Contact Info

Marcello Design, LLC

301A Canal Blvd
Thibodaux, LA 70301

609 Napolean Avenue
New Orleans, LA 70115

Phone :
Office: 985.447.0073
Cell: 504.610.3773

info@marcellodesign.biz

Featured Article

ARE YOU A SNEAKER OR A NIKE?

By Gwynn Torres

If you were an athletic shoe, wouldn’t you prefer to be one that is well known and well respected rather than an undistinguished, generic sneaker?

What does the athletic shoe industry have to do with you? You run a medical practice. Yet when it comes to branding your business, the challenges are similar. Like Nike and its competitors in the sports footwear arena, you want to establish your practice as the best known and most highly regarded in your marketplace. How do you do that? The same way Nike, Coke, Oprah, Ochsner, MD Anderson and hundreds of leading products and businesses do. Branding.

What is a brand? It’s what comes to someone’s mind when the name of your practice or specialty is mentioned. It’s what differentiates your practice from another, even when the area of expertise is similar. It is a patient’s expectations and perceptions.

Consider how Southwest Airlines has differentiated itself within the airline industry. All airlines can get you from Point A to Point B, but Southwest does it with personality and economy, among other things. It has been clearly branded from the CEO down in a positive, business-reinforcing way.

Every product and business already has some brand. It may be weak and unproductive. It may even be wrong and communicating an inaccurate picture of the business. This is the accidental brand. Branding, or the process of creating a brand, seems like it should be easy, especially for a medical practice. Manage the operations properly, treat patients with care - and positive branding should occur naturally. It isn’t that simple.

Whether a business is medical or manufacturing, public perception of it is confused at best until a strategic branding objective is established and a branding program is in place. Owners and managers are often surprised when external research shows there is both misconception and confusion surrounding the company brand in the marketplace. The more closely involved you are in the operation of a company, the harder it is to see the big picture – and to see it with objectivity. But your customers see it. And how they perceive it defines your brand.

Think of it as looking at a huge painting. Standing close to the canvas, you may see how every little object in the painting is perfectly crafted and detailed. But how does the painting look as a whole? You’d have to stand back and study the entire painting to see if the composition is pleasing or if the colors at the top complement those at the bottom. You’d need a wider view to see how the painting fits in with its surroundings. And if you wanted to understand the significance of the painting, you’d probably ask an expert.

Branding strategists help you see the big picture, and then show you how to make it work for you.
Strategic branding does more than communicate an impression to your customers. When it’s focused and strategic, it starts a process that progressively strengthens the bottom line. Thus, you can logically amortize a branding expense over the space of several years. The benefits continue long after the establishing work is completed. For instance:

• With strategic branding, your marketing efforts will cost less, because a strong brand can be more efficiently promoted.
• Strategic branding helps guide management decisions, because everything you do and communicate as a company, both internally and externally, becomes consistent with the brand.
• With strategic branding, the corporate culture of the practice becomes more clearly defined and embraced. The result is employees who feel more engaged and enthusiastic about the practice as a whole, and who experience a renewed sense of pride in being part of the team.
• Strategic branding makes the practice more able to weather downturns, crises and competition.
• A strategically developed brand provides a healthy platform for expansion and growth.
• A stronger, more positive brand makes your patients more comfortable.

 

Once you’ve decided that strategic branding is an investment that will make your business stronger, your marketing dollars more powerful and your bottom line healthier, it’s time to begin. Embarking on a branding development program is one of the most productive, stimulating and exciting processes a company can take on.

The branding development process itself can be highly interactive, involving a workshop, creative ways of looking at the business and one-on-one interviews with key staff members of your practice. The results of this discovery process, along with analysis of the marketplace and community perception research, will put your practice in a position to face the future with a leading advantage.