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on May 17th, 2012  Guild annual report cover LevinsonBlock developed this dramatic annual report that introduces Jewish Guild Healthcare– formerly the Jewish Guild for the Blind, a 100 year old human services and healthcare organization.
 Brand reveal spread Cover and reveal
Since low vision services are a core part of the Guild’s DNA, we used an eye image on the cover – a modern scientific shot of an iris. The headline emphasizes the forward-looking nature of the Guild and sets up the “reveal” of the new logotype on the first spread.
 Challenge and response spread Urgent challenges
Once the new brand is introduced, the report presents urgent healthcare challenges and the Guild’s response — showing what motivates the Guild to create new programs and services.
on April 24th, 2012
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| We just finished raking out the flower beds and fertilizing our little garden. In a few weeks we’ll spread out the bark mulch, and the heavy work will be over. Through the warm months we’ll only have to water plants and deadhead flowers. |
 - Some visitors to our garden
Target: butterflies
When we started the garden, we just threw plants in the ground without a lot of thought — sort of how I started my business! Eventually, we choose plants that attract butterflies — like Buddleia (Butterfly Bush), and Joe Pye Weed. Now, when it gets hot, we’ll have a parade of swallowtails, monarch, and fritillaries sipping on our flowers.
We recently participated in a meeting with the founder of a new website — a community for people in the healthcare profession. He needed messaging that would speak to his audience, and show the benefits of joining his online community.
A startup for everyone
We asked who in healthcare he wanted to target. He said everyone — from pharmaceutical salespeople, to research scientists, to hospital executives, to doctors. Ambitious? Yes. Smart? Maybe not.
When you try to talk to everyone, you end up saying nothing.
On the other hand, consider our butterfly garden — we knew our audience (butterflies), focused our message (plants they love), and got results (multiple butterfly visits).
Shortcuts to defining your audience
• Create personas. Break up your target audience into a few segments, and define what their goals and needs are. Then take each segment and turn it into a fictional person — assign demographic traits, names, even photos. For more about this method, visit this blog
• Study your competition — take a look at your direct competitors and understand who they target. See what content they use to connect with their targets, and the look, feel and voice that they use.
FACT OF THE MONTH
The IRS employee manual has instructions for collecting taxes after a nuclear war.
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on March 23rd, 2012
My wife and I are lucky that we get along well with Jan, our handyman. Especially since, on a recent home improvement project, we saw him every day for 3 weeks.
 Like most home projects, this one sounded simple: paint the rooms on our parlor floor. However, once Jan started working, it became obvious that it wasn’t that simple. In fact, the paintbrush didn’t hit the walls for two weeks.
Why? Preparation. Because we wanted a good paint job that would last for years, Jan patched cracks in the walls, stripped the woodwork, and repaired old plaster.
It turned out about 60% of his time was spent in preparation. Keep this number in mind when developing your website.
Your most important step
Your most important step in developing a website is planning. The more thinking and planning you do before you build, the better the result.
You’ll want to find answers to these questions:
• Who is the website for?
• What are the top 3 actions you want your audience to take?
• What functionality do you need in the website? For example, are you planning to add new content to the website on a regular basis? (the correct answer is yes!) If so, you need to build the site using a content management system.
The website is brand central
Since the website is the primary expression of your brand, you’ll also want to answer questions like:
• What are your competitors’ websites like? What ideas can you borrow?
• How are you different than your competitors?
• What is your elevator speech?
Help is on the way
Sound like a lot of work? It is — but we’re here to help.
Drop us a line here, and we’ll send you our Website Planner, which guides you through the planning you need to do before a line of code gets written. Of course, there is no obligation.
FACT OF THE MONTH
A 10-gallon hat barely holds 6 pints.
on February 15th, 2012  AMC logo before and after
In a challenging field, this company needed to show what set it apart from its larger competitors.
AMC Health sells remote-monitoring technology that lets medical providers track the condition of in-home patients, to prevent problems and ensure better treatment.
Unlike its larger, better-known competitors in the telehealth field, AMC Health offers personal, tailored customer service along with cutting-edge technology. But potential clients were reluctant to listen to an unsung brand.
