Direct Mail

Looking upstream means I keep one eye on health news and emerging health trends. When the scientific literature on the health disaster ushered in by COVID stress, social distancing, and isolation began to merge with reports from mainstream media, I looked closely at the science. What I found, confirmed by physicians on our team, was a looming public health disaster from which it would take years to recover. Read my Creative Brief here.

Below is a direct mail postcard sent to 25,000 households. This coincided with the January 2, 2021 launch of traditional and digital media. The image on the front brings our campaign home with a famous local landmark, Platteville Wisconsin’s “Big M” (the world’s largest).

Print Ads

A place I like to start in developing creative for a multi-channel campaign as good print ads allow me to combine compelling imagery with disciplined copy before going straight to our call-to-action. Less copy is more with print ads, yet this complex and worrying topic demanded more explanation.

Radio

For Midwest audiences and healthcare messages, radio gives me a platform to tell a story. That story can easily translate to other platforms from Pandora to animated video. Have a listen below.

Keeping the Surprise Alive

Creating a range of headlines and image combinations means I can surprise audiences in new ways to make a message sticky. It also means we can either have directions from which to choose or segments of a campaign that can extend its run.

My Healthy Life Outreach Programming

Since my earliest days in healthcare, I recognized hospital’s and health system’s responsibilities on matters of public health, responsibilities few were addressing meaningful ways. With leadership, medical organizations do so much more than dispense medicine. They can be the heart of their communities, looking upstream from the four walls of their facilities and working to create change in individuals and in communities. Empowered to cultivate our brand and engage our communities, I began making at least one organization — Southwest Health — live out its promise and at least some of its potential.

Since the early 90s, I have collaborated with physicians and a wide range of other professionals both inhouse and around our communities to research community needs, create implementation plans, and to offer free health education and activities. This is a small sampling from those decades of collaborative work.

Health Screenings

I’ve developed a deep well of experience in strategies and tactics designed to change behavior. These colonoscopy promotion pieces helped me achieve hospital goals while also encouraging screenings too many people automatically avoid.

It Runs in the Family

From diabetes to heart disease to sleep disorders and a host of other conditions, I am driven to help people live better while also achieving health system goals. Through my work in assembling our Community Health Needs Assessments, I forge my commitment to making an impact on the health and longevity of our populations, and I address our community’s health head on through events, outreach, and campaigns like this.

Come Walk with Sole Mates.

Sole Mates is my free community walking club and a passion project I truly love.

Sole Mates is free of judgement, so no matter who you are, no matter where you’re from, no matter how fast you walk, and no matter how far you want to go, you are ALWAYS welcome among Sole Mates.

Adding spice to this program, our 100 Miles in 100 Days community walking challenge has engaged hundreds for many summers. We’ve had as many as 400 people walk together on our local walking path, and each season, May through much of October, it’s a great pleasure for me carve out time each Monday evening to walk with folks and get to know them.

Socialization is important for everyone’s health, and among older folks it’s a lifeline. This program inspires many to get out and enjoy life, to be active, and to get social in a real life way.

Highlights from a 4 Phased Approach

One can pursue brand and brand refresh projects in different ways. For this internal Journey to Excellence rebrand, I employed a 4-phased approach, the intricacies of which I learned from experts in the for-profit world, and I tailored its power to my not-for-profit needs:

1. Research

2. Strategy

3. Creative

4. Implementation

In phase 1, I performed in-depth interviews with leaders and a broad cross section of staff. The insights learned there, informed my leadership of a steering team in the second phase — development of our internal brand strategy. Primary deliverables in this second phase are a rewards hierarchy, a big idea, a positioning statement, a promise statement, and a tagline.

Rewards Hierarchy

BIG IDEA: The present is where we create the future.

Position Statement: For people who seek to fulfill their human potential at work and beyond, Southwest Health is the health system that unleashes the best version of each of us because here, all are empowered to create the future with our collective embrace of the present moment, opening pathways to excellence in health care and transforming all that we do.

Unique Selling Proposition: Working at Southwest Health is the clearest path to unleashing the best version of yourself. Here, you’ll personally create moments that celebrate the uniqueness of each human being while contributing in incredibly meaningful ways to the health and wellbeing of others.

How we want our audiences to think/feel: We want to create an environment that compels our employees to feel responsible for the safety of all yet supported, valued for their unique contributions. We also need them to understand and rise to the challenges of creating a HRO. And we want them to know that every moment they are present and aware, they are truly one with all their other co-workers.

Creative/messaging strategy: Our Journey communications are top down, with leaders, managers, and supervisors all placing a high value on ensuring employees are informed, trained, and engaged. We ensure understanding of key Journey concepts with highly consistent and noticeably clear and simple messages delivered in a variety of platforms and media. We behave like an HRO in unfailingly conveying our values, purpose, and promise in all our Journey related communications. And in doing so, we prove each time our commitment to our Journey to Excellence.

The Employee Experience: Our employees will come to understand presence and value being present in both their work and their personal lives. They will welcome the consciousness it brings their everyday living. And they will more easily rise to challenges while feeling the presence of others around them working as one.

Presence compels us to:

• Always be aware of and to honor the unique humanity of every person.

• Always listen first… with the intent to understand… for that is the bedrock of compassionate care.

• Always remain steadfast in working as one… for the benefit of others.

The three modalities of being and working in the present:

1. Acceptance, joy, and enthusiasm. We do everything with focus (even the mundane) when we do it with acceptance of the present.

2. We live and work with joy in our hearts when we operate in the present.

3. We bring great enthusiasm to bear whenever we work in the present with a goal or vision of the future in mind.

 HRO Language:

Southwest Health is elevating it's Journey To Excellence.

We recognize you as a highly-reliable individual.

YOU are responsible for the safety of all.

YOU are expected to take action to work toward zero harm.

And together WE will create a highly-reliable organization (HRO).

Creative Phase

Two key elements remain after the strategy is set, in addition to a plethora of design and writing to help make the strategy come alive.

Promise: Present, aware, and as one, we create moments that make a difference.

Tagline: WE begins with ME.

Our New Journey Logo:

And So Much More

For the full 17-page Journey Booklet or to know more about the many other Journey Brand touch points… Or, the education behind this effort, contact me.