Great Rebrands Listen to Many Voices
Think back to elementary school. You got to pick your own desk the first day, and you and your best friend made certain to be next to each other. Now, think back to that Monday morning two months later that you got to the classroom and discovered the teacher, in some devious, twisted social experiment, had changed the seating chart. Gone was perfection and all you’d become accustomed to, replaced by chaos and your desk now an arm’s length from the dreadful, obnoxious (insert name here). Who asked you about all this? Nobody.
People largely do not like change. But they particularly dislike change when it is sprung on them suddenly. So why do some organizations keep everyone in the dark when rebranding?
Here’s a tip from the comprehensive rebranding of Nebraska Medicine: the more voices included in the process, the merrier the outcome.
The goal was to create a new identity and unifying symbol that would represent three formerly separate healthcare entities – The Nebraska Medical Center, Bellevue Medical Center and UNMC Physicians – coming together as Nebraska Medicine. DAAKE helped develop the “Nebraska Medicine” name and created the dramatic, unifying emblem that is now used by both Nebraska Medicine and its long-standing partner, the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC).
The project took nearly 10 months and helped to unify nearly 10,000 people of Nebraska Medicine and UNMC. It worked well, we believe because so many of those people had a voice in the new identity’s design and direction.
Early on, DAAKE and the other consultants utilized their broad experience to develop and conduct interviews to determine specific opinions about The Nebraska Medical Center’s brand, its relationship with its affiliates and its relationship with UNMC.
More than 40 key stakeholder interview sessions with dozens of participants were conducted. These “deep dive” input sessions included employee focus groups, boards of directors, senior leadership and medical staff leadership. In addition, consumer focus groups were conducted with former patients of the clinical enterprise, and with people who had never been a patient.
From the hundreds of opinions obtained, distinct common threads began to emerge. Those threads were then used to stitch together the new identity. The inclusion of these opinions, collected from across all layers of the organization and from the public, served a two-fold purpose. It generated the sense that, “I am an important part of a very important change. They are listening to me.” And, by being inclusive of so many viewpoints throughout the process – even those of skeptics – it created valuable buy-in that translated into excitement preceding the grand reveal, and enthusiastic support afterward.
How important is that kind of across-the-board support in a rebranding? It’s like sitting next to your best friend – the entire school year.