Patients Hate How You Sound: Humanizing Healthcare Starts Here.

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This article is about humanizing healthcare brands—so your message lands with real people, not just “patients on paper.”

In the supermarkets, consumers are choosing to pay twice as much for eggs from humanely-treated cage-free chickens because of their values, not because it’s a better egg.

They do this because they don’t want to be the cause of any mistreatment of chickens (caged birds with their beaks clipped and all that).

They don’t want to support such practices with their dollars, and they don’t mind spending more dollars to do so. People are carefully considering the consequences of their actions, and they want brands to do the same.

When your patients connect to your brand that aligns with their most deeply-held beliefs and sense of identity, they are essentially both pulling that brand into their own world and entering the world of that brand.

People who are shopping for meaning are either drawn to that ethos and worldview or not. But if your brand truly represents an ethos and worldview that are attractive to your patients, they will not just patronize your brand, they will not just prefer you, they will not just be loyal to your brand, they will embrace that brand as part of their own identity.

So how do you go about creating such alignment of belief systems and sparking relationships between your audience and your brand? That’s what we’ll go through today.

This article covers:

1. Audience Identification and how it relates to your medical business
2. Humanizing your brand’s communication is key to break through today’s digital noise
3. Brand Persona Workshop
   • Brand Archetypal Mix Exercise
   • Brand Commitment Matrix
   • Brand Voice Exercise
   • Brand Tone Projection Exercise
   • Brand Interview Exercise
4. What’s next

Let’s dive right ahead.

Do patients identify with you?

It seems that many of us in the post-modern industrialized world have moved beyond the primal needs of survival and safety—and are focused more on the higher needs of esteem and self-actualization.

Today, people want to belong to something bigger than themselves. People want to stand for something that matters. People want to champion good over evil. People want to do the right thing.

Therefore brands aren’t just about the product or service they provide, but the meaning they represent, which people are using, in turn, to represent themselves.

Think of the owner of a Toyota Prius who wears eco-friendly Nau clothing, buys fair-trade coffee at Whole Foods, carries a Prada bag, and wears blood-free diamonds from Tiffany’s. This person is borrowing the meaning from these brands to tell a story about herself that ranges from her commitment to social responsibility to her love of quality and dedication to style.

If she chose different brands, even if they offered the same quality level but did not represent her social consciousness, she would be telling a different story about herself. She would be, in effect, representing a different person.

This means that people are choosing brands as a way to self-identify themselves and communicate their values to the world. For example, If your target patients are environmentally-conscious people, it makes sense that your brand displays the quality of cleanliness and eco-friendliness. Eco-friendly people will choose eco-friendly brands because it reinforces their values and reflects their core attributes.

And if you’re in the cosmetic care services, your audience is image-aware people (think celebrities, politicians, models..) they will choose brands that display the same values they hold (confidence, certitude, elegance).

This way there’s a match of values and purchase decisions are almost automatic.

So, how do you go about creating this “match” between your medical brand and its audience? How do you set the stage for your brand in order for patients to identify with it? That’s the subject of the first exercise in this guide.

But first, let’s tackle another critical yet easily missed aspect of your brand.

How humane is your medical brand?

Due to the rapid boom of technology, we’re bombarded with repetitive automated messages, answering machines, and uninspiring robotic offerings. Algorithms dictate what messages we see and the way we see them. And the only human-like touch we’re left with is the artificial attempt of personalization: “Hi {{Name}}”.

Not only that, but because of the quick surge of look-alike brands, we’re seeing more and more of this drab and lackluster communication.

We’re now soaked in “digital noise” which left us yearning for the slightest human experience and personalized messages. And the need for a new way of communication is acute.

Today I’ll share with you a creative strategy to “humanize” your medical brand and infuse humanistic flair into its communication. We’re going to create a unique “voice” and manner of messaging that will tighten the connections your patient segment has with your brand.

If you’re building the full system, this work plugs into your broader branding framework .

Brand Persona Workshop

Note: You can access the workshop by clicking here

The goal of this workshop is to solve the two critical points we discussed above: 1) How to create a medical brand that people will deeply identify with and 2) how to inject humanistic attributes into your brand’s communication for a stronger affinity and engagement.

The workshop consists of 5 exercises:

• Brand Archetypal Mix
• Brand Commitment Matrix
• Brand Voice
• Brand Tone Projection
• Brand Interview

So without wasting time, let’s start our workshop.

1) Brand Archetypal Mix Exercise ⏰ [15-25 minute]

To create a match between your brand’s traits and your target audience’s beliefs, we need to visit a concept coined by psychologist Carl Jung, and that is Archetypes.

An archetype is a typical character that represents universal patterns of human nature. These characters represent our core desires and aspirations. According to Jung, there are twelve archetypes:

Archetypes, Jung suggested, were inborn tendencies that play a role in influencing human behavior. Archetypes are widely used in books, movies, and branding. For example, Yoda is the Sage in Star Wars. Indiana Jones is the Explorer, and Maximus is the Hero in the Gladiator.

