
keep the organization tools within brand
standards.
• Marketing can only easily control what they do
and they can’t do it all.
• Look for tactical drift.
• Voice/tone
• From entity to entity or service line to service
line.

28. Keep Internal Politics From
Diluting Or Killing The Brand
• This is very difficult to do – you are
often dealing with multiple CEOs and
physicians (sometimes board
members).
• The role of the CEO is critical.
• A sound research foundation is
critical.

29. Make Brand Architecture
Adjustments To Address
• Changes in brand equity.
• New ventures/implications.
• Risks involved in partnerships.
• Changing consumer sentiments/life
style issues.

30. Maintain The Integrity Of Results
Measurement
• Create a dash board group of
indicators/research method and stick
to it. It should be the first element
of brand budget, not the last.
• New ideas – flighted research.
• Don’t forget new research tools like web
based research.