Branding and Marketing Health Centers

The Center for Colorectal Health

CRH Medical Corporation is a Canada-based company that is opening 30 colorectal health centers across the United States in 2006 and 2007. They have a small US-focused marketing department that needed help with all the materials required to launch the centers in a short period of time. The parent company also needed a visual identity that would correlate with its centers' brand identity, yet differentiated it from the centers in purpose for its investors.

The client wanted to establish distinct brands for CRH Medical Corporation and its centers, The Center for Colorectal Health. The CRH Medical Corporation materials target potential investors and physicians interested in their patented treatments. The Center for Colorectal Health should be recognized as a trusted national brand by physicians, consumers and investors, and associated with painless, non-invasive colorectal health services.

Spectrum worked with CRH to establish a creative strategy for the parent company and its centers. We identified the various audience landscapes that the client was targeting.

Spectrum developed logos and identity suites for both CRH Medical Corporation and The Center for Colorectal Health including name choice, color palettes, logo guidelines, letterhead, envelope, mailing labels, and business cards for each individual.

The visual identity was carried through to the consumer brochure and interchangeable inserts that are used by sales representatives and the centers themselves to market their services. Spectrum also designed a nine-piece physician referral package used to recruit new physicians for their future center openings. The package includes a heavy-weight, custom-designed pocket folder with business card slits, physician brochure, ligator tool marketing slick, consumer information marketing slick, and medical director biographies.

The Web site, http://www.crhcenter.com/, is segmented by the three primary audiences: patients, medical professionals and investors. When a visitor first comes to the site, they are directed to the patient home page, but can choose an alternate section and save their home page choice for their next visit. Each section has its own palette and unique navigation, although some of the content is shared by multiple sections, the templates adapt to the section the visitor is currently in. The site covers each of the centers' specialty areas: hemorrhoid removal using their patented CRH-O'Regan Disposable Hemorrhoid Banding System, anal fissure treatment and colorectal cancer screening. Flash and video demonstrations show patients and physicians how the banding system works, video-based patient testimonials are featured, a stock quote is available for investors, and patients can find a center closest to them through the location finder. A forum is also provided so patients can discuss topics with each other or with site experts.

The site is built with a content management system and custom documentation is provided so the client can easily maintain the content of the site without programming expertise. Spectrum also implemented various search engine optimization techniques to bolster the site's ranking in search engines, and WebTrends Analytics 8 to track web metrics.

In two months, the 72-page site has increased to over 2,600 visits each month with more than 40% of its referrals coming from search engines.