As you can see, each one of us has core desires and an archetype that represents them.

And in this exercise, we’ll try to pick an archetype and assign it to your brand. But, the trick here is to first identify your audience’s archetype, THEN, assign an archetype to your brand that would most appeal to them.

For example, let’s say that your target patients are pregnant women and your hospital helps deliver babies. Your patients (mothers-to-be) archetype will be the caregiver (an archetype that is driven by the desire to protect and care for their children)

So, your brand’s archetype can be also a caregiver: meaning, your brand’s communication, and behaviors will carry characteristics of the caregiver archetype like soft-spoken messages/reassuring and supportive.

This way there’s a harmony between your patient-base’s archetype and your brand’s.

But you don’t always have to mimic your audience’s archetype. For example, If your patients desire power (the Ruler), it doesn’t necessarily mean that your brand should choose the Ruler archetype.

And that’s because if your medical brand is providing them with some kind of education, to help them get that power, then they’re likely to be drawn to the Sage personality that demonstrates wisdom and knowledge.

A good rule of thumb is to have two archetypes for your brand. The first one will represent 70% of the brand and the second will represent 30% of it. The first one will be the prominent archetype and is what your audience will resonate with, and the second one to break the mold and differentiate the brand.

We’ll go over some examples to further illustrate these concepts, but now let’s see how to define your brand archetypes.

🔴 Action Step: Define your archetypal mix:

On the brand archetype wheel, identify the core desires of your target audience, and based on that, think about what role your brand plays in their lives.

To define your brand archetype, follow the next steps:

• Discuss with your team what are the core desires of your target patients and how it relates to their problems.
• Use sticky notes to write down the archetypal mix percentage of your brand (ex: 70% Sage, 30% Caregiver) based on their desire.
• Each participant should pin their answers to the quadrant and start the voting
• Use the red voting dots on the right to decide on the best suitable mix for your brand. The highest voted answer is the winner.

When you are deciding on an archetype try to ask yourself “What’s the ulterior motive for our patient to visit us?” Try to dig deeper to pinpoint the reason for patients to get treated by you. For example, if you’re a cosmetic dental practice, don’t settle for answers like “to fix their crooked teeth”. Crooked teeth are the surface-level cause. What the patient desires are to eradicate self-consciousness and be more confident in their dental appearance.

Once you know the desire, pick an archetype that fits it.

After you and your team are happy with your archetypal mix, move on to the next exercise.

2) Brand Commitment Matrix Exercise ⏰ [15-25 minute]

Now you have a brand’s archetype that fits its audience, let’s see how we can further align your brand with your patient’s values. And for this, we’re going to use the Brand Commitment Matrix (BCM).

BCM is a document that maps out the basic contract between you and your patient. Here’s how it works: Two columns, one for patients and one for the brand. Each column contains three key statements.

For patients, the statements will describe their IDENTITY (who they are), their AIMS (what they want), and their MORES (how they belong). These form the acronym IAM.

For the brand, the statements will describe its PURPOSE (why we exist), its ONLYNESS (what we offer), and its VALUES (how we behave). These form the acronym POV.

The statements in each column should line up horizontally: patient’s identity and your brand’s purpose should align; patient aims and your services “onlyness” (differentiator) should support each other, and mores and brand values should be in sync.

🔴 Action Step: Fill in the Brand Commitment Matrix

To start filling out the BCM, first explain to the team the goal of this exercise and how it’ll help us further align the brand with our target patients.

After that move on to the next steps:

1. Customer Column:
   • For the IDENTITY: In this space ask the team to describe the target audience in a couple of sentences and write down the answers.
   • For the AIMS: these are their goals as it relates to your brand’s services. Ask the team to write down a list of aims the patient wants to achieve.
   • For the MORES: these are the rules in which your target patients behave in their community. What do they dislike? And what are some of the absolute rules they live by? How do they interact with each other? (are they outspoken and articulate? Or reserved and calm?) what’re their day-to-day activities like? Do they try to avoid something? Or care about a cause? List as much mores as you can and move on to the brand column
2. Brand Column:
   • For the PURPOSE: Start by writing down your brand’s Why or its reason to exist. You can borrow some of the ideas and statements from the first workshop Brand DNA
   • For the ONLYNESS: Here you write down your onliness statement from your positioning work (see: Healthcare brand positioning )
   • For the VALUES: Here you write down your brand’s pillar and how they correlate with your audience’s mores.

Once you’re done, move on to the next exercise where we dive into part 2 of this workshop and that’s the Brand Persona.

3) Brand Voice Exercise ⏰ [15-25 minute]

In this phase of the process, we craft Brand Voice Guidelines. This is the tone and language used when communicating your message, ads, marketing, website copy, or when talking with patients.

