Finding a new voice for health care.
The cost of attention is becoming increasingly expensive.
New world.
New opportunity.
On top of an increasingly aggressive competitive marketing environment, consumers have plenty of options, and they know it. Demands and expectations are high. Retailers offering speed and personalization are rising above generalized service offerings as user experience increasingly becomes the fulcrum to brand success and a business’s bottom line.
The desire for frictionless, helpful and painless experience expands beyond the day-to-day and into all industries, including health care. Patients are consumers. They want help making decisions, evaluating options, managing conditions and being proactive when it comes to their and their families’ health. And they expect this support on their terms.
Health care can be confusing and complicated.
Offerings are shifting from mass generalization to mass customization and precision, following suit with consumer expectations regardless of the industry, service or product.
Insurance coverage changes are accelerating with higher deductibles, plan terminations and à la carte plans becoming the norm. Consumers are directly impacted by these actions and are becoming more price-sensitive to the services that they are paying a larger percentage of the cost to receive. The complex rules and exceptions are creating confusion and drawing patients to providers that navigate this landscape for them and are able to quote simple “driveaway” prices.
Bind
Brand Narrative, Website and Pre-Member Outreach
Bind is rebuilding health insurance in the rails. They threw out convention to build a health insurance model focused entirely on the quality of experience and culturally relevant solutions. They needed to go-to-market with purpose and prowess as they ramped up to the precipice of an industry revolution.
Objectives
- Break from a sea of sameness and reinvent health insurance.
- Be the affordable, personal and flexible solution consumers demand.
- Address compelling needs of both B2B and consumer audiences.
Approach
Leverage what’s wrong with the insurance industry today.
- Take a position.
- Be certain.
- Evoke emotion.
- Facilitate immediate understanding.
- And get noticed the first time.
We needed to help our audience forget how things used to work and demonstrate how Bind gives the power of health back to each person, so we can all live happier, healthier lives.
Search engines are answer engines.
Consumer-relevant brands understand what an increasing dependence on search engines means for marketing, communications and the user-journey outside of SEO + SEM programs.
Consumers aren’t waiting for their next appointment or pharmacist engagement to get advice or questions answered. They’re online and they want answers within seconds. While there is no shortage of online advice offerings, optimized content created by qualified, authoritative sources greatly outweighs the rest.
They want to be made aware of products and services that can provide value in some way to them.
With a world of content and information at their fingertips, consumers never need to settle for a boring or expected experience. Getting their attention is not enough—they’re seeking brands that will shake things up—surprise them, delight them, make them laugh, make them cry—deliver an experience that lets them escape the mundane.
Mayo Clinic Health System
Rebranding Campaign
After two decades of acquiring local hospitals and clinics, a global leader in health care was seeking to reveal its newly branded regional health system. Mayo Clinic Health System (MCHS) needed a purpose-driven platform to intimately integrate its “big” brand reputation into the small-town fabric of over 70 communities.
In order to make an impact in the local health care marketplace, MCHS had to put their stake in the ground as they defined and communicated their differentiators as a health care provider. The approach? Leverage their collaborative relationship with the nation’s premier health care provider, Mayo Clinic, in a disruptive way—uncommon in a space littered with lab coats and exam rooms.
Blue Cross Blue Shield
Cessation Campaign
By leveraging the absurdity behind the delayed-quit compromise and connecting with students in their social context, this Blue Cross Blue Shield smoking cessation campaign received a 67% awareness level across all targeted college + university campuses. Those familiar with the campaign were 14% more likely to make a cessation attempt.
The human journey is what matters most.
Health care is continually ranked as one of the least customer-friendly service industries. Costs are high, wait times are long and care providers are perceived as unsympathetic. The industry is on the extreme low end of American consumers’ expectations. Contrast that with the high end of customer expectations: retail and tech industries with low wait times, new + innovative services that delight customers and a seamless experience that meets them where they are. This is the real competition for hearts and minds.
