Activating a Brand

Jenny: Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I’m your host and I’m the founder and owner at Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. I am so excited to have with us our very own Madison Molho. Madison is the Director of Strategy here at Hedy & Hopp, and she joined us last week to talk a little bit about the development of a brand, whether it is a net new brand, if you’re doing a rebrand, if you’re trying to do a brand refinement and the ways that you could make sure that the work you’re doing not only matters to the end patients, but also that you have the necessary components in place so that anybody working on activating your brand understand how to bring it to life correctly. 

With messaging and visuals. But that’s not all, Madison. Our team then usually takes that work and turns it into something called an engagement framework. And I think when I talk to people at different organizations, this seems to be one of those missing pieces where organizations really have a gap in between the brand and the activation.

So talk a little bit about what an engagement framework is and why it matters. 

Madison: Yeah. So essentially, the engagement framework is that bridge from the foundational brand into activation. And it starts to pull in elements from the brand framework, the messaging framework, which we talked about last week into how we would execute in whichever channel or space we’re in.

So engagement framework looks at a high-level audience journey with the caveat. Obviously, we all know people do not move through journeys linearly, but for the sake of this, we look at it linearly, and then we look at how somebody will move that journey from their perspective. What do they want to achieve at each stage, what are their challenges, and what are their needs?

And then we layer on how that brand interacts with them from a messaging standpoint, from core channels, and then KPIs. So we can start to move our audience in the direction we want them to be and not just meet them where they are, but move them to where we want them to be in a way that, again, is relevant to them and is more organic and not somebody you know coming and pulling them, but really along with them in the journey.

Jenny: That’s so helpful. So, for example, for our clients that we do performance marketing for or the agency of record for, we’re often doing large activation campaigns. So give me some examples. How do we make this tangible for our listeners? If we’re creating an engagement framework and then we’re actually doing the activation, what are maybe a couple of different steps in the engagement framework or different ways that you can kind of bring it to life for folks?

Madison: Sure. So a lot of times the engagement frameworks are broken up by audiences slash personas depending on where we are, knowing their nuances across audiences, we say patience. That’s a very broad group of people, regardless of who your patients are or where you are. So it’s important to understand the nuances within each of your audience segments. And so really that allows us to have specific messages within each stage that then we can transition into, let’s say, media.

If we know that we’re activating media in, let’s say YouTube, for somebody who’s 65, we have a specific message in that part of the journey, knowing where YouTube plays a role in that funnel, plus the message, and then allows us to build that connection from what we know the audience wants, you know, overcome their pain points, hit their objectives, while also delivering that relevant message to them in the proper channel.

Jenny: Sure. Because, for example, like let’s say we’re doing a campaign for a payor, if it’s a programmatic campaign, you can’t have a hard sell, right? They aren’t actively searching for a solution. They’re not emotionally maybe ready to make that commitment. So it’s a different step. 

Madison: Right. So at that point, you’re probably just making sure your name is out there.

They’re aware of you. They start to see, you know, your brand colors. You see an image, you’re like, hey, that’s pretty relevant. But, you know, they may keep scrolling, which is totally fine. That’s the point of where that message is, because that’s where we would layer on another channel, and another tactic with another message to pick up where our programmatic ad left off.

Jenny: Yeah, that’s really helpful. And then of course, we have the measurement plan, which we could have someone on our analytics team on to talk about the specificities of it, but that thing could be layered on top of the engagement framework to really say, you know, at each of these steps, how are we defining success? How are we going to build the metrics within our dashboard to be able to make it real for folks, etc.?

Madison: Absolutely. So we always try to put a KPI per stage in the journey into the engagement framework. Knowing an entire measurement plan will also come later, but again trying to focus by the objectives stage. What are we trying to measure? What does success look like by stage as we move that person down the journey, making sure we have the right channels and messages, also working together to drive that.

