Turning a House of Brands into a Branded House
by Cheryl Haas
On March 18, 2013 at precisely 11 a.m., employees of Greenville Hospital System University Medical Center unveiled their organization’s new name and logo. In a special ceremony, a group of employees – accompanied by a dramatic drum roll – revealed a 40-by-10-foot logo and a new visual identity, and the largest hospital organization in upstate South Carolina officially became known as Greenville Health System. Across the medical center’s then five campuses, employees carried 30-by-30-inch cards bearing the old logo that, with a flip, demonstrated the transition to the new one. The new identity was the culmination of a two-year effort in which Greenville Health System evolved from a “house of brands to a branded house,” says the organization’s director of marketing services, Sally Foister.
“We are a highly integrated health care delivery system,” Foister says, “but visually we weren’t looking that way at all. We were a ‘house of brands’ with 30 to 40 different logos, and consumers were confused about who was affiliated with whom. The brand equity in our system was fragmented.”