MHA's Executive Briefing

Brand Loyalty from the Inside Out

Health care is finally taking a page from the book of other consumer-oriented industries and stressing brand loyalty. This means that patients must come first ... right? I think the answer is no. Building brand loyalty begins with cultivating your own employees. You cannot build patient loyalty unless your own people have developed the passion and commitment you'd like to see in consumers. A leader's investment in the company's most valuable asset - its people - pays off in bottom-line returns.

Read the full article from H&HN Online.

Brand investment traps

Integrated brand management starts by defining which elements of the brand create differentiation and influence customer behavior. Start with customer analysis and in-market experimentation that shows how existing and prospective customers make choices in the marketplace. That analysis can be augmented with brand image and customer experience data, which captures how customers perceive the brand at each touchpoint. Once collected, a list of 50 to 100 image and experience dimensions can be winnowed to a subset of six to 10 of the brand's equity elements-attributes that shift the demand curve to the advantage of the brand owner. Each equity element can have a positive or negative value, depending on whether it makes an individual customer more or less likely to buy. For example, for Sony, innovation has a positive value to the extent that customers associate it with "the best and latest products"; it has a negative value if customers think of "products that are complex and hard to use."

Read the full article in CMO magazine. (via SHSMD's e-Connect)

Don't Shout, Listen

At Procter & Gamble, branding is almost everything. And in the age of the Web, almost everything is up for grabs. Here's how P& G has turned the Internet into a device for listening to customers -- and for experimenting with its brands.

7 elements of brand valuation

The Interbrand model of brand strength is a useful framework to consider the performance of your own brand. Consider these seven points and you should get a better sense of the strength of your own brand, as well as some ideas on how to move forward.

Six Strategies for Crafting 'Ethical' Hospital Advertising

A recent article in the Archives of Internal Medicine raises questions about the ethics of hospital advertising. The study of 17 university medical centers reveals that certain direct-to-consumer advertising conceals risks and plays on fear, vanity or other emotions to attract patients. Even further, it suggests that some ads create a sense of need in otherwise healthy patients. Hospitals have watched from the sidelines as drug companies' advertising practices have taken the heat. Educated consumers are now setting their sights on holding hospitals accountable.

Remember that the messages sent to the public through advertising reflect on the entire health care organization. It is not just the responsibility of the marketing department to pay attention to these issues. The buck stops at top leadership.

For the full story from HealthLeaders.com, click here.

The Tricky Business of Nonprofit Brands

Coca-Cola, move over. Many of the world's best-known brands belong to nonprofits, but the brand management issues these organizations face can be quite different. A conversation with professor John A. Quelch and collaborator Nathalie Laidler-Kylander. For the full story from Working Knowledge, click here.