How We Rebranded a Healthcare Business
Our latest project focused on rebranding PERC — an optometry group purchasing organization (GPO) owned by EssilorLuxottica (OTC: ESLOY).
PERC was founded by Drs. David Golden and Howard Stein with the idea that they could dramatically reduce their cost of goods by joining forces with independent optometrists to better compete against big box retailers like Costco, Lens Crafters and Target. Still run by its original founding doctors, PERC grew organically over eight years, and in 2018 they were the nation’s largest alliance of eye doctors with over 5,000 practices, 7,000 doctors and 70 vendor partners.
Despite this amazing growth, PERC’s business started showing signs of trouble. Competitors sprang up and took market share. Their customer experience, branding and communications needed serious attention.
PERC’s challenge to us: Optometrists have plenty of choices when it comes to GPOs, how do we stand out in a crowded field?
We started this project like most of our work: We got out of the office and started talking to people. We interviewed dozens of stakeholders, including optometrists, their staffs, and PERC vendor partners like Alcon, Essilor, and Johnson & Johnson. There are so many insights that come from speaking to people and asking questions. It’s amazing how much listening informs the branding process. Two of the most important insights we uncovered were 1) While PERC was first to market, now with many options available in market, its members had a hard time finding value in the organization, and 2) PERC’s service offering was not differentiated from its competitors.
We then went back to basics to re-articulate the PERC mission statement. A brand is like a house: you have to start with the foundation before building the kitchen and putting the roof on. The mission statement supports the entire business.
PERC’s mission previously had been Empowering the independent. While this was directionally correct, it was not differentiated from other GPOs in the optometry space; it did not convey what was unique or special about PERC. Creating a meaningful and succinct mission statement takes time. The process requires deep thinking and some research.
We determined that PERC’s success would be contingent on their ability to regain the trust of their members and communicate the value of the organization. Also, we felt PERC could do more to nurture community and build deeper relationships with its members.
After a couple months of work, and working collaboratively with the PERC leadership team, we arrived at their new mission statement:
Building a better community for our practices and patients
The word community was the linchpin. This is what PERC is all about. We used this word in the broadest sense; it refers to not only doctors but their patients, their staff, vendor partners, and member office employees. We needed to bring value to all of these groups and make their professional journey more prosperous and more rewarding.
Now it was time to start creating assets that would live under this umbrella. A thoughtful mission statement serves as a North star and moral compass for many decisions. For instance, when designing a logo or creating content, we can always refer back to the mission and make sure everything is aligned, and that we are speaking in one voice. We put together a team that included designer Ben White and strategist and copywriter Phat Chiem. The best marketing work comes from a collaboration with talented experts.
The first step was to refresh the brand identity. We created a bolder yet friendlier version of the PERC word mark. We aimed for simplicity, and the all-lowercase type communicates accessibility.
OLD LOGO:
NEW LOGO:
We decided to remove “+IVA” from the mark. IVA stands for Infinity Vision Alliance, a separate GPO that merged with PERC a few years ago. The doctors, patients, and practices within IVA are an important part of the PERC community. But we decided that a singular identity better supported our mission statement. We’ve built one community and not two. Our identity should reflect this.
OLD WEBSITE:
NEW MOCK UP WEBSITE:
OLD SIGNAGE:
NEW SIGNAGE:
STATIONERY:
STYLE GUIDE:
EMAIL TEMPLATES:
After that, we rebuilt the email templates, the event signage, the collateral, and the homepage of the website. Every place the PERC name was seen had to be rebuilt. And it wasn’t just about the logo; our work was a lot about rethinking how we communicated. Did an email, or a company overview collateral piece, convey the desired message? Were all of these materials organized and in sync with each other? We had to look at all of this. And branding is also about experiences. We thought about how to add value to PERC’s events. For instance, we decided to bring a portrait photographer to some events and give free headshots to doctors and staff in attendance.
And getting the data organized was also critical. We shifted PERC to Salesforce and create a detailed database segmentation and actionable KPIs. Different email campaigns and sales initiatives needed to be laser targeted to the right audiences. Once we got the database going, we saw immediate increases in email metrics. Open rates doubled, and click through rates went up by 10x.
A brand is the sum total of all its touch points. It’s much more than a logo or some visual assets. The whole system has to work together, and that’s what we tried to do here. It will take time to understand how successful our work is, because regaining trust takes months and even years. But early results have been encouraging, and member engagement has gone up significantly. We definitely have the beginnings of building a better community for our practices and patients.
