Streamline Service Lines to Avert Brand Identity Crisis

Once an organization's logo well bursts, it's difficult to stop the flow of disjointed logos for each separate service line. Soon the organization will be left with a bad case of logo soup and its branding will be covered in an unpleasant sheen. But in this case, the situation can be corrected without using any half-baked plan that starts with the word "top.' Lehigh Valley Health Network attacked its logo spill head on and streamlined its service lines under one cohesive brand.

Logo soup resulted in Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVNH), then Lehigh Valley Hospital, having poor brand recognition in key markets. So the 459?bed Allentown, PA, hospital launched an organization-wide rebranding campaign that aligned its service lines with marketing goals.

"People were sure there were good hospitals in the community, but they weren't sure who won what award because we couldn't differentiate ourselves," Laura Harner, LVHN's marketing manager, said at the April Customer Based Marketing Strategies conference in Atlanta.

Working with Springboard Brand and Creative Strategy, an Arlington Heights, IL, agency, LVHN identified five key objectives: support market share goals, integrate service line messaging, establish awareness and preference, differentiate from local and regional competition, and engage stakeholders as referral sources and brand advocates.

But first, LVHN had to solidify its brand identity. To do this, marketers spoke with leadership and other key stakeholders to discover the essence of the organization. The word "drive' came up again and again, but focus groups found it too mechanical. So marketers translated "drive' into "passion,' and created the tagline "a passion for better medicine.'

"The notion of drive came through because everyone there is driven and goes above and beyond the call of duty and their timecard," said Rob Rosenberg, president of Springboard. "People really put in the time and the passion, so employees were engaged and aligned behind the strategy because they understood what was going on."

With a standardized brand in place, marketers created a new network identity and logo to brand all of its service lines under.

"Traditionally, if there was a request for a graphic treatment or a logo for an individual department program or service, we would accommodate that," Harner said. "But what we saw was that was sending a very confusing message to our community and patients."

Due to the wide array of logos, it was difficult for the community to see how all of LVHN's services worked together to create a network of care. "Once we explained that to folks they had a better appreciation for the need for a uniform graphic representation of the network, because ultimately it was helping our patients and community identify and access us,' she said.

LVHN marketers didn't yield when they faced push- back from service line directors because they understood the importance of service lines' relationship to branding. This feat is a crucial stage in the battle to reclaim your brand. Some marketers will shy away from rocking the boat with influential service line directors, but if you explain the organizational importance of creating one uniform brand most will come onboard.

Once LVHN had aligned its internal stakeholders, it launched a rebranding campaign in early 2008. Brand awareness has increased by about eight percentage points and usage has increased by about 3 percentage points since the campaign launched. The reason the branding initiative was so successful is because it was part of an organization-wide overhaul.

Going forward, LVHN marketers plan to continue to invest in the branding effort and explore the most relevant ways to deliver its message to consumers, based on market conditions and consumers' understanding of the network. Service line integration will remain at the forefront of the initiative.

Though streamlining service line brands can get messy, but it will only get worse if you don't address the problem head on. Logo confusion starts as a trickle, but almost always turns into an endless, gushing flow of despair and destruction that apparently no one can plug. We're still talking about hospitals, right?