Over the past decade, a decentralised approach to hospital portfolio management had created an inefficient and inconsistent brand identity for Healthscope. Brand awareness and strength were largely driven by individual hospitals, with low recognition or understanding for Healthscope as a group brand.

The internal design resource has done its best to respond to the expectations of stakeholders, but without an overarching brand design strategy and with the inevitable creep of time the number and inconsistency of brand assets have become unmanageable.

Our stakeholder research identified strong recognition across the organisation that the Healthscope brand was dated and not aligned to the new business strategy. However, there wasn’t an appetite for a full rebrand, given other priorities in the healthcare landscape. There was also strong equity in many of the local hospitals and it was also deemed too disruptive for the business to change everything.

We needed to retain the core brandmark and develop some smart solutions to strengthen and build the brand. Our objectives were to make the profile of Healthscope as a whole more contemporary, flexible and appealing, better able to support individual hospital brands and initiatives such as staff recruitment, align individual facilities and services, refresh and revitalise the brand and provide practical tools for stakeholders to better manage the brand.

Working together with key stakeholders across the group, we stress-tested a range of different brand architecture scenarios. After carefully considering feedback from patients, practitioners, staff, and strategic business objectives, it was agreed there was significant equity in the local hospital and clinic names, but Healthscope needed to be more recognised at every facility.

To strengthen the Healthscope link, a brand endorsement of ‘by Healthscope’ was added to the hospital and clinic brandmarks. This was further supported with ‘OneHealthscope’ internal communications and the new ‘community of care’ positioning.

New brand messaging, personality and tone were also developed to make the brand more relatable and approachable. Templates and style guides were also created to make it easier for all parts of the organisation to deliver consistent, high-quality communications.

The icon and the teal needed to remain as the primary brand colour. We also had 42 hospitals and clinics that needed to keep their existing signage and wayfinding.

Through a consultative process, we explored solutions to each challenge and presented a range of options that could address issues with different solutions from a simple clean-up to a complete rebrand. Working through with the executive leadership group we settled on a solution that would achieve the strategic and communication goals while avoiding the complexity of a complete rebrand.

With limited opportunity to change or modify the brandmark we evolved it to work better in all applications. Fixing some issues like legibility and limited lock-up options. We also added ‘by Healthscope’ to connect every branded opportunity to the group brand.

This combined with a distinct, modern, and friendly font, evolved graphic elements, and an extended colour palette to create a flexible, engaging, and friendly visual language for Healthscope and all 42 hospitals and clinics.