Changing perceptions, one individual at a time.

While our 2023 quantitative consumer research showed AnMed brand impression increased 8 percentage points following our initial brand refresh, it also indicated that most Upstate SC residents didn’t realize AnMed had expanded services and grown its clinical teams recently to rival the larger system 40 minutes down the road.

Our experience and years of qualitative message testing for healthcare brands has shown specifics are sticky, and a few examples from key service lines can have a halo effect for the system brand as a whole.

The team interviewed doctors, nurses, and techs across the system to identify those stories and crafted a cohesive creative approach that uses AnMed’s employees to tell one overarching story: AnMed has the expertise to handle more than you think.

This storytelling layer, leveraging real AnMed employees, supported an additional goal: make the work distinct within its competitive landscape. While competitor healthcare systems were advertising with broad, sweeping statements and visuals, the AnMed campaign “zoomed in” to real individuals at AnMed, while continuing to build on the brand’s core positioning.

We leveraged their expertise and industry insights to develop an integrated media plan to reach target audiences across multiple touchpoints. This comprehensive approach maximized reach across different platforms and delivered a unified brand experience.

Initial campaign metrics are encouraging with digital channels experiencing a 34% increase in engagement, indicating the new creative is effectively resonating with target audiences. New users to the website increased 27% year over year during the first full quarter of the new messages being in market. We also observed a 25% lift in ad recall during the first flight, a strong indicator that the creative is successfully driving brand awareness.

Feedback from AnMed leadership signifies that the campaign is taking the brand in the right direction. As AnMed’s CEO, William Kenley puts it: “We’re in a market that is being viewed more positively by competitors every day. And we’re seeing encroachment from the south and from the north as well. I love seeing people proud of the organization,” Kenley says. “Now they wanna wear that jersey and say, you know, ‘Better starts with me.’”