Do you have a Corewell doctor?
That was the lead on Detroit Free Press reporter JC Reindl’s story about the newly named hospital system formed earlier this year when Grand Rapids-based Spectrum Health acquired troubled Beaumont Health, the biggest hospital network in southeastern Michigan. The reference was to an earlier advertising and marketing campaign Beaumont ran more than a decade ago when it was a three-hospital network and one of the busiest surgical centers in the country. Meeting Beaumont’s then rigid credentialling standards signaled that a doctor was in the top-tier of their specialty.
The tag line, “Do you have a Beaumont doctor?” was brilliant in that it communicated the superiority of Beaumont doctors without getting into the weeds about credentialing or mentioning that Beaumont docs overwhelmingly trained at elite medical schools like University of Michigan, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins. That Reindl referenced a campaign that hasn’t aired in more than ten years speaks to its lasting memory. Everyone who lived in southeastern Michigan when the “Do you have a Beaumont doctor?” commercials aired remembers them.
Beaumont began to fall on hard times in 2016 when it was merged with two Detroit-area hospital systems of considerably lesser quality. Understandably, the newly formed system kept the Beaumont name, but the Atlanta executive recruited to run the healthcare enterprise, a guy named John Fox, trashed the place implementing aggressive cost cutting and chased away dozens of Beaumont’s top surgeons, anesthesiologists, and other specialists. The Beaumont that Spectrum acquired was the carcass of a once great hospital system, drowning in red ink.
Tina Freese Decker, who was named Spectrum’s CEO in 2018, is clearly proud of the Corewell name and the tag line, “Together, we are now,” which one could mistake for the gibberish President Biden utters when he’s not reading from a teleprompter.
“This name was influenced by some of those responses from our team members,” Freese Decker told Reindl, offering him a crash course in branding. “A name is one component − there is so much that goes into a name: the brand promise, logo and marketing campaigns, and all of the processes with that. So it is a complex process, and I’m really proud of our team for working diligently to figure this out and to engage people in the input process.”
Freese Decker is as clueless about branding as she was about Beaumont’s financial condition. (Beaumont’s losses in the first six months since Spectrum acquired it were nearly double what she projected.) The name hasn’t gone over well with Beaumont employees. When it was first disclosed, I immediately heard from some of my sources at the hospital system, whom I know because I chronicled Beaumont’s decline for a publication called Deadline Detroit.
“How do people come up with this crap and get paid for it? asked one source. “Reaction around here is ‘silent disdain.’ Said another: “All hell breaking loose with Corewell…”
Detroit Free Press readers also reacted negatively to the name.
“How many marketing geniuses did it take to come up with that one,” asked Jason P. Ferrous M chimed, “Was someone hired to create this new name? Maybe next time farm it out to public schools.” Said Brian M, “Anyone who has ever been to a Beaumont location will know that at their core, their main concern is profits and making money. Not helping people.”
Several Freep readers said Corewell sounded like the vulgar term for anal intercourse, which Ian F. said was most fitting. “That is what you get with the bill.”
Say one thing for Michiganders, they have a great sense of humor.
Freese Decker disclosed to Reindl that the firm Spectrum used to help come up with the name was Prophet, which I assume is the San Francisco-based outfit that promotes itself as a “growth and transformation consulting firm” with the emphasis on transformation. So much for Freese Decker’s trademarked “For Michigan, By Michigan” promise she made when announcing her Beaumont acquisition.
“Sweeping levels of change and disruption require new thinking and transformative approaches to growth,” Prophet says on its home page. “From product to purpose, brand to experience, customer insights to operations, we bring the rigor and expertise needed to uncover and realize transformative opportunities.”
As I’d expect, Prophet doesn’t have employees but rather “propheteers” who are “fearlessly human, unexpectedly irreverent, and just corporate enough. We welcome the entire person to the office every day.”
My father warned me that I needed to accept that bullshit sells, and Prophet reaffirms his wisdom. The firm appears to be thriving, with 15 offices in the U.S. and around the world. It claims to have garnered more than 120 awards, including being named among the world’s best marketing firms. I’m guessing there isn’t yet an award for best transformation agency.
I’ve spent considerable time mulling, “Together, we are now” to determine if perhaps there’s some cosmic meaning that escapes me, but after reviewing Prophet’s website I’m convinced it’s a transformational message that’s meaningless, a line that caused famed advertising legend David Ogilvy to roll in his grave. Ogilvy insisted that corporations were better off not advertising than using poorly designed or poorly written advertisements.
America’s advertising, marketing, and branding industry was once dominated by brilliant people who spent considerable time and effort coming up with tag lines that communicated powerful ideas and thoughts. There was obviously something to be said for those famed three-martini lunches.
One of my favorite campaigns of all time was for Miller Lite. When Miller pioneered a beer aimed at people who wanted a brewski with fewer calories, the challenge was convincing people they didn’t have to compromise on taste.
The tag line Miller went with: Everything you always wanted in a beer. And less.
Calling the beer Lite rather than Light was sheer genius.
U.S. and Canadian advertising were once chock full of clever slogans. Three other favorites of mine were Scott Paper’s, “Scott knows a lot about people and Scott’s got the papers to prove it,” Norwegian Airlines,’ “Navigators of the world since it was flat,” and the Toronto Zoo’s, “Noah would be proud.”
The other night I stumbled on some car advertising and was reminded of the once branding brilliance of GM, Chrysler, and the former American Motors. Chevrolet became the top selling car brand in America because of the brand’s early embracement of television and the medium’s early stars. Check out Dinah Shore signing her heart out, “See the USA in a Chevrolet.” Admittedly, it’s too folksy by today’s standards, but the ad was reflective of a period when Americans were proud of their country and respected their corporate leaders.
Then there was this classic Chevy commercial.
Another example of Chevrolet’s brilliance was getting the cast members of Bonanza, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Bewitched to introduce Chevrolet’s new lineup of 1965 cars.
Chrysler deftly used humor in its commercials, like this one.
The branding success of U.S. automakers was their ability to make people feel good and associate their cars with those feelings. When I think of GM today, I immediately think of a grossly overpaid CEO in a leather jacket making millions off the backs of exploited Mexican workers living in poverty.
Whereas U.S. car companies were once capable of generating positive feelings about their products, Michigan’s biggest hospital system can’t even come close to generating public goodwill. The good news is that Michiganders likely won’t have to endure the Corewell name all that long, as I expect Freese Decker will be forced to sell her hospital chain in a few years because of the “massive losses” Spectrum’s former CFO warned she’ll rack up.
I’m no prophet, but I know of some Propheteers who will be readily available to name and transform the new enterprise.