‘Narayana Health’s core proposition "Take Care" is simple yet powerful’

Marketing for a healthcare brand has its own challenges. Does the brand showcase the visual imagery around various ailments or the latest medical technology, equipment and upgrades used to aid cure diseases? How do you convey the brand message when it is used most likely during a stressful time when a loved one is ill?

Last year, Narayana Health took a stance to project itself as an empathetic brand. Steering away from the graphic imagery, well-known healthcare provider Narayana Health, recently rolled out its latest multilingual 360-degree campaign, ‘Apno Ki Fikr’.

While Narayana Health is known for its cardiac care, the campaign highlights the institute’s all-encompassing care expertise, a spectrum of specialities including digestive, bone and spine care among others.

Emphasizing Narayana Health’s role as a healthcare partner, Dr Ashish Bajaj, the company's Chief Marketing Officer says, “As a brand, we have moved ahead in terms of having our brand proposition as ‘Take Care’. We want to ‘Take Care’ of you as a consumer and as a patient. Taking this premise ahead, we are known for our cardiac specialities. Over the years, we have built capabilities across departments. It was important for us to bring that forward in front of our consumers. This is the campaign that brings this across with empathy. We are happy that the films have been appreciated.” Commenting on the brand’s core proposition of ‘Take Care’, he says that ‘it's the most powerful and the simplest of emotion which can be associated with any health care brand. It just says everything.’

The Neighborhood Brand

With the brand strategy to be the ‘neighbourhood brand’, the area around 30 kilometres of specific units becomes the target geography for the brand and the people in this area its core audience. Bajaj states, “Our media strategy is hyperlocal and yes, reach is also important. When you're talking about reach in markets, especially in media-isolated geographies like Karnataka, we have Kannada Television channels to build up the reach. Similarly, for the Kolkata cluster – another media-isolated market – we advertise on Bangla channels to build up reach. We are on Television in Rajasthan and Raipur as well.”

He continues, “However, the neighbourhood takes away the larger share of the buy in terms of our investment, be it digitally or outdoors. BTL also makes a big story for us because that's our in-mile conversions.” With billions of searches happening around health, brand search queries automatically become the lead indicators for Narayana Health. Bajaj points out that people have become a lot more informed. While broad-based searches were done in the past, now people now use exact phrase searches with the right keywords for the information they need. Another lead indicator is the call volume that goes to the brand’s contact centres.

The Covid-19 pandemic brought about a sense of urgency among people about their health and fitness routine. However, post the pandemic, the focus on one’s health, in terms of preventive health check-ups and insurance, has diminished. On its part, Narayana Health is taking the approach of highlighting the ‘prevention is better than the cure’ mantra. Bajaj says, “As a brand, we want to focus on to the preventive part of it because that allows you to take care of yourself and is true to what we promise as a brand to deliver.”

Content Is King

With content playing a key role in connecting with consumers, in March Narayana Health launched a medical docu-series called "InsidER" in multiple languages.  The series featured 10 episodes that showcased the true stories of patients facing life-threatening medical emergencies. The series highlighted the urgency and intensity of emergency care & chronicled the efforts of bystanders, families, emergency physicians and specialists as they race against time to save lives. Each episode provided personal accounts from patients and their families, giving personal and emotional depth to the narrative. Calling "InsidER," ‘the highlight of my career’, Bajaj states that the docu-series has surpassed over 110 million views. He adds, “A unique user has seen at least three episodes with each episode seeing almost 86% completion rate. If you look at it from a marketing point of view it's like a dream come true as it checks the right matrices for any content piece. It has helped us increase our brand search volumes. The number of calls for us seeking emergency care has increased for us.”

An Empathetic Insurance Provider?

A very stressful situation which is a regular feature in all hospitals is dealing with insurance. To remove some stress from the patient and their families, Narayan Healthcare has ventured into the insurance space. Bajaj states, “Policyholders don't trust the insurer and patients don't trust the hospital. This is the same between the hospital and insurance companies. There's a clear need gap for somebody to pick up the slack and say that I need to solve this for a consumer. That was the starting point for us. If I'm invested in a consumer as an insurance provider, it becomes my responsibility to take care of them. If the insurer, the hospital, and the patient are on one side, that only helps the consumer in staying healthy.”

Bajaj believes that such an ecosystem leads to a outcome-led model for a consumer. The insurer, in this case, will recommend its customers to take a health checkup every year. He adds, “It solves a lot of current need gaps and helps us in our journey from being just a hospital to a healthcare brand.” Currently, the product has been soft-launched in Mysuru, its surrounding districts and Bengaluru. Narayana Health will be tying up with other hospitals. Bajaj says, “We have not been in the insurance business from the start. We are known for running hospitals and providing the best care possible. We are taking baby steps and want to provide the best service to the patient. Once we do that, we will rapidly scale.”