Where Is The Brand?

The healthcare industry is about to embark on a brand-building mission, feels Vivek Shukla

David Ogilvy, the father of modern advertising stated, "Any damn fool can put up a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand."

The healthcare industry is about to embark on a brand-building mission. The competition is fierce, the customers are more informed, the market shares are being aggressively sought and new markets are being constantly searched.

The topic of brand building, for the most part, was not being looked into by hospital owners and promoters. Blame it on arrogance, ignorance or laziness; but brand building is about to arrive in a big way. Too bad if some people are too arrogant, oblivious or lazy.

For most of us, brand means the name by which a company's product or service is sold. If you look closely, it is not just the name, it is also the associations which accompany the name of a particular product/service. For example, Apollo Hospitals is not just a mere name; there are a lot of things that automatically that come to mind as soon as we hear the name Apollo.

It is really intriguing to know that every brand has a personality, character, tone of voice, its own style etc. I still remember my first lecture on brand management in business school. When the professor asked us, "What animal comes to mind when you think of a Maruti 800 car?" We all thought she might just have returned from a zoo or a circus and she is not over it as yet. After we established that Maruti 800 is a 'clever and quick fox', she wanted to know what kind of a person a Tata truck would be, if it were a human being. Brand management became more intriguing after we created a human personality of a tall, strong, rural man with a moustache for a Tata truck.

The purpose of citing these examples is for healthcare promoters and marketers to know that every brand has a personality. The useful thing to know would be that the brand image will get created whether or not you consciously create it. People will have an opinion about your hospital, whether you create it or not. A smart businessman creates his own image rather than wait for it to be formed automatically. Moreover, with advent of communication systems and enhanced education levels, the reputation travels at enormous speed.

A few basic ways to create and manage your brand equity in this crowded marketplace are as follows:

Create Some Brand Associations

Every brand has some associations to it. MacDonalds is known for kids, fun, Mac burger, cleanliness and efficiency. These are the associations with MacDonalds. Similarly, Deccan Airlines is cheap, no-frills airline. Your hospital can be associated with one or more of the following attributes like latest technologies, friendly attitude, honesty, promptness, focus on one super speciality, heritage and culture of service.

Once you are clear about the associations you need to create about your brand, you will need to consider the ways in which these associations will be manifested. For instance, if you are considering to be recognised by your rich heritage in serving the humanity for the last 20 years, here is what you can do to build a brand around that:

• You can have a brief history of the institution, its founders, its contribution to medical care be printed and given along with the OPD card.
• A similar write up can be a part of your website.
• Your hospital building and ambience must reflect its rich culture of service. You can have hand-made portraits, old pictures, old written testimonials framed and hung on the walls.
• The hospital can organise some events for general public. The events can focus on preserving local culture and heritage. It must have some cultural songs and dances.
• You can make sure that you talk about the heritage in all press releases and communications to the outer world.

Managing Contact Points

To create a brand identity, you will need to get to all your target customers and introduce yourself as the brand that you are. In a service industry scenario, important brand ambassadors are the people who come in contact with customers daily. In other words, your staff, doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and cleaners must all act in accordance to the brand identity. For instance, the nursing staff of the 'pioneer' hospital has to master modern communication skills and they cannot afford to wear the common old-fashioned uniforms. Doctors have to communicate with patients with an air of pride in the fact that they are a part of a pioneer team.

Other contact points where the customers come to experience the brand also need to be identified and managed. A hospital that projects itself as a latest technology provider cannot afford to have a pre-historic looking ambulance.

Physical appearance of the building, both exterior and interior, needs to be thought of. Brochures, website, letterheads, visiting cards, patient files and other documents have to be carefully designed. It will work to have a uniform basic design with uniform colour schemes for everything related to the hospital.

Traditionally, red is the colour of Coca Cola and blue is the colour of Pepsi. If you observe closely, it is the same shade of red and blue in all their contact points with the customers. I have even heard that a Pepsi employee coming to office in a red shirt will be frowned upon by his colleagues.

Brand Loyalty

It is a well-known fact that brand loyalty is very important for any business. In case of hospitals, it is all the more important. The reason for brand loyalty being of prime importance is that hospitals are at a 'high-risk' purchase decision for the customers. Any customer who will buy your hospital's services for the first time is likely to ask about it to a few of his friends. Won't you ask your friends and won't you do some research work before buying a car or any other high-involvement purchase? Often, what people say about your hospital to its prospective clients is pivotal in whether they end up with you or not.

Please note that brand loyalty in case of hospitals does not mean repeat purchase. Once a surgery is done on someone, he may not have another surgery done to him in his lifetime. Brand loyalty in our industry means that the patient who got his treatment done with you acts as your die-hard fan and is the most vocal spokesperson of your brand in his community.

Good news with 'high involvement' services is that the brand loyalty for them is very strong. Seldom will a person switch over to another dentist or gynaecologist without sufficient reason. So, if you can have a person convinced about your brand strength he is there to stay. You may even create some tools to measure the brand loyalty of your customers.

Moreover, my standard suggestion to all my client hospitals has been to create and implement powerful Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programmes. The programme will not only ensure brand loyalty, it will also be instrumental in communicating your brand attributes to the outer world.

Lastly, as they say — Rome was not built in a day. Brands are built and managed over years and decades. It is affordable to create and manage a brand, even though it may seem otherwise. But it takes time to reap the harvest of a brand-building exercise.

Day after day, month after month and year after year you will need to put in efforts to create a brand. Thriving brands like Coke and Lifebuoy are more than a century old and are still going very strong. It is worth every minute and penny you invest in brand building and management, especially if you are looking at a long-term competitive advantage for your hospital.

The writer is Healthcare Marketing Consultant, based at Dharamshala.
E-mail: vivekshukla2002@hotmail.com