Question

Topic: Taglines/Names

How Does This Tagline Work For You?

Posted by Anonymous on 4/21/2012 at 12:25 AM ET 125 Points
We've hired a marketing firm for our physician/MD based medical clinic. We provide a scientific approach to natural medicine. Our Unique Value Proposition is our different-ness if you will. We are different from traditional med, different from wholistic practioners, different in the time we spend with patients, different diagnostic tools etc. (technically it's called "Functional Medicine"). The ad group stated:
"In pursuit of these, we began by considering the brand already lived by Waller Wellness Center. From the practice’s many points of differentiation, we selected a few key characteristics that are especially representative and important and, therefore, are primary positioning points. These are: experienced, credentialed, comprehensive, science-based, effective/successful, life-changing, empowering, empowered/capable, compassionate and — quite importantly — different. The task of creating a tagline is to express this effectively in ~10 words or less. "

The tagline, second time around that they came up with, is" Building health & transforming lives with comprehensive, experienced & uncommon care.

My dilemma is that this tagline does not grab me. It's kind of long (11 words verbalized), and it seems to require too much work on the reader's part to figure out what we do. They are trying to widen our appeal to a broader market, hence the absence of anything "natural". My concern with that is that it may fail to people looking for the natural approach.

I would like some feedback on what this tagline does and doesn't do for you, or it's strengths and weaknesses.
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RESPONSES

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 4/21/2012 at 9:09 AM Accepted
    If I were to see your tagline, I'd think the following:
    - "What does building health mean?"
    - "What does transforming lives mean?"
    - "Isn't all medical practices based on comprehensive & experienced care?"
    - "Is uncommon care better than other care I can receive?"

    While you can't promise you can heal anyone, your tagline can focus on your specialties (perhaps chronic pain, hard-to-treat forms of cancer, palliative care, etc.). The problem you face is that your business name doesn't say that you're a medical facility (a wellness center could mean just about anything) and your key benefit is that you help treat the problem, not the symptom(s).
  • Posted on 4/21/2012 at 10:21 AM Author
    Thanks for your response Jay. You have confirmed my own sense that the chosen terminology is lacking and leaves too much to the reader to interpret or put meaning to.

    Regarding the specialty, our specialty is "Functional Medicine", a specialized term itself that means little to the public; we treat a wide range of conditions so we can't focus on one specialty.

    Not sure what you mean when you say "The problem you face is . . . your key benefit is that you help treat the problem, not the symptom(s)." It would be helpful to me if you could clarify this.

    I agree with your thoughts about "Wellness Center" being ambiguous, but at this point the name is etched in stone. I am hoping a tag line can add some "medicine" to the centers name.


  • Posted by rachikwon on 4/21/2012 at 1:09 PM Accepted
    The word "uncommon" seems a bit off to me. If I am to put myself in the perspective of a potential patient, this might either:

    1) intrigue me
    2) scare me away or leave me nervous

    I guess this is because people would be wary of taking risks with regards to their health and their money.

    I would therefore suggest that you have your advertisers portray your "different-ness" in a way that will entice potential customers rather than scare them away. "Uncommon" is too strong of a word.

    Hmm... Maybe "innovative" or "cutting-edge" would be better?

  • Posted by Jay Hamilton-Roth on 4/21/2012 at 3:09 PM Accepted
    "Waller Wellness Center" could mean pretty much anything (you could be selling nutritional supplements/herbs, offering massage, diet therapy, etc.) - it doesn't sound very rooted in physician/MD treatments. So, your tagline needs to make this very clear. As for your key benefit, my understanding of functional medicine is it attempts to get to the root of the problem, which may be masked by many symptoms that other medical practitioners would focus on as the problem, rather than the root cause.
  • Posted on 4/21/2012 at 3:23 PM Author
    Thanks for your feedback kailamilos. I agree that uncommon is open to interpratation. They considered "innovative" and "cutting edge", and at least for "cutting edge" felt it had become too trite.

    Just realized I posted their first proposal, rather than the first revision, much to my embarrassment. The first revision read:

    Building health & transforming lives with uncommonly focused, comprehensive care.

    (I will try to make note of this in my original most if I can find out how to edit it.)
  • Posted on 4/21/2012 at 4:03 PM Author
    Jay, thanks for your second response which I did not see a little earlier. That is my concern exactly. FWIW, we had just renamed the clinic, and I can't say that I am satisfied with that either, but as I said in my previous post the wheels are turning and we are moving ahead with it. I definitely want to balance out the "wellness" concept with medical/medicine.

    You are correct about Functional Medicine and getting to the root cause. We often find and understand problems traditional and alternative medicine have overlooked. I've always explained it as "A scientific approach to natural medicine" which differentiates us from traditional and from alternative, which is often not very scientific.
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