Inova Children’s Hospital a mock case study for cultural strategy

Inova Children’s Hospitalhad been its own brand for years, but tell their customers and they

would be surprised– for them, the hospital was just another branch of Inova Health Center, the large web

of hospitals in the Northern Virginia area.

To make matters worse, parents viewed the brand

as a solution for special cases only.

The hospital built its reputation around specialties like its

neonatal intensive care unit and, as result, fewer parents visited Inova for reasons they considered

mundane.

To Inova, this was a greater challenge than competing with nearby

hospitals.

Its largest competitor, Children’s National

Medical Center in Washington, DC, had set its sights on the national

stage.

Inova’s audience remained mostly local.

The key problem, then, was perception.

Inova wanted to be seen as a vital

resource in the Fairfax community,

the “pediatrician around the corner”

regardless of the case’s severity.

In short, it needed a new brand image.

Slides 10 – 19 explore the Inova Children’s Hospital customer and the ways they perceive their own

community

Slides 20– 28 cover the sorts of tensions that have entered the

modern household, creating new challenges for parents.

Slides 29 – 39 show how the dominant discourse of hospital advertising fails

to address these tensions, instead resorting to cheap escapism.

Slides 40 – 45 pinpoint a growing trend of New Urbanism, which

potentially makes Inova’s audience more receptive toward cultural

innovation

Slides 46 –56 demonstrate how we can harness that trend to break free

from the category discourse and paint Inova Children’s Hospital as

the thread that ties the Fairfax community together.

Finally, slides 57 – 65 show the ways other brands have used advertising

as a way to inspire community imagination

Let’s get started.

On the surface, Fairfax seems like an

odd place to call a “community”

A suburb to Washington DC,

Fairfax is a sprawling web of homes, strip

malls, and small office buildings.

It hosts regular events like the

Chocolate Lovers Festival but, for the

most part, lacks a vibrant community

center and mass narratives that

inspire a “public imagination”

Yet, to understand the Inova Children’s customer is not to dwell on what Fairfax lacks–

but to explore what it offers.

First, the suburbs have always been

more about intimate private space than a

vibrant public center.

As suburban living blossomed in the

decades that followed World War II,

advertisements for consumer goods

indirectly promoted the suburbs as well,

equating them with prosperous family life.

Moreover, the suburbs are an

answer to the “chaos” of the city.

They bring as close to reality as possible

the fantasy of the woodland cottage with promises of

comfort, stability, and personal space.

Yearnings for suburban life also complement the direction that social ties have taken since 1985

A 2006 study published in the American Sociological

Review* discovered a significant shedding of

personal connections between 1985 and 2004, mostly of friendships not

connected directly to family.

* Written by M McPherson, L Smith-Lovin, and M Brashears

In their place is a smaller but more intimate network

that revolves around the closest

family members.

What does all this mean?

The people who move to places like

Fairfax are not looking for a vibrant

public sphere.

Their priority is stability and

intimacy, the chance to nurture their new

families.

Yet, even if Fairfax residents see the city as

part of a search for stable living, moving to

Fairfax hardly signals the end.

The middle class suburban household has

become a perilous negotiation between

private life and public pressures

First, the public discussion over mental

health issues like bipolar disorder,

ADHD, and autism

The “science of childcare” is in

constant flux, presenting parents

with relentlessly shifting issues of the

day.

Second, as entertainment

becomes a private affair, and leisure time means time alone, the family

grows increasingly isolated from one

another.

Parents are left to worry what sort of

digital lives their children lead.

Third, middle class families are time-

strapped. More than likely, they

have enlisted their kids in a full

schedule’s worth of sports and

extracurriculars in an effort to

“cultivate life skills.”

Most importantly, today’s work

culture devalues childcare.

Even though households are

largely dual-income, the

corporate world is still less than

hospitable toward parental needs

Since the 70s, American workers have taken fewer

vacations and have worked more hours.

Add to the mix the latest economic

downturn, and you have an entire

workforce unable to dedicate more time to

domestic life due to workload or even fear

of losing their job.

Parents therefore need resources to help them

face these growing complexities.

Yet, the category climate fails to address the

tensions of everyday life.

Instead, the hospital ads I studied almost

universally used tones of rapturous

transcendence.

Through their visual and spoken language,

they cast themselves as a larger-than-life

presence. They deliver miracles. They restore

childhood.

In the world of the ads, mundane concerns

come second to fantastical visions.

Johns Hopkins Children’s Center

Philadelphia Children’s Hospital

Hurley Medical Center

Click on the thumbnails to watch each ad. Notice how the lighting, camera

angles, soundtrack, and even narration convey grandiosity and drama

Even Children’s National Medical

Center has adopted a brand message

based on transcending the

everyday.

