What you thought was your health care brand now belongs to someone else.
The days of using exquisitely produced TV commercials and elaborate websites to define a health care brand are over. For better or worse, your brand is no longer what you say it is. It's what people say it is. What people say about your brand is determined by their experiences with it.
Bad experience, bad brand. Good experience, good brand. Creating experiences that change how people think, act, feel and talk about brands is the work of the modern agency.
This is what RAPP does for a range of health care brands.
Experiences can be virtually anything. Yes, a TV commercial or a website. But they can also be the way you answer your phone, how you process a claim or your program that redefines retirement for the baby boomers. Woven together, well-designed experiences form a well-articulated brand that's relevant to consumers, health care professionals and the opinion leaders inside the Beltway.
The quality and originality of these experiences start with a deep understanding of your target. Every agency will tell you that. But no agency has RAPP's 45-year history of studying human behavior and the influences of culture on that behavior.
We've found that there are three major factors defining the health care world today.
First, our culture is pushing the health care system toward prevention, not just treatment. Caring, not just curing. Whatever the segment, a brand that participates in this cultural shift will prosper, even in the current overheated climate of distrust and fear.
Second, social media has changed how people learn about conditions and share insights on prevention, treatment and related topics. Brands that understand this social dynamic are able to offer experiences that help people find and share information in new and exciting ways. These are the brands that lead the category.
Third, the Internet has permanently changed the doctor-patient relationship. Greater health literacy has revealed that doctors are not gods. And very different kinds of conversations are going on in doctors' offices these days. The brands that offer credible and useful educational experiences are the brands that are most trusted by doctors and patients alike.
The raging health care debate has put a target on the chest of many health care brands. But our philosophy of understanding where brands live now is helping our clients from pharmaceuticals and biosciences to medical devices and consumer health defy the fate that pundits predict for all health care brands.