When a well-known Catholic hospital system changes its name, the community automatically assumes that it's been bought out, some services may be eliminated, some employees may be fired and its religious heritage will be lost. Although none of these scenarios applied to the 90-plus, primarily Catholic-owned facilities in South Dakota that adopted a new umbrella name, Avera Health, the branding effort had to be done sensitively and strategically.
This branding campaign, launched September 1998, formally announced the partnership of various hospital, clinics and nursing homes owned by a diverse group of organizations, including two Catholic orders (the Benedictine Sisters and the Presentation Sisters).
To develop a strong brand identity for Avera, the two Catholic orders made the biggest sacrifice of the partnering facilities - dropping their names from 20 of the largest hospitals and clinics in the Great Plains region. This gutsy but difficult decision was necessary to communicate to the community the broad range of services Avera offers regionally, says Kathy McGreevy, Avera's director of communications.
The Avera name, which means "to be well," in Latin is used by partnering facilities in two ways, the first more prominent than the second:
- the Benedictine or Presentation-owned facilities use the brand name before the hospital's, i.e. Avera Sacred Heart Hospital; and
- the hospitals not owned by the orders use the brand name after the facility name, i.e. Community Memorial Hospital Avera Health.
Although partnering facilities were not required to add the Avera name, most saw value in the brand affiliation, with benefits ranging from strengthened rural care to group purchasing administrative services. So far, more than 90 percent of the facilities have adopted the name.
Naming Strategy
To implement the branding campaign, Avera recruited Wixted, Pope, Nora & Associates (WPN), a strategic communications firm in West Des Moines, Iowa, in the fall of 1997. The agency's communications initiatives first targeted the 800 employees in the Avera system then focused on external efforts to get community support.
Employees were told of the name change in March, allowing them six months to get comfortable with the new identity before a formal announcement to outside communities in September. During this time, WPN trained hospital teams on how to address employee concerns at each facility.
Employee-based messages focused on the fact that hospital ownership remained unchanged, religious heritage remained intact, employee benefits would not be altered and highlighted the wide-ranging advantages of a single "branded" identity.
Dual Branding
The logistics of developing a new brand identity among more than 90 facilities was a major undertaking, requiring two levels of graphical identity. The agency that handled the logos, Denver-based Monacle & Associates, developed a prominent Avera logo for the Catholic-owned hospitals to precede the hospital's name. The logo features the Avera name on top of the hospital name in big bold lettering, accompanied by a cross to convey a strong united religious front.
For the other facilities, the Avera logo is downplayed - it appears after the hospital name in smaller lettering to communicate a more subtle affiliation.
The marketing rationale for this dual branding strategy was to indicate the varying levels of partnership participation, says McGreevy. The boards of the sister-owned hospitals had agreed to certain quality guidelines that the non-sister-owned facilities weren't required to adopt. But in order to use the Avera name, the facilities did have to agree to these guidelines that include JCAHO (Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) accreditation, system benchmarking initiatives and patient satisfaction surveys.
Going Public
The external campaign, launched in September, focused on many of the same messages as the internal communications effort. It was important to make the community aware that the hospitals had not been sold or that their faith approach to healthcare would be altered, says Allison Pope, a WPN partner.
To convey these messages, newspapers throughout the region were told before broadcast news organizations about the new Avera name to ensure accurate newspaper coverage. Newspaper reporters interviewed hospital CEOs, Presentation and Benedictine sisters who sit on the Avera board and other hospital administrators who explained the benefits of a unified healthcare identity.
Rather than offending broadcast reporters, the approach succeeded because TV reporters were more interested in capturing the visual of the new hospital signage rather than the news of the name change, says Pope.
These visuals included a giant crane hoisting the Avera logo to the top of a the Avera Queen of Peace Hospital and a sister admiring the new Avera Sacred Heart Hospital sign. In addition, several hospitals sponsored a "Walk To Be Well" demonstration that generated extensive TV and print coverage.
(Avera, Kathy McGreevy, 605/322-7309; WPN, Allison Pope, 515/226-0818)