Success lies in an empathetic understanding of the end health care consumer. Brands that are willing to attack the industry chaos head-on and put consumer wants + needs above all else will win. Those that wait for others to make the hard decisions and changes first, later following suit, will lose.
Nurture by Steelcase (Now Steelcase Health)
Brand + Product Launch Campaign
Objective
Challenge
Approach
Mayo Clinic Health System
Women's Health Campaign
Challenge
Mayo Clinic Health System – La Crosse (MCHS – La Crosse) needed to reverse market momentum brought on by perceptions of aging facilities without investing major capital into a facilities overhaul. A community health competitor gained market traction—and significant regional media coverage—with updated specialty care facilities for cardiology and women’s health (including their birth center).
Because the female head of household is the key influencer in health care decisions, this shift in perception presented significant long-term implications for MCHS—particularly in smaller communities where families are more likely to receive a continuum of care with the same health care system.
Strategy
Our research revealed a serious public health risk to women’s health was being overlooked. The number one cause of death for women—cardiovascular disease—was not actually perceived by women to be a concern, despite the fact that women are 50% more likely to suffer a heart attack than men.
To address both the public health risk and the competitive challenge, MCHS needed to reframe the perceptions of women’s health beyond reproductive health. This meant we needed to change the conversations women were having with each other about their health and empower them to put their own well-being first—instead of always putting their own health behind caring for others.
Approach
Results
- After the campaign launch, MCHS – La Crosse had the highest unaided ad recall for cardiac/heart—35% higher than its competitors.
- A year later, MCHS – La Crosse still had the highest unaided recall for cardiac/heart at 16%—now 63% higher than competitors.
Mayo Clinic Health System
Service Line Campaign
The role that emotions play in the problem of rising care costs and poorer health outcomes is often ignored. How consumers feel impacts how they heal. Human-centered, wholehearted care experiences can reduce chronic illness and increase patient adherence while amplifying breakthrough brand performance. The following highlights two patient-focused campaigns that ran back-to-back over a 6-year period.
The Role of Humanity
Research shows that purely emotional brand communications are twice as effective—with greater attention, engagement and social advocacy—than purely rational content. The science of “how” is best cast in a supporting role when illuminating the humanity driving consumers’ “why.” People want to see authenticity in advertising—true stories, people like themselves.
Extraordinary, Every Day.
This campaign demonstrates Mayo Clinic Health System’s dedication to enhancing the quality of people’s lives, every day, right where they live. And that the ordinary moments in life aren’t, in fact, ordinary at all.
A seamless brand experience is the difference.
Meet consumers wherever, whenever: The highest quality measure for health care isn’t clinical—it’s convenience. Consumers choose solutions that they feel are best for them. Health care brands must embrace new channels to meet consumers on their terms—or assume the fiscal risk of Blockbuster.
Mayo Clinic Health System
Digital Banner Campaign
Challenge
Hunt Adkins was tasked with generating appointment requests and increasing year-over-year results. The campaign itself represented five different service lines, with a national audience and three main campus locations in Minnesota, Florida and Arizona.
Complexities existed due to lack of first-party data, the numerous tracking methods required and multiple creative pieces.
Strategic Approach
In keeping with our disciplined process, we determined metrics of success and the target audiences we needed to impact—not just at their direct moment of need, but along their entire consumer journey. We created a digital campaign with various CTAs for ongoing tracking of information in order to gain insights and optimize as necessary while illustrating the excellence and expertise across all of Mayo Clinic.
Results
The campaign ran for a total of three years. From year one to year three, click-through appointment requests increased by nearly 30%. Due to continuous optimization and positive results, we received approval on new strategies for the client that allowed us greater access to new metrics.
Want more insights?
Get Hunt Adkins’ Reframing Health for a More Successful Health Care Experience deck now to unlock drivers required to improve health outcomes and ensure healthy bottom lines for all.
- New strategic frames for successful modern health and care
- Today’s consumer demands and expectations
- Ideas for better consumer brand experiences
- Insights to optimize current and future marketing and CX programs
Learn more at: healthcare.huntadkins.com.