|  Scott Regan

I struggled with whether I wanted to venture into these waters, but there are so many brand lessons in the Tiger Woods saga that I finally decided to jump in feet first.

Tiger Woods is, arguably, the world’s biggest brand. On any level. In any country. In any industry. Period. Even if you want to debate that point, it’s hard not to agree with the premise that his brand is sizeable and robust.

And infallible. Or so we thought.

As the first athlete to earn $1 billion, his brand was once sterling. He was a Golden Boy. And now, his brand is fast approaching rubbish. Accenture has already severed ties with Woods. As the scandal continues to unfold, there will certainly be others. So what can you learn from this debacle that might save your own brand? Plenty. Here’s five lessons that will serve you well.

1. Brands are often tied to people, as organizations take great strides to personify their brands. Your hospital’s brand is inexplicably intertwined with the CEO, the physicians on your medical staff, and your employees. Woods only needed to manage himself. You have to manage 500 to 50,000 individuals, depending on the size of your brand. And any one of them can destroy your brand as quickly as Woods destroyed his. If you are going to manage your hospital’s brand, you have to also manage the reputation of your team — because they are a critical component of your brand.
2. Hubris almost always sinks a brand. It certainly sunk Woods. Because of his own arrogance and overbearing presumptions, he believed that he could behave badly without retribution. When hospital CEOs begin believing their own press releases, trouble is on the horizon. And when those same CEOs believe they are bigger than the organizations they serve, trouble is just around the corner. Hubris has killed many an executive — as well as the brands they were charged to protect and oversee.
3. It takes five to 10 years to build a brand. It takes five to 10 minutes to destroy it. We need brands. They serve as a trust mark, a sorting device. We make conscious and subconscious decisions all day long based on brand trust. Ever purchase Advil for $9.99, when the generic next to it sold for $3.49 and had identical ingredients? Maybe it wasn’t Advil. Perhaps it was Philadelphia Cream Cheese versus the generic. Or maybe it was the physician who was the recent subject of a Medicare fraud investigation that you passed by in favor of a doctor a mile further away. My point is this: The next time Tiger Woods talks about the values that was inculcated in him as a child (although I can’t believe this will happen anytime in the near future), how much of his rhetoric will you actually believe? Now take your answer and apply it to your collective community next time your hospital is trying to defend its brand and the values associated with it.
4. Even in times of utter and total brand turmoil, brands can survive. However, pulling this off takes skill. And speed. Tiger Woods displayed neither as he cocooned in his home, forgoing an appearance at his own charity golf tournament and hiding behind the “private matters should stay private” comment. Had Woods stepped forward into the white hot spot light and bared his soul, showing remorse for what he had done, and pledging to take steps to rectify his sins, many would have raised his pedestal even higher. We all fall at some point. Individuals and institutions. It’s not the fall that is unforgiveable. It is not rising up after the fall and soaring even higher.
5. It’s better to take all of your medicine in one dose, that have it administered to you over several weeks or several months. Woods is learning this lesson the hard way, as new stories emerge nearly every day. With each new story, the Woods brand continually erodes, and Woods has more to answer for. When your brand is in trouble, it is better to assume that the things you are hiding will eventually emerge, rather than hope they are never uncovered. Step forward, put it all on the table, and be done with it. Not only is this brave, it shows that you have taken responsibility for your actions — even those that have yet to be disclosed. It’s easy to forgive someone who tells the whole truth, shows remorse, and pledges to do better. It’ hard to forgive someone who does otherwise.

You’ve worked hard to develop a strong hospital brand. Take a minute to think about how fast it can come tumbling down, should your hospital accidentally kill a patient, the Justice Department launches an investigation into billing fraud, your purchasing manager is accused of taking bribes, or your CEO is charged with sexual harassment. Now think about what you will do to save your brand from ruin. The time you spend planning now could save your brand in the future.

Last week, we conducted a poll on the eight most common brand platforms for hospitals, and 135 of you responded. The results: 60% of respondents listed “customer service” as their hospital’s primary brand platform, followed by medical staff reputation (13%), clinical outcomes (13%), teaching and research (7%), and facilities (7%).

