Rebranding During a Pandemic: Q&A with Mass General Brigham CMO

Mark Bohen, MBA, shares insights into the Boston-based healthcare system's marketing strategies, how the pandemic has affected them, and what marketing strategies are still to come.

In November 2019, Partners HealthCare CEO Anne Klibanski, MD announced a five-year strategic plan and rebranding for the Boston-based health system, renaming it Mass General Brigham to highlight the system's two prestigious academic medical centers: Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Klibanski, who still leads Mass General Brigham, explained in a previous statement that patients are, “at the center of all we do. The overall aim of our strategy and the new name is to create the premier integrated health care system of the future, built on the strong reputations of our academic medical centers."

Mark Bohen, MBA, who previously served at Beaumont Health in Michigan, joined the health system in September 2020 as chief marketing officer. Since then, he's led the patient-focused marketing and rebranding efforts through the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic to unify the Mass General Brigham brand.

Bohen recently spoke with HealthLeaders about the health system's marketing strategies, how the pandemic has affected them, and what initiatives are still to come.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

HealthLeaders: Where is Mass General Brigham now in its five-year strategic plan?

Mark Bohen: The overall strategy is to bring all these world-class institutions together and form an integrated health system of the future, where the patient is at the center. We're making great progress. In fact, we recently announced two major initiatives that reflect how we're coming together as an integrated system.

The first [initiative] is that we launched our Sports Medicine Business on Monday. This is an initiative that brings all our world-class providers and clinicians together. Sports Medicine provides the patient with a better experience and a single-entry point into our system depending on their location and needs. It's the first time that we've launched a system-wide clinical service like this, so we're excited about that.

We also announced an enterprise radiology clinical service. Here, we're [also] putting patients at the center and offering high-quality imaging read by our world-class experts regardless of where you are, whether you want to come to downtown Boston or get your imaging done in the [outer] communities, it's the same experience read by the same world-class clinicians. [We're] trying to meet people where they are in the community.

HL: How was your transition to chief marketing officer of Mass General Brigham during the pandemic? What challenges faced you when you arrived?

Bohen: It was a bit unusual to join during the pandemic. Of course, we're all remote, and so I started working from my house in Michigan. It's always challenging to start at a new job, but then you layer on doing it during a pandemic and trying to understand the business, meet people, develop relationships. It was certainly challenging, but it's been terrific.

I'm so impressed with the work that people are doing, the research that leads to all the breakthroughs, innovations, and new therapies. We can help people in our communities and around the world. During the pandemic, we all came together and collaborated as a system. We treated so many people who had COVID, we have administered a lot of vaccines and a lot of COVID tests. We did that all working together as a system.

HL: How has the rebranding effort affected consumer engagement, retention, and patient experience?

Bohen: During COVID, all our focus was on our patients and on our employees, making sure they were OK.

Over the past few months, we've been doing more and more to roll out the visual identity part of [our rebranding. We've changed the signs on some of the hospitals and a few more are in the works now. We're rolling it out in phases. We're still in the pandemic [and] we've got another surge happening now, so we want to make sure that we're putting our focus where it needs to be, which is on our patients and our employees.

We've also done some work on what the MGB brand stands for. We did a lot of development work on the value proposition, positioning, and research which we've turned into creative because we want to start communicating what MGB stands for externally. We launched a brand campaign locally starting July 4, and then [we have commercials playing] during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. [Our brand] is about using our research to develop new clinical breakthroughs and innovations, and to make sure we deliver that great care in our local communities but also around the world and that's what we're communicating in those brand commercials.

HL: What marketing strategies have you utilized through the pandemic?

Bohen: Our focus was on the people who had COVID-19, testing, and then when the vaccines came a lot of focus was on getting patients and employees vaccinated. All elective procedures were halted for a period and people understandably didn't want to come to the hospitals for procedures. But then as time went on, when it was safe to come back in, we did encourage people to come.

We had a campaign, broad-based TV, digital, social, and other forms of communication to let people know that it's safe to come back, that they shouldn't delay care, and that certainly helped. Now we're just about at pre-pandemic volume levels, so people are coming back and getting those important cancer screenings and other preventative measures too.

Now, our marketing strategies are focused on building the brand, building awareness for the brand, and making sure people know what it stands for.

And, you know, we'll continue to make plans for the next fiscal year, which starts October 1. We want to continue and add to our marketing strategies. We're excited about the future here and the opportunities are limitless for our marketing department. We're new, we came together as an MGB marketing department last fall, and so we're working together more effectively and just beginning to hit our stride.

HL: What are your marketing strategies moving forward?

Bohen: To me, the practice of marketing is both an art and a science, and we want to make sure we bring more science to the table to inform our marketing decisions.

We want to bring classical marketing principles to marketing here at MGB … to infuse how we develop our marketing strategies and programs. We'll focus on consumer insights, focus on data analytics, measuring return on investment on our marketing activities, developing deep skills in the digital social area, making sure that we understand consumers' media consumption behavior. People are omnichannel, so we need to be where consumers are. Those types of principles and practices, and the discipline around understanding the consumer will serve us well going forward.

Oftentimes I'm asked, 'What's your social media strategy?' and I always like to say we have a marketing strategy that includes social media, but it also includes other media and tools in our toolbox. That's how I think about it is what can the marketing practitioner bring to reach consumers where they are, and sometimes it's social, whether it's organic or paid, sometimes it's search, but then also, sometimes it's more broad-based and even traditional forms of media. It's never good to be a one-trick pony; people consume information through all forms of channels. When we're talking about a new brand or a new clinical service like sports medicine, you've got to create the awareness first, then once people are aware, then they can do their own research and find you, whether it's organic search, or paid search, or social.

Related: Why Partners HealthCare Rebranded as Mass General Brigham