For What Matters | Blue Cross of Idaho

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Defying category conventions to create a more human brand

People don’t think about health insurance every day. So, what should health insurance be thinking about?

Our integrated brand campaign for Blue Cross
of Idaho surfaces what people truly want from their health plan—and what they don’t—for a radically different perspective on what matters.

Project details

Insight

Our research showed that what’s true of consumers in general is especially true of Idahoans: People don’t need heroics from their health insurance company—just a little more reliability on the basics. Do what you say you’re going to do when your customers need you, and stay out of their day-to-day lives when they don’t need you.

Idea

This became the driving force behind the development of a new brand promise: “On your side, not in your way.” This served as the foundation of an organization-wide messaging strategy, which included the development of a series of user-tested brand tenets that define what Blue Cross of Idaho believes and the value they deliver as a company. By putting people first and staying out of their way. By working to ensure you get what you pay for at a price that’s affordable. By following through on a commitment to making healthcare easier to use and understand.

Central to bringing this new brand promise to life was a comprehensive advertising campaign that celebrates life’s simple, everyday moments—moments that have nothing to do with health insurance. But this new strategy also had to hit home with some of our client’s most important stakeholders—employees—and in order to do that, much more than an advertising campaign was in order. Langrand designed a custom launch event aimed at getting employees to rally behind the new brand.

Impact

These coordinated efforts began to gain immediate traction, both among target audiences and inside Blue Cross of Idaho’s own walls. In the first year of the campaign, we increased total brand awareness from 60% to 67% and oversaw an almost 10% rise in mean favorability scores, surpassing the organization’s three- year brand goal far ahead of schedule. The launch event succeeded not only in generating excitement among employees, but also in serving as a springboard for reimagining the Blue Cross of Idaho campus.

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