Those categories without a single mention: Technology (surprise!), physician relationships, and financial stewardship. So maybe the Big Eight is really the Big Five, although every category with the exception of teaching and research was considered to be a secondary brand platform by at least six hospitals.

Quite a few hospitals also provided their own secondary brand platforms that were not on the list of eight. Among those that were included were compassion, affordability, accessibility, trust, and world-class. The question is, are these really brand platforms? Or are they brand values?

Dictionary.com lists the sociological definition of values as is “the ideals, customs, institutions, etc., of a society toward which the people of the group have an affective regard. These values may be positive, as cleanliness, freedom, or education, or negative, as cruelty, crime, or blasphemy.”

If you are searching for a home, the home itself has a certain brand platform: wealthy, poor, urban, rural, etc., depending on where the home is. And depending on the location of the home and how it is constructed, it can also carry specific values: clean, cost-efficient, warm, drafty, and secure, to name just a few. But these are attributes of the home that help convey the home’s brand. They are not the brand platform itself.

You can purchase a home in a down-trodden neighborhood whose brand platform is under-class by virtue of the neighborhood that surrounds it, and elevate the brand platform by adding a Florida room, re-landscaping the yard, and adding exterior lights. By focusing on the brand’s values, you can strengthen, weaken, or even change the brand platform.

A hospital I worked with a few years back focused on clinical outcomes as its primary brand platform and customer service as its secondary brand platform. It had a single brand value it wanted to own in the marketplace, that value being “trust.” The hospital felt that unless the community really trusted the hospital, it would never fully develop their brand platforms.

That single value of “trust” was imbedded in every internal and external communication. Hospital executives obsessed on this value. The external marketing communications conveyed images of trust and had the word unobstrusively included in every message that was released into the marketplace. Within five years, the percent of people who mentioned this hospital by name when asked what hospital they trusted the most went from 32% to 74%.

And market share went from from 37% to 51% during this same time.

All by understanding their brand platforms, brand values, and interweaving them together.

Take our three-question survey on brand platforms by clicking here.

When was the last time you gave any thought to the platform your hospital’s brand was anchored to? Was the brand platform a deliberate choice, or did it “just happen”? Even more important, do you know what your brand platform is and whether that platform is effective?

After conducting extensive research over the past 10 years, I have found that 95% of all hospitals anchor themselves to one or more of the following eight brand platforms.

1. Customer Service
2. Clinical Outcomes
3. Teaching and Research
4. Technology
5. Medical Staff Reputation
6. Physician Relationships
7. Financial Stewardship
8. Facilities

The two that dominate hospital marketing is customer service and clinical outcomes. Hospitals usually make up their minds to win the war for patients either by providing excellent personalized attention and creature comforts or by leading the marketplace in clinical indicators. It’s a fight between “we’ll love you” and “we’ll save you.”

The second tier of brand platforms includes teaching and research, technology, and medical staff reputation. Often, two of these are naturally coupled together. Teaching and research hospitals tend to migrate toward their strength, laying claim to the belief that because of their status, they are simply better and more sophisticated. But it’s not uncommon in markets where there is a major teaching institution to see a community hospital build a brand around technology and medical staff reputation. Consistent messaging is the key.

Finally, the third tier consists of physician relationships, financial stewardship, and facilities. While not as likely brand platforms as the first five on the list, they are still common, and are often a secondary brand platform for hospitals. The difference between medical staff reputation and physician relationships is that the latter is grounded in the collective pedigree of the medical staff (board certifications, fellowships, specialized training, awards and recognition, etc.) while the latter uses the medical staff to provide professional references for the hospital (physician testimonials, physician practice patterns, where physicians receive their own care, etc).

Financial stewardship is — and will probably always be — a stronghold of sorts for safety net hospitals, which must maintain a public dialogue about the need foir public funding. Integrated delivery systems, on the other hand, have given rise to the facilities brand platform, as they try to win market share by having a hospital, physician’s office, urgent care center, and/or imaging facility on every corner in town.

Any one of these brand platforms can be successful, if executed correctly. Where hospitals get into trouble is moving from platform to platform, creating diffusion as well as confusion. To create a strong, sustainable brand, define your platform — whether it’s on the above list or not — and use it to create a strong foundation for everything that you do, from operations to communications.