This week I attended one of my twice-yearly meetings with the Alliance of Marketing Communications Agencies. You can check out our new portal Web site at www.amcagroup.com.  This meeting was held in Phoenix, so I went from snowy weather in Maine to 90 degree heat in the Arizona desert. I love the diversity!

One of the agencies in our group walked us through a “Brand Re-launch” they just did for a communiity hospital. I was really interested in their process because it is similar to our “Marshall Plan” process that we use for cliens who need to define their brand and map out a comprehensive marketing communications strategy.

The process they used for their Brand Re-launch included the following steps:

• Analysis of Current Situation
• Positioning (strengths, expertise, differentiators, audiences)
• Brand Positioning Framework (origin, expertise, points of difference, target audience and personality which all resulted in a branding statement)
• The origin in the framework above included embracing the brand’s core strngths to establish a strong market presence
• Areas of expertise included nine descriptors that were the core competencies of the hospital
• The points of difference includced their strategic partnership, their focus on their customers, their multiple  specialties and their focus on the community
• Their targeted audiences included the influential decision makers in ther community
• Ther brand personality included seven descriptive attributes that make them unique and different
• They they established their goals of their Strategic Marketing Paln which included identifying their unique brad and creating specific marketing plans for each of their servce lines
• They then defined further what the words in their brand statement meant, which became the basis of their branding statement and tagline.
• They the recommended a tagline that arose organically from their brand attributes. This becomes an indisputable method of defning a tagline that resonates with targeted audiences
• The plan went on to established Goals and Strateges for marketing the hospital
• A media plan was defined that included integrated communications via print, television, radio, outdor adertising, interactive, direct mail and internal signage and materials
• The agency then presented samples of the print and broadcast creative to establish the “look and feel” for the hospital.

The beauty of this process was in its simplicity and its logic. Going through the process proves that this agency had a strategic foundation on which they built the marketing communications campaign.

It was so fabulous to be able to walk through this process with another agency because it reinforced why we go through the Marshall Plan process with our clients, and why this process is truly the best way to establish and communicate a strong brand in the marketplace.

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