Case 1
Case 2
Case 3
Case 4
Case 5
A marketing audit can increase market
share.
Opportunity: Audit a major medical center's marketing function in
order to help increase market share in a key SSA that has seen an increase
of 23,000 new residents a year.
Process: A
comprehensive audit was completed to include: a thorough environmental
assessment; leadership and physician interviews; marketing staff
interviews and shadowing; internal and external focus groups; key
constituent interviews; a complete review of all marketing plans,
strategies, tactics and related collateral; staffing skills reviews;
organizational chart review and more.
Result: In short, the organization was selling itself short when it
came to the resources and staffing needed. Once rectified, the numbers
speak for themselves: a 139.8% increase in invasive cardiology discharges;
a 5% oncology market share increase in the PSA and 1% in the SSA; a 400%
increase in newborn discharges in the SSA; a 10.5% increase in neonatal
discharges in the PSA and a 8.4% increase in the SSA; a 1.9% increase in
OB discharges in the PSA; a 1.5% increase in discharges for all women's
services; a 2.6% GYN market share increase in the PSA; a 48.6% increase in
discharges in the SSA for electrophysiology with a 33.3 % increase in the
SSA.
The "AHA" Moment: One moment of revelation came in a focus group
with community members when one adamant consumer said that the only way to
change the image of the facility was to adopt its health system's name.
That was essentially an off limits topic going into the audit as it was
perceived that county commissioners would have fits. I realized that this
was an artificial barrier and resurfaced the issue in the final report. I
had nothing to lose. It took a while but they finally changed the name!
That helped set the tone for everything to follow.
The Story:
The function suffered from lack of
commitment of resources with disparate "marketing" activities reporting to
other functions and just one part time coordinator to make sense of it
all. Based on audit recommendations, here is what was initiated. A full
time Director of Marketing was hired. More importantly, that position
reports to the CEO and has access to the people and data needed to develop
a strategic marketing plan, something that was sorely missing.
The Marketing Coordinator position is being increased to a full-time
position. An internal communications/PR coordinator was hired. Since that,
they have introduced a new medical staff newsletter and will be
redesigning the employee newsletter and other publications. Employee
forums were initiated as well. A community newsletter is in the works.
A key women's affinity program was brought under marketing and the scope
of the position expanded to include
outreach activities. Physician liaison work was being handled by many
different people causing redundant duties and messaging. That effort is
being consolidated.
A marketing presence is being established in a key competitive area, one
of the fastest growing in the Charlotte, NC region. A strategic marketing
plan continues to evolve.
Think you don't have a brand? Think again.
Opportunity: Help a medical management company build a brand to
complement sales efforts.
Process: Lead a culture
transformation and change organizational mindset to believing they had a
brand identity and were not just a backroom operation.
Result: Brand identity established; an eight
fold increase in patients; the attraction of additional insurance
companies; and the tripling of its physician network.
The "AHA" Moment: The moment of cultural
transformation came when we went through a renaming exercise that took new
proportions. It became clear that in defining a name we were defining a
brand and that we were no longer a back room operation but had selling
features on which to compete. It took this group dynamic to turn the light
bulbs on!
The Story: Touchstone Health Partnership, Inc., formerly Physicians Health Alliance, is a Wall Street healthcare startup, a physician organization with more than 300 primary care physicians servicing older adults in the New York City boroughs. Touchstone works with selected Medicare HMOs, taking on in industry terms, "risk" for the care of its patients. Simply, HMOs pay Touchstone a percentage (as high as 85%) of what they receive from the federal government to administer HMO Medicare benefits. Essentially, it is up to Touchstone to manage their patients' care so that patients stay healthy and the company makes money.
Now, Medicare risk is nothing new. But it is scary and not many have succeeded at it. All of the efforts of the company must be focused on attracting patients and then keeping patients' healthy, providing medical management that is intense and value-added services to participating physicians that provides them with information and services to help better care for patients.
Touchstone viewed itself as a "back room" operation and did not think it had a brand that could help sell their healthcare model to older adults. And yet, the very services they provided and the model of Medicare risk they were engaged in were brand elements. With all Medicare HMOs on a pretty even playing field, offering very similar benefits, Touchstone had the brand elements that could breakthrough the clutter and help older adults make an informed decision about the kind of healthcare they should receive, making a case to join an insurance plan affiliated with Touchstone.
Here is where marketing played a pivotal role. What started out as an exercise to rename the company, turned into a cultural changing event. Through intensive senior management meetings orchestrated by marketing to help both prove a brand existed and to define that brand, it became clear that there were three key benefits to patients that Touchstone offered.