AMC Health asked us for help emphasizing their personal touch. Our objectives were to:
- Develop a brand strategy that positioned AMC Health as a more caring, service-oriented alternative to bigger telehealth vendors
- Update AMC Health’s visual brand to match its culture: just as professional as the big corporations, but more approachable and caringSimplify AMC Health’s messaging, making it easier for its sales force to generate leads in three target markets—health plans, hospitals and health systems, and home-care agencies
- Simplify AMC Health’s messaging, making it easier for its sales force to generate leads in three target markets—health plans, hospitals and health systems, and home-care agencies
 Brand position XY diagram
Research and Findings
We looked at AMC Health’s current communications, conducted in-depth inter-views with employees and clients, and put together an exhaustive competitive audit of six brands AMC Health was up against in the telehealth sector.
Key takeaways were that the company’s brand looked and felt too clinical — and that although current clients liked AMC Health, it had to become better known by prospective decision makers.
Brand Strategy
- Name: We recommended the company drop its full name (Advanced Monitored Caregiving) and market itself as the warmer and simpler AMC Health.
- Logo: Putting the name in all lowercase gave its new logo an approachable feel. The house at the center shows AMC Health knows where the heart of their busi-ness lies, and the stars are a multivalent symbol, representing both technology and a bright outlook.
- Tagline: Since AMC Health does two things really well—caring and technol-ogy—we put them in the new tagline: Where caring and technology meet. “Meet” emphasized the personal connection.
- Key Messaging: Caring and technology were also the focus of the key messages and elevator speeches we developed for the company’s three target markets. These quickly explained that by working with AMC Health, clients could save money and take better care of patients.
 AMC Health website Tactics
The front page of AMC Health’s new website highlights ways they can help all three types of clients they serve. Each page offers multiple opportunities to get in touch with AMC Health, such as an e-news sign-up form and an information re-quest form.
A consistent, engaging corporate voice that is personable and professional ties it all together. Brochures, sell sheets, and trade show displays used the same new visual branding.
Results
Sales Force
“The marketing materials have created some very positive feedback. The AMC Health sales force is extremely happy and much more excited about referring prospects to the new website. Prior to any outreach, we have already received many requests for information that now go directly into our CRM system.”
—Brett Olive, Vice President of Marketing, AMC Health
New Leads
Even before AMC Health began promoting its new website, it had received more than two dozen new subscribers to its monthly email newsletter. Recently, the AMC Health logo won a Service Industry Advertising silver award.
Six months after the rebranding, the company reported it had a new challenge to deal with: keeping up with all the leads generated by the new brand.
on January 19th, 2012  Guitarist Bill Frisell (Photo:Tony Gieske) Besides running a business, my most challenging task is studying electric guitar. I’m currently learning, note by note, a song by guitarist Bill Frisell — I’ve worked on it for 3 months, and have months to go.
What’s more, I’m never really finished learning a song — even if I think I’m done. That’s when Sean, my guitar teacher, will say, “That’s enough for now — we’ll circle back to that song and work on it some more later.”
As a person who enjoys crossing stuff off to-do lists, this has taken some getting used to.
A quaint notion
Now, back in ancient times — say, 5 years ago — once we built your website, it was finished. It stayed the same for a few years. Then we overhauled it completely.
Today, this is a quaint notion. The websites we develop now are never finished. They demand a continuous stream of content. We’ve heard that a good target is adding 2,000 words a month of new content to your website.
New demands
For example, we are currently developing a website for a large healthcare organization. We are building more than 30 empty pages that will be populated with healthcare education content. The organization will fill these pages, over time, with original articles, blog posts, videos, and announcements that are helpful to their target audience.
Some ideas on feeding your website
- Focus on quality. Content quality trumps word count. You don’t want to populate your website with useless filler. So ask yourself:
- who is the audience?
- what content is most useful to them?
- Breaking news. Plan content by creating a calendar. The calendar should not only show dates important to your organization, but dates important to your audience. It’s a good way to provide content that’s relevant and timely.
- Consider video. Google is infatuated with it, so it is a quick way to boost search ranking. Sometimes it’s easier to write questions and then shoot and edit a video interview, than to write content. For examples of effective, low-tech video interviews, take a look at the Mayo Clinic YouTube channel.
- Don’t go it alone. If you don’t have capacity to create enough high-quality content, talk to firms that do this. (Yes, we offer this service).
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FACT OF THE MONTH
One of Warren Buffett’s first business ventures was to purchase pinball machines and put them in barber shops.
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Levinson Block – Marketing Minute The Marketing Minute is a free monthly E-Newsletter with a focus on providing brief insights into effective branding, website development, marketing and design.
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