These ads’ copy may be tiny, but the visual

language is clear-- monuments rise toward the sky,

dwarfing the children below them.

Combined with the tagline “the nation’s

children deserve nothing less,” the ads

invoke narratives of nationalism that appeal to a force greater than the

patients themselves.

In some ways, this tone of transcendence

does address commonplace

anxieties by offering an escape from them.

But when a bulk of the category deals

with the same images of transcendence,

hospital brands depart from reality, existing in a fantasy

land of their own.

Luckily, an emerging trend

has given us the ammunition both

to address familial tensions

and to differentiate

Inova from the category

discourse.

Within the last decade,

environmental consciousness has

become a mainstream

phenomenon.

It is no longer a “tree hugger thing”

to imagine how individual actions might impact the world at large.

Meanwhile,the green

movement has zeroed in on the

suburbs themselves.

A growing body of literature

questions the sustainability of

suburban living.

This movement, dubbed New Urbanism, is a

constant presence for Inova customers.

Tysons Corner, a town in Fairfax County, was

previously an exemplar for sprawling auto-centric living. Now it is slowly

being transformed into a pedestrian-friendly mixed

use community.

With local papers regularly documenting

Tysons’ transformation, it is

not a stretch to imagine that the issue

is on many Fairfax residents’ minds,

whether they support it or not.

Nor is it a stretch to imagine a consumer

base who, inspired by the Green Movement

and the Tysons Corner transformation, are

thinking and talking about the organization

of communities

Therefore, Inova Children’s Hospital

faces a unique opportunity:

A consumer base poised to think of

themselves as part of a community rather

than a cluster of disassociated households.

Inova can harness this opportunity by becoming the catalyst, the spark needed to

rally its customers around the possibility of a “better Fairfax.”

Our communications strategy, then, will revolve around the idea of mobilizing

for a better community

We will paint Fairfax as a vibrant public space and Inova as

the glue that binds it together.

This brand image works toward Inova’s objectives

in three ways

First, by serving as the catalyst that inspires

community awareness, Inova creates awareness for itself.

It effectually brands a movement.

Second, this strategy offers opportunities for branded

social content.

The “community mobilizer” identity can easily

translate toward social media platforms, framing

the hospital as a consistent resource rather than a last

resort for special cases.

For example, Fairfax has a popular online

community called Fairfax Underground

It needs a drastic overhaul.

It brings plenty of Fairfax residents together

virtually, but the topics are poorly organized and

the comments are often crude.

This presents Inova with the opportunity to

reshape Fairfax’s social media presence around

its brand.

Branded social content also allows Inova to face parental tensions head

on.

Parents would have the chance to relay their concerns to their peers

and to Inova’s pediatricians, all through an integrated platform.

Third, this branding strategy allows Inova

to integrate itself seamlessly into its

audience’s everyday lives.

The Tysons example shows the ways

Fairfax residents already consume

information on community reform.

If Inova can become a provider of this

sort of information, it can boost its brand without depending

exclusively on intrusive media.

Finally, how will this “community

mobilizer” brand strategy translate

toward actual advertising?

Since we clearly cannot change the

structure of the community itself, the

key is to inspire Inova’s audience to

think of themselves as part of a greater

whole.

Here are some examples of the ways

other brands have done this:

Levis’ “Go Forth” campaign features a

rag tag aesthetic that avoids the corny

grandeur of the Children’s National

Campaign despite featuring similar

themes of nationalism.

Instead, Levis heightens the

feelings of urgency and reform

Furthermore, in a television campaign,

Munroe Regional Medical Center stirs up

its own feelings of community

Click on each thumbnail to view the ad

The television spots fall victim to the rapturous

transcendence trap, but they stand out for their

use of the heart as a unifying visual metaphor.

The ads ask their viewers to imagine a sort

community cohesion, even if it does not exist in

their everyday lives.

The last and potentially most potent example is

the slogan “Keep Austin Weird.”

It emerged in the early 2000s as a response to

what Austinites described as rapid commercial growth and cultural

homogenization.

Then it became a merchandising

phenomenon

The slogan gave residents a way to consolidate into

a single phrase all the emotions they felt toward

the city.

It reframed the way Austin residents thought

and talked about the community around them.

Ultimately, Inova’s desire to integrate itself within the Fairfax community is

tricky, as its audience needs a bit of coaxing

just to think of themselves as part of

one.

Yet, with the right brand message, Inova

Children’s Hospital can do more than raise

awareness for itself.

Sometimes advertising has the power to change

culture for the better, and Inova could very well be

that brand.

ThanksSteve Gottschling