First, when a company takes on Medicare risk, the HMO is no longer at risk and they have no say in what the primary care physician does. Brand element - at Touchstone, your doctor is empowered to make the medical decisions.
Second, Touchstone's medical team provides a list of features to physicians that can help them take better care of patients, from health risk assessments to flu shot reminders to disease management programs. Brand element - at Touchstone, there is a team that acts as an extension to your doctor's office, helping to take better care of you.
Third, Touchstone employs patient advocates that work on behalf of patients to make sure they receive the benefits they are entitled to. You call. They answer. They respond. And, senior management meets with patients during "Listening Tours" to uncover ways to make the healthcare experience better. Brand element - at Touchstone, you receive a level of customer service that is superior and unheard of in today's marketplace.
From the brand flowed a new name, Touchstone, whose qualities speak of setting standards of excellence, being a watershed mark in an industry and other attributes that help convey that this type of healthcare is truly something different. The result - an eight fold increase in patients, the attraction of two additional insurance companies and the tripling of its physician network. Think you don't have a brand? Think again.
You can't change a
culture without communication.
Opportunity: Help a Fortune 500 company brand a corporate university
and change the image of training for employees worldwide, aid recruitment
and retention and build an image of employer of choice.
Process: Build a dedicated marketing function for the university to
include IT and registrar personnel to assure seamless integration of
technology and customer service. Build career development tools for
employees. Create and execute a strategic internal and external marketing
plan.
Result: Key media placements
in The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, Information Week, Business Week, and others. University Intranet rated the second highest rated in company. Training use at record levels with 22,000 employees (of 34,000) receiving training. Marketing team was selected to present at the prestigious Corporate University conference.
The "AHA" Moment: This was actually an easy one.
Either the university would succeed and that meant having dedicated
marketing support or it would fail by having this as just another duty
under corporate communications. It was then about building a business case
to build a marketing function.
The Story: In early 1999, Unisys Corporation, a Fortune 500 information technology leader, was about to embark on a culture change initiative that would affect every one of its 34,000 worldwide employees. Plans were in the works for the creation of a corporate learning organization, Unisys University.
Training had been part of Unisys for many years. But, it had been purely reactive, responding to a business need at hand and not anticipating market trends and business needs to come. The University was about to change that. And that was critical for Unisys. It had already found, through research, that their employees were the key differential that made Unisys stand out in clients' minds. In fact, an entire corporate branding position was built around the theme of Unisys creative, tenacious, technically-excellent workforce. But that brand had to be lived day in and day out. The University was going to help. Training would now be focused so that employees could proactively gain the skills that would help the corporation to deliver on the brand promise that its advertising conveyed.
Schools were set up along critical business lines of the company. And Deans, business unit leaders, were appointed to lead curriculum committees in the development of training paths for employees. Employees had career paths that showed their next most likely career option as well as other careers available in the company. Now, training paths were being developed to accompany these. So, you could see the careers that you could move into and you could actively prepare yourself for the career move.
Now all of that was a lot to swallow. And, as the University was being developed, a critical component was missing - marketing and communication. This initiative was going to change how employees' approached their careers. There was a need to communicate not just the practical tools that they would be using to access and register for training but also to communicate the reason it was being done, why it was critical that they participate and how crucial it was to company success.
The most significant counsel that we provided to Unisys was building a case that clearly spelled out the significant need for a dedicated communication and marketing function, directly reporting to the University vice president. This was not a function that could be handled by corporate communications "when they got around to it."
It called for the technical web developers to report to the function because the messages developed had to come first with the web tools complementing them. In addition to a team of communication experts on staff, the University registrar function would need to report to the function. The reasoning was simple. The function was acting as the public relations representative of the University to internal audiences. The registrar was the function that all employees would come in contact with as they started registering for training and it was vital that registrars convey the right image. They were the employees' first perception of the University and employees would judge the University by their experience with the registrars.
The case for building a team worked and a team was put in place to develop the overall strategy for the marketing of the University. Sophisticated web-based career development tools were developed. Prior to launch, employees were given weekly University updates through both intranet communications and through infomercials on the Unisys television network. As launch approached, special management communications were developed and briefing sessions staged. A live hour-long television program launched the University internally but that was just the start. For all of the sophisticated communications options available, none could replace going on the road with a grassroots campaign to explain the University to employees face to face. And so a worldwide tour ensued.
Did it work? The University communication team completely aligned the University branding with the corporate branding. And that played well "on the street" with media placements secured in The Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, Information Week, Business Week, and others. The University Intranet was the second highest rated in company. Training use was at record levels with 22,000 employees (of 34,000) receiving some type of training by end of year, 1999. And the marketing team was selected to present at the prestigious Corporate University conference that year.
