Inova Children's Hospital: A Mock Case Study for Cultural Strategy
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Transcript of Inova Children's Hospital: A Mock Case Study for Cultural Strategy
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