UnitingCare Queensland / Blue Care - Live life your way

Name of Organization / Company: UnitingCare Queensland / Blue Care, Brisbane, QLD Australia
Category: E01 - E12 - Award for Innovation in Marketing > E02. Award for Innovation in Brand Renovation / Re-Branding

Entry Title: Blue Care - Live life your way

Essay:

Blue Care, the consumer brand of UnitingCare Qld, was faced with the biggest challenge in the brand’s 60-year history, with unprecedented government reform driving fierce new competition within the aged care market. Our challenge was to evolve the brand and maintain our market presence to ensure we remained relevant in a highly competitive, contestable and changing market.

If we didn’t take a proactive approach to revitalising our brand and engaging with our customers in a meaningful and relevant way, we risked losing market share, revenue, customers and brand relevance. More than that, we risked losing our standing as one of Queensland’s leading aged care providers.

Before we set out, benchmarks and targets were set against brand, campaign and business impact. Key objectives were to: improve Blue Care’s brand health; brand commitment; brand equity; and acquire new and retain existing customers.

Our brand revitalisation activity needed to shift the brand from being seen as a service provider, to one that understands and solves the challenges of our target audience.

We developed the strategy to grow our audience by focusing on our target of women aged 30-54, and maintaining our secondary audience of people aged 65+.

Overlaying behavioural data with ABS, we determined the core audience was the “sandwich generation” – parents with the dual responsibilities of raising children and caring for an elderly parent. This situation puts incredible stress on relationships, as the parent becomes dependent and their child finds themselves caring for the one who’s always cared for them.

Two-thirds of this audience were women who are completely overwhelmed; juggling a myriad of everyday tasks while also trying to look after a loved one and navigate the complex aged care system.

After better understanding our core audience and the customer journey, it was clear our brand messaging needed to position Blue Care as a trusted advisor who could provide the information and support to protect these cherished relationships and guide people through the aged care system.

Stated simply in our revitalised Brand Promise… “Blue Care makes the options clearer, the decisions easier and the outcomes better suited, so you and your family can continue to live life your way”.

Customer insight and research led us to launch our ‘Always’ campaign - celebrating the unique relationships parents have with their children, the individual roles they play, and the importance of maintaining what's always been.

Key elements included:

• New creative execution - We brought our message to life by shining a spotlight on the real-life relationships shared between parents and their children.
• New brand positioning line for Blue Care: “Live life your way” – It expresses freedom, choice, independence and individuality. With the support of Blue Care, you’ll always have that relationship with your loved one, so you can live life your way.
• New innovative services: We established a dedicated specialist advisory team at the Customer Service Centre to deliver on our brand promise as a trusted advisor.
• Integrated media approach - our multi-channel campaign utilised traditional reach-building channels and digital environments where our target audiences were engaging. By buying media that we knew our audience was engaging with, we effectively reached key decision makers.

Visit: http://www.unitingcareqld.com.au/showcase

Overall, the Blue Care brand revitalisation and campaign has been a resounding success—achieving its goal of increasing market share, driving brand awareness, increasing consideration and new business enquiries. The marketing activity has been directly responsible for significant positive changes in relation to brand presence in the market as well as general brand equity.

The final piece that the brand campaign has delivered is a tangible proof that a well structured re-positioning campaign, based on customer insight, research and customer centred design will deliver a return on investment. This will continue to deliver value to our business.

Links:
http://www.unitingcareqld.com.au/showcase
www.bluecare.org.au/always
www.alwaysbluecare.org.au