How To Build a Health Care Brand Post-Launch: The Next Phase of Promotion

Stacy Beers, Director of Marketing at University of Florida Health

“When a new brand takes hold as intended, one tough job is over—but another has already begun,” note Stacy Beers and Claire Hovis. “How soon is too soon to change gears from brand establishment to a new phase of promotion? Will new messages come across as mixed messages and muddy the clear impression you’ve worked so hard to make?”

Beers, the Director of Marketing at University of Florida Health, and Hovis, a Vice President, Account Director at strategic marketing communications agency Capstrat, explain how one major health system found the right balance with a constructive twist on its launch theme:

“Before 2013, health system UF Health was known as UF&Shands. That ampersand joined the six health-related colleges, research centers, and institutes of the University of Florida Health Science Center with the private, not-for-profit Shands family of teaching hospitals where UF physicians practice.

“The old brand wasn’t broken, but it wasn’t set up to handle the challenges that were coming: more competition, changing expectations from patients, increased consolidation, and internal division among the system’s own employees. UF&Shands needed to redefine and build its brand for long-term success and market differentiation. In looking forward, the health system collaborated with Capstrat to help shape a new strategy.

Claire Hovis, Account Director at Capstrat

“Months of qualitative and quantitative research revealed that patients didn’t understand the connection between UF and Shands. More important, they didn’t understand why the relationship between the system’s two halves should mean anything to them,” state Beers and Hovis.

In our new article, Beers and Hovis explain how they made UF Health’s key differentiator—bench-to-bedside research advances—tangible in consumers’ minds: “Alike” but Different: Building a Brand in the Wake of Its Successful Launch.

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President