Baton Rouge, La.-based FMOL Health is investing $25 million to unify under a brand that “stands for best-in-class care across our footprint,” a marketing leader told Becker’s.
The nine-hospital system changed its name from Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System in November to improve consumer awareness and grow market share.
Becker’s caught up with Janice Lamy, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of FMOL Health, about how the nearly $5 billion organization landed on its new handle and what the return on that big investment is expected to be.
Question: Why did FMOL Health decide to rebrand? How did you come up with and agree upon the new name?
Janice Lamy: We are a regional healthcare system serving a significant portion of patients across Louisiana and operating in the largest healthcare market in Mississippi, yet our large geographic presence was not well understood. The name we have operated under for more than 100 years is Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System — which is a really long name and one we rarely utilized in our markets, adding to our low consumer awareness.
Additionally, each of our four markets operated under separate and distinct names — Our Lady of the Lake, Our Lady of Lourdes, St. Francis and St. Dominic — further fracturing our presence. This created challenges for patients transferring between markets, for recruiting providers and team members, and for clearly communicating who we are as a system. Managing multiple brands also made our marketing efforts more complex than they had to be. We needed a solution that would clearly unify our health system.
At the same time, we wanted to honor our heritage and our founders, the Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Sisters (also known as the FMOLs), and keep our name but make it more manageable and easier to recall. We also wanted to incorporate our four existing market brands in order to keep the brand equity we built through the decades. So, we proposed taking an endorsed brand approach, where our system name would exist alongside our market brands with equal weight and significance.
Then the challenge became making all the words in our system and market brands work — imagine a sign on one of our hospitals that reads “Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System | Our Lady of the Lake” … ! We crossed our fingers and pitched an abbreviated system name “FMOL Health,” not knowing how it would be received. Spoiler alert — it was immediately warmly embraced by our internal stakeholders!
Rather than beginning with where we wanted to go, we started the shortened naming discussion with listening. Through focus groups, strategic planning sessions, one-on-one conversations, and patient testimonials, we talked with leaders, providers and team members about the endorsed brand approach and why we felt it was the way to proceed. We were pleasantly surprised when no one expressed any objections! This approach allowed us to stay true to our long-standing heritage, local pride and tradition while unifying our broad network of care under a brand that stands for best-in-class care across our footprint.
Q: Where are you at now in terms of physical/digital rebranding or any branding campaigns?
JL: We launched our initial brand campaign in November of last year and have very strong support from the communities we serve. Internally, everyone seemed to be ready for this change and were grateful for finally making it clear that we are a regional healthcare system making a significant difference for our patients and communities.
Rebranding is complete across our digital assets, including our web presence and social media accounts, our information services systems, and all components of our digital front door. Physical signage across all of our hospitals, clinics, and health centers is in process and is a complex process, as you can imagine, extending across the next three years.
Q: How much do you expect the rebrand to cost? What’s the ROI and how will you measure it?
JL: The entire rebrand process is estimated to cost around $25 million over the next three years. We have a partner in this effort that specializes in rebranding and is helping us keep the costs in check while also not sacrificing quality. The ROI of this effort is difficult to pinpoint exactly, but we will be monitoring our health system’s brand awareness and preference with consumers over time, as well as its impact on market share and the associated revenue. As we become more widely known as the regional health system we’ve always been, we expect all of these metrics to consistently grow and improve, supporting our continued success and sustainability well into the future.
Q: Do you expect community members to use the new name, or keep referring to the organization as what they call it colloquially?
JL: We anticipate a combination of the use of FMOL Health and the local market brands, given the long history of those brands and the strong consumer preference each currently enjoys. We want to make FMOL Health relevant to the communities we serve by sharing how being a part of a regional health system benefits everyone, from providing a full network of care to address virtually any healthcare need, to economies of scale and managing costs, to being able to more fully address community needs through sponsorships and other financial support.
Q: What comes next for the rebrand?
JL: We are preparing for phase two of our brand campaign, where we will begin to tell stories of service line clinical excellence across the health system through the voices of our patients, providers and team members. We are energized by the response we have received so far with our initial campaign and look forward to launching our next phase this fall.
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