Jenny: So let’s talk a little bit about like let’s say it’s a larger system and we’re doing perhaps a brand level campaign, but then also service level campaigns. Do you typically recommend an engagement framework for the service lines as well as the brand, or is it one broader engagement framework that then all of the service line campaigns roll up to?

Madison: It depends on what the objectives are. I would say normally, yes, I would split between brand and service line, just because service line tends to have a very specific objective and an even more niche audience that allows you to get more granular and more targeted with how we look at the audience, the messages, and the channels we put them in.

So they do work together because of course, they’re one organization and you want to be consistent and cohesive. Obviously, the campaigns that are in-market will be different, and what you’re trying to accomplish with those campaigns are different. So it’s important to understand the audiences from the objective as well. However, they should work together. 

Jenny: What advice would you have for marketers, on the provider side, that are thinking about tackling a rebrand or a brand refresh, or maybe they have an existing brand, but they feel like they’re not showing up in the way that the brand should be showing up.

When it comes to actual activation, what advice would you give somebody about where to start? 

Madison: That’s a great question. Well, as a true happy, and if you will, I would say it starts with the data. And as I like to say, not all data is quantitative. It’s also qualitative. And so perhaps, you know, conducting some preliminary, either internal surveys, some with the audience, understand what’s working and what’s not working and where you need to push the brand.

For some instances, I would say sometimes there’s a new, charge within an organization to reposition or, you know, move that company in a new direction. And at that point, it’s okay, let’s take a step back and understand where do you want to be? And now let’s figure out how we get you there. Of course, I will always come also with that sort of data, but in a different, order of operations.

Jenny: That’s helpful. Do you think, fun. Would you rather would you rather, try to refine an existing brand where you didn’t have the ability to change the name of the organization and bring it to life more effectively in a way that resonated with the patients? Or would you rather kind of start from scratch and design something where there’s no existing brand equity?

Madison: It’s hard. Again, I think it depends on why the name is staying and what challenges that would have to overcome. I do think it’s a little more fun to start from scratch, because I also think it’s fun to work with the clients on that, because everybody starts at the ground floor together, and you really spend a lot of time together working in partnership to build it.

And I, I find a lot of joy in doing that. And I have, I think, built really strong client relationships in the past, doing that because you’re in it together. Not that the other way isn’t fun also, it’s just a different way to interact, to engage in different challenges, to overcome. But I do I think if I had to pick in this way to have, I think I would do it from scratch.

Jenny: I think it’s so fun. I love that, I think it’s so fun because we work not only with large systems, but sometimes with private equity backed groups where they’re actually or position on groups where they’re buying additional locations. And so I think we’ve seen time and time again as they come in with this big fancy name and they want to swallow up all of these names of the folks that they’re acquiring, but actually had some brand equity within their local communities.

And then that goes away whenever they rebrand because it is being rolled out correctly. So I think the nuances of branding are so interesting and really shows why it’s so important to think through the ramifications of each of those journeys versus, you know, just thinking it’ll be super easy to be able to relaunch something. So.

Madison: Yeah, I would say off of that to something we haven’t talked about yet, which is important in this example, is also understanding brand architecture and what matters.

Where does where do you want your equity to be? Where is it currently? And then how do you have that something that’s scalable, especially if you work, if you are physician-owned, private equity back where you are, if you’ll say a healthcare system with plans to acquire different hospitals, where does that live? That’s a whole other fun thing to tackle as well.

Jenny: But part of the overarching branding as well. Absolutely. Well, Madison, this was so helpful and interesting. I love talking about brand strategy with you. You have such interesting insight. So thank you for joining us today. For our listeners, please like and subscribe. If you have a topic you’d like for us to cover in the future, give us a shout.

Or if you’d like to chat with us about brand and strategy work, we’d be happy to brainstorm with you and share some insights about situations that we’ve seen that may be similar or complementary to yours. To maybe give you some examples. And that’s it for today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Be sure to tune in next week for a new episode.

Cheers!