Think of Brand Voice as the unique manner in which your brand expresses itself. Is it serious or playful? authoritative or empathetic? feminine or masculine? Your brand voice should be one that your target patient will engage and relate to.

The ultimate goal of this exercise is to develop a unique “voice” for your medical brand so that your messages will go intact and straight into people’s minds. A voice that’s highly targeted towards your patients and speaks to them on a personal level.

Let’s see some good examples of brand voices so you have an idea of what a distinct voice looks like.

Examples of brand voice

#~The Joint Chiropractic: Their voice in social media is laid-back, casual, and uplifting.

Here’s a non-medical example of a brand’s voice.

A tongue-in-cheek billboard advert for The Economist in 1990 that sympathizes with their target audience: CEOs and company executives.

Strip away the huge salary and the executive jet, and you find much solitary misery. Even chief executives are human.

The economist’s tone of voice and the message connects deeply with their audience, creating stronger bonds and loyalty for the brand.

Here’s an example of the unique voice of a mobile app from The Desk Magazine. Although the weather app market is saturated, AuthenticWeather tries to slice through the “me too” apps by their witty communication.

#One medical, membership-based primary care practice on a mission to make getting quality care more accessible, and enjoyable.

Their voice in social media is caring, warm, and thoughtful

🔴 Action Step: Define your brand’s communication style

Using the Brand Voice Sliders (BVS) Exercise, let’s decide on what voice your brand will claim. The BVS aims to gauge to which extent your brand is humorous, formal, respectful, enthusiastic and what attitude it has.

• First: Discuss with your team how your target patients and audience communicate and what sort of behavior they have. (you can check previous exercises for help).
• Second: using the slider dots, drag each one to the left or the right depending on what manner your brand will maintain.
• Third: There are good reasons to be on the left or right of any of these lines, and it’s even okay if some of your sliders end up in the middle. But it’s helpful to be strongly opinionated on at least one or two ranges.

After you finish, your result will look something like this:

Once your brand’s voice is decided, let’s define its tones.

4) Brand Tone Projection Exercise ⏰ [15-25 minute]

What’s the difference between brand voice and tone? Think of it this way: You have the same voice all the time, but your tone changes. You might use one tone when you’re out to dinner with your closest friends, and a different tone when you’re in a meeting with your boss. Your tone also changes depending on the emotional state of the person you’re addressing.

The same is true for your brand. Its voice doesn’t change much from day to day, but the tone changes all the time depending on the context.

To define your brand’s tone, we’ll project its voice across 4 dimensions of speaking: humor, formality, respectfulness, and enthusiasm.

The goal is to answer the following questions:

• How humorous will your communication be?
• How formal is your brand when talking?
• Level of respectfulness infused in a speaking manner, and;
• How enthusiastically the brand’s voice will be

🔴 Action Step: Define your brand’s tones

Let’s use the Tone Projections Exercise to start defining the brand’s tone of voice. After you explain to the participant the goal of the exercise move on to the action steps:

• On the right of the exercise, there are four quadrants with their respective dimensions of speaking. In each quadrant, participants will pin sticky notes that contain a statement that describes how the brand will speak in that particular dimension.
• The statement template goes as follow: We’re___, but we’re not____. E.g. “we’re forward-looking, but we’re not jumpy”
• Fill each quadrant with as many examples as you can. And repeat the process for the rest of the quadrants.

Here’s an example of the final result:

Once you’re done, it’s time to solidify your brand’s voice and get a clear picture of how your brand communicates.

5) Brand Interview Exercise ⏰ [15-25 minute]

This is the final exercise of this workshop. The brand Interview Exercise aims to test out the voice we’ve developed until now. It’s great to flesh out the way the brand speaks.

In this exercise, we’ll visualize your brand as a person and we’re interviewing him/her. We’ll pose a series of questions and answer them as the brand.

These questions aim to solidify the brand voice by putting into practice how your brand communicates.

Let’s see how it works.

🔴 Action Step: Brand Interview

1. On the brand interview exercise, you’ll see a list of questions to ask your brand. Explain the exercise to your team and let them answer the question as the brand itself.
2. Each participant will have his/her section where they can answer the questions and test their understanding of the newly developed brand voice.
3. After the team has finished answering all of the questions, discuss your answers and see what insights you can gather.

After you’re done, the final result will look something like this:

End the Brand Persona workshop ⏰ [5-8 minute]

As always, at the end of each workshop, provide the team with an overview of what they have done and the insights gathered. Make sure to save the notes and answers for later.

OK, now what?

Now that you’ve defined voice and persona internally, the next step is turning it into public messaging that persuades (without sounding like marketing).

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Part 3 of 6: Healthcare Branding Series

You’re reading Part 3 of a 6‑part series on building a medical brand people trust (and choose).

If you want to keep the thread:

• Previous: Healthcare brand positioning
• Next: Healthcare brand storytelling
• Or start a project: Contact