Case Study:  Branding Children’s Hospital

The foundation of a successful brand is a clear understanding of its core principles and the ability to accurately communicate its essence to appropriate audiences.  Brands are communicated in everything that is done to market a product or service including advertising, public relations, promotions and events.  Perhaps most importantly though, brands are communicated through customer experiences…both positive and negative, along with how an organization handles problems and how it prevents problems from happening in the future.  An Omaha, Nebraska hospital was able to achieve substantial increases in awareness, brand leadership and referrals by using research to define its message and strategies and to track changes among key audience perceptions and choice.

While there are several ways to determine a brand’s essence, one method that has proven successful for many organizations is to identify a brand archetype (1).  This was the situation for Children’s Hospital, a 142-bed freestanding pediatric hospital located in Omaha, Nebraska.  The hospital contacted The MSR Group after having undergone an extensive internal clarification of its core principles and brand personality.  The process had culminated in the identification of an archetype for the Children’s Hospital brand: The Hero.

Having conducted brand awareness and perception studies with The MSR Group since 2000, Children’s had baseline data that would allow it to gage the success of its newly clarified positioning efforts.  In addition, the hospital wished to ensure its new advertising would accurately communicate the Hero brand in a way that was meaningful to its target audience.

Approach
In order to accurately measure the branding success within the marketplace, The MSR Group recommends three types of research:

Because Children’s Hospital had in place a quantitative method to measure customer experience and it had been conducting brand awareness and perception studies with The MSR Group since 2000, it was starting from a position of advantage.  The MSR Group recommended that Children’s Hospital first conduct advertising testing followed by a repeat of its brand perception study.

With the help of The MSR Group, Children’s hospital conducted a unique interactive, pre-testing measurement of advertising concepts to ensure the hospital’s advertising clearly communicated the essence of The Hero.  Once this research was complete and the advertising had run for several months, The MSR Group was able to provide a quantitative assessment of the success of branding efforts through a repeat of earlier Brand Awareness and Perception research.

Ensuring Accurate Brand Communication through Advertising Testing
Multiple concept evaluations, including both print and broadcast stimuli, and a desire to receive feedback from a larger sample than what traditional qualitative research offers, created a natural fit for Perception Analyzer® (PA®) technology.  PA® is used to allow test subjects to record their reactions to any form of test material (e.g. advertising, new concepts, copy testing, etc.) using electronic hand held dials, which have a wireless connection to a personal computer.  Information is translated into data and graphic output, which is presented in real-time to either the group moderator or the viewing client.  The real “value” in enhancing qualitative research with PA® is its ability to provide instantaneous data turnaround allowing the group moderator to scan the opinions of every group participant without any inter-subjective contamination inherent in traditional focus groups.

Children’s Hospital’s Advertising Test with PA® identified among three tested television concepts the one with greatest appeal and highest perceived alignment with the Hero archetype.  Furthermore, the testing was able to provide additional direction in terms of ad production.  Testing showed in precise seconds the length of time a medical procedure could be shown before it became a “turn off” for viewers.  In addition, contrary to other healthcare industry research which indicated that the inside of a hospital should not be shown in its advertising, this research revealed that because of the unique, child-friendly atmosphere of Children’s Hospital, including visuals of the facility would achieve the objective of differentiating Children’s Hospital in the marketplace.

Results
Measures of success were drawn from the hospital’s Brand Perception and Awareness Survey.  From 2000 to 2006, Children’s saw:

Additionally, in a survey of physicians who refer patients to Children’s Hospital, there was a 10 percentage point increase in the number of physicians reporting that they had referred a patient for admission to the hospital.  Among those with patients needing hospitalization, there was a 13.3 percentage point increase in the number of physicians reporting that a parent had requested Children’s Hospital.

Conclusion
Ensuring an organization is truly “living its brand” requires a multi-dimensional research program.  When executed properly, a robust brand monitoring program will provide:

The MSR Group has the experience, technology and insight to provide a roadmap for success that will aid in the development of a powerhouse brand.