Brand Evolution, or How Intermedica Became Lexummedica

The purpose of this article is to tell the story of the difficult and complicated process of building a brand. A process that takes place in the difficult market of medical services, extremely sensitive to fluctuations in the economy.

…in simple terms, a brand is a name, sign, symbol or combination thereof created to identify a service or product and to distinguish it from competitors. A strong, i.e. positively and widely recognizable brand helps build customer loyalty and is a key argument in the purchasing decision-making process. It usually takes a very long time to create it, but… it is worth investing in it and taking care of it, because the value of the brand can be enormous and it can significantly affect the valuation of the entire enterprise.

Interesting fact: the value of the strongest brand in the world, which is Coca-Cola, is USD 67.5 billion; the value of the strongest brand in Poland, Orlen, is PLN 3.64 billion.

In January 2010, the international network of Lexum Group clinics, taking over control of Intermedica Ophthalmological Clinics, faced a real problem. On the one hand, there was the great history of the Intermedica brand, high organizational culture, thousands of satisfied customers, well-functioning Clinics, and on the other, the possibility of creating a brand with European reach and drawing on the experience and strength of the Lexum brand.

With such a dilemma, it is difficult to decide…

Fortunately, in order to avoid subjective choices, you can always refer to research. Thanks to them, we obtained information directly from the market, unencumbered by our preferences and emotions. Research conducted among Patients showed satisfactory recognition of the Intermedica brand. At the same time, it turned out that over 70% of Poles are not aware of the possibility of undergoing a refraction procedure. It was a shock for us, but it did not cause fear, but rather motivated us to act.

There could be only one conclusion – let’s preserve the culture, knowledge and experience of the people building the Intermedia brand, but let’s create a new image for it. The image of a brand with European reach, a leader in the private ophthalmology market with Polish roots.

The time of great change is usually painful. We part ways with our habits, and at the same time we fear the future. We had to make difficult decisions: what should the new brand be called, what signals should it send to the environment and what image do we intend to create.

We made three key decisions: firstly, the new brand must be strongly associated with the old name, secondly, it must communicate the Lexum brand, and thirdly, it must retain the colors of the former Intermedica.

In line with our development strategy, we have adopted two assumptions: firstly, we educate Patients by making them aware of the possibility of undergoing a refraction procedure (the message is as simplified as possible in the slogan “We will cure your vision defect”), and secondly, we create a rational brand message – an argument that builds trust in the brand (“over 100,000 procedures, 17 years of experience).

When we had already defined exactly what we wanted to communicate, we decided to “put down” strong roots. The roots of the brand are its identity and the basic identification media that the Patient has the most frequent contact with. We focused on the most important ones, i.e. the internal and external identification of the Clinics, the website and key information materials for Patients. At this point, we can boast of considerable successes: we were the first in the industry to use a speech synthesizer that reads text found on the website pages and we launched a version of the website for people with poor eyesight in the so-called high contrast.

Lexummedica has made a breakthrough change – the rebranding has affected virtually all areas of the clinics’ operation and, most importantly, is strongly supported by Employees.

In every good, cultured family, it is worth informing the closest ones about the most important events first. This way, we save their nerves, but above all, we avoid misunderstandings.

For Lexummedica Clinics, the closest environment is Patients, Employees and Doctors. For them, we have created special, dedicated letters from the Management Board and packages containing the first issue of the Lexummedica bulletin published on this occasion. By taking care of their state of knowledge, we avoided a momentary information noise and smoothly introduced the new brand to the market.

…which means for us that information about Lexummedica circulates as widely as possible. We have an extremely strong presence on the Internet. We exploit the largest Polish portals. We embellish the whole thing with dozens of information and publications in the media. In addition, we create the image of a socially responsible brand by supporting the promotion of the Individual Polish Squash Championships and the Eco Nordic Walking Marathon. Our ambassadors are Monika Pyrek (an outstanding Polish athlete) and Krzysztof Globisz (a recognized Polish actor).

Creating a brand is not everything. We have to take care of it, nurture it and set ourselves new challenges. But this is probably the most enjoyable part. Therefore, in order to reach out to patients, we “moved” the Ophthalmology Clinic to the Shopping Malls. At the LexumSpace stand, consultants provided advice and, if necessary, the possibility of making an appointment for an ophthalmologist visit. Patients also received proof of special care for their health – the Better Vision Guarantee and the LexumCare electronic care system, which significantly improved the comfort of their service. And this is just a promising beginning…