Crisis
Communication: How you act when times are good can assist you when times
are tough.
Opportunity: Help a former for-profit hospital become a good community
citizen while softening negative PR of the closing of its popular sister
hospital six miles south.
Process: A multi-year process of community
involvement and media cultivation; fair, honest and timely communication
of issues; a strategic approach to both marketing and PR for both
institutions.
Result: Hospital closing announcement well coordinated;
occupied no more than one day in media; negative publicity minimized. Contributed to a strong transition of services with
ninety-five percent of the sister hospital ED volume coming to other
facility.
The "AHA" Moment: The for-profit hospital treated
the community as such. It was invisible in terms of civic involvement. The
administrators were unknown. Knowing what healthcare trends were spelling
out, it was crucial to then get involved in the communities served to
build relationships and tipping point for choosing services and lessening
the impact of negative events. It came down to a for profit versus a not
for profit mentality in many respects.
The Story: Rancocas Hospital and Zurbrugg Hospital were sister hospitals, six miles apart in Burlington County, New Jersey. Each offered duplicative services. Zurbrugg had been in the community for nearly eighty years but was financially suffering. Rancocas had been in the community for just thirty years, many of those as a for profit entity that had little public visibility until Zurbrugg, in a David and Goliath move, took over the larger hospital in the 1980s. Each would become members of one of the first cross-state health systems, Graduate Health System, based in Philadelphia. Rancocas was the best financially performing hospital in the system.
A two-fold scenario was being developed that would set the agenda of the marketing function for the next seven years. It was critical that the Rancocas facility be actively marketed and become actively involved in the community. For the fate of the Zurbrugg facility was starting to become inevitable and would lead to its closure. And there was the second part of the scenario - actively engage community leaders closest to Zurbrugg to educate them about healthcare in the 1990s and slowly prepare them for what would happen. For when Zurbrugg closed, it was crucial that the patients come to Rancocas and not competing hospitals and health systems. So the taste that community leaders had in their mouths for Rancocas and the Graduate Health System would be key in defining what would happen when all was said and done.
And so the odyssey began. First, the Rancocas story. In short, everything was done to make Rancocas a vital member of the community and to involve employees and management in the community so that real faces and human beings could be identified with the facility. It was multi-faceted. We strengthened ties to the community through partnering and participation in events. We developed an award-winning
that the community rallied around. The local daily newspaper and cable company became prime sponsors. And we participated in their events and took active roles in the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Chambers of Commerce and other associations. Hospital leaders participated widely in community boards and rotaries. We completed a name change and launched a marketing and media campaign for the Rancocas facility. We instituted a program
involving and rewarding employees for identifying media stories. And we partnered with the daily newspaper to host a monthly medical hotline column and call-in program, developing key relationships with the editors and publisher of the paper. We took active roles in lobbying on behalf of healthcare issues and being a voice in the community. And the numbers were showing success both in terms of patient volume and in marketing surveys gauging name recognition and likelihood of use.
Many of the audiences we encountered for Rancocas - ambulance squads, physicians, volunteers, employees, politicians, media - were the same audiences that we would speak to about Zurbrugg. So, we were slowly building up the perception and good will toward Rancocas among key constituents that would be needed when Zurbrugg closed.
And it is to those audiences that we reached out midway through those seven years. We actively engaged them in town hall meetings and private meetings to slowly educate them about healthcare finances, the situations of the two hospitals and why it was impossible to continue duplicative services six miles apart. When the time came, they understood. And they worked with us to close the Zurbrugg facility in two stages. The emergency department was kept open after the first stage until the community was satisfied that the six mile trip to Rancocas and the bypassing of Zurbrugg by emergency squads would not be harmful to patient health and safety. Then, the facility completely closed in 1996.
The announcement was well coordinated and expected. It occupied no more than one day in the local daily newspaper and negative publicity was minimized. It helped contribute to a strong transition of services to Rancocas. And that culminated when Rancocas opened a new emergency department during this period. Every emergency squad in the County participated in a parade leading to the grand opening. Ninety-five percent of the Zurbrugg emergency department and inpatient volume came to Rancocas after that.
So while it is crucial to have a crisis plan in place for the inevitable, how you act as a good corporate citizen over time can do wonders to soften the blow of any crisis you face along the way. It's a work in progress everyday. And, it is crucial that marketing have a front row seat at the executive table in order to accomplish a strategic agenda such as the one described. See related articles in the
Press Room.
