BMI Healthcare

Background
The challenge
The insight
The solution
The result

Background

BMI Healthcare is the UK’s largest provider of independent healthcare, with 47 acute care private patient hospitals spread widely across the UK with over 2,400 beds. BMI Healthcare handles over 250,000 inpatient and 750,000 outpatient visits each year, and nearly half of the procedures undertaken for patients are of a major or complex nature.

The challenge

When Merchant Healthcare Marketing initially started to work together with BMI Healthcare it was a disparate group of 17 private patient hospitals. There was an inconsistent brand identity and each hospital was working towards a different
set of marketing objectives.

Our challenge has been:

To provide BMI Healthcare with a focussed integrated marketing approach that could be implemented simply and effectively at a local level
To develop a consistent look and feel for the brand to reflect its core values of care and trust
To engage with each of the BMI hospitals and its major stakeholders
To build tools to simplify the working procedures and allow effective sharing of information

The insight

Merchant Healthcare Marketing has worked in partnership with BMI Healthcare as its integrated agency for the past 15 years. Merchant Healthcare Marketing has nurtured relationships with each of BMI’s hospitals and its major stakeholders from PCTs to GPs and consultants.

The solution

Over the past 15 years Merchant Healthcare Marketing has provided a fully integrated marketing service on a national and localised basis to BMI Healthcare and the network of BMI hospitals.

This has included:

Branding
Design
Strategy
Marketing
Communications
Digital
Campaigns
Advertising
Direct marketing
Website
Digital marketing
Public relations
Partnership marketing
Sponsorship
Events

We have worked with each hospital to implement the marketing strategy on a national, regional and local level.

We have achieved this through setting up national marketing conferences, regional marketing workshops and regular individual face to face meetings.

Working in close partnership with BMI over the years has enabled us to develop a series of integrated marketing campaigns that have been executed at a national and regional level.

This includes branding and marketing the core products offered by BMI including cosmetic surgery, weight loss surgery and women’s health. The launch of these products has included the brand identity, printed marketing collateral, advertising creative, PR and digital marketing.

Although we meet regularly with the individual hospitals and their stakeholders, we have proactively explored and pursued ever more time and cost efficient ways of working with BMI Healthcare and its individual hospitals. This led to the development of our own online marketing and advertising management and ordering systems.

It allows each individual hospital’s marketing department to access and share the entire group’s marketing activity.

The BMI advertising ordering system allows each hospital to view online all existing advertising collateral and very simply order a specific ad tailored to their exact requirement.

These systems have simplified the working procedures and allowed us to act as BMI Healthcare’s brand guardian enforcing strict application of the brand guidelines, and giving BMI a strong and consistent look and feel.

The result

Working in partnership with BMI Healthcare for the past 15 years, our focus has been on offering first class client service, and developing robust and trusted relationships with each of the individual hospitals and their stakeholders.

We have made a significant contribution developing and growing BMI’s marketing function that supports the overall BMI Healthcare brand, the individual hospitals and the range of products offered.

We have streamlined working processes over the years to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, information and marketing assets between each of the 47 geographically spread hospitals.