Northfield Hospital & Clinics
Getting It Right: Market Research to Guide Intelligent Decision-making
The Situation:
Northfield Hospital had developed a regional network of primary-care and specialty medical clinics and other services supplementing the capabilities of the municipally-owned hospital in Northfield, Minn., a college town of 19,000 about 40 miles south of Minneapolis/St Paul. The organization had also developed partnerships with Mayo Clinic and other leading providers to bring top-quality specialist care to Northfield and had opened a state-of-the-art new hospital facility on an integrated Northfield healthcare campus in 2003.
The Communications Challenge:
Hospital leadership sought to develop a new name for the umbrella organization, as distinguished from the hospital itself, to more fully reflect the breadth, depth and regional reach of its medical services and facilities. The new name needed to retain the identification with Northfield while helping to make the case for the availability of sophisticated medical and hospital services further south to residents of the southern Twin Cities suburbs who traditionally have instead looked northward toward the Twin Cities and inner-ring suburbs for specialty medical and hospital care.
The Strategy:
Neuger Communications Group coordinated focus group research to learn more about how residents of the south-metro target audience perceived various words and phrases that could accurately be used to describe the range of healthcare services offered by Northfield Hospital. Four focus groups were composed of residents of two towns served by Northfield Hospital’s clinics in the far south metro region who had varying types of experience with healthcare services and hospitalization.
The Results:
The focus group research unambiguously proved its worth by steering the client away from a descriptive name that had previously been among the top choices. Residents of the target communities proved to have unexpectedly negative or distracting associations with certain healthcare descriptors that had not been anticipated during the initial development of potential name options. The market research was instrumental in guiding the selection of the organization’s new name: Northfield Hospital & Clinics. The natural, almost inevitable feel of the new name belies the care and science that went into its selection. As of early 2010, the new name and updated graphic identity have been in use for about a year, laying the foundation for a successful new awareness campaign now rolling out in the targeted south-metro communities.
