Leveraging Brand Activation to Address the "Elephants in the Room"

Which is a stronger position in the market: a women's health program with a $500,000 digital mammography machine but a 10 day turnaround time on results; or, a competitor with an $125,000 conventional film machine but the ability to generate mammography results on a same day basis?

It depends, of course, on who you ask. A clinician may say the stronger program is the one with greater accuracy and ability to manipulate digital images, resulting in fewer call-backs and enhanced ability to diagnose with fewer false positives.

A patient may respond that the uncertainty of waiting 10 days for results is a far worse outcome than the risk of a call-back for a second set of images.

The best answer, of course, might be the market-leading technology and the ability to deliver results on a same-day basis. Even beyond that there is the ideal of being able to channel abnormal mammograms into same-day ultra-sound or even biopsies for those who choose that option for purposes of peace of mind.

Today, a client of ours was wrestling with that question as it tries to activate its brand. As my colleague Carla Bryant helped facilitate that discussion, she fostered a dynamic that forced the team to see the brand through the eyes of the customer and to candidly confront attitudes, behaviors and processes that result in a less than ideal patient experience.

It was an encouraging process! The result was the client work team:

• prioritizing for action some "game-changer" strategies;
• building an unvarnished assessment of barriers to the desired position;
• proposing to focus operational resources on meaningfully different features and performance that deliver the brand benefit to the customer.

With Carla's facilitation the team leveraged its discussion of brand activation to address long-standing "elephants in the room". In an time when our agendas are crowded with legacy issues and unspoken challenges, it is refreshing to have a means to clear the room and feel real progress.