William Shutze, MD, a member in community practice in Dallas, has lost no time in putting the new SVS Branding Toolkit to use.
In fact, he was experimenting with it during the SVS Town Hall in mid-September at which it was introduced.
“One of the first things I did was download the member branding banner,” he said. “I have actually embedded that into my work templates on electronic health records at the hospital.” The red banner is larger than his signature and stands out, he said. “I’m hoping the idea will catch on and others will be inspired to do the same thing. It’s a powerful statement.”
He also has taken the audio file from the longer branding video and is now using it for the practice’s “hold” music. “It’s the right length and it gets the message out that we need to send.” He has customized the “leaderboard digital banner” for primary care physicians with pictures of himself and two of the 14 surgeons in the practice. This has become the footer for all correspondence with a referring physician. “It’s in my computer; I just drag it onto the correspondence; I don’t have to create it every time.”
Additionally, Shutze has customized the fliers and begun doing some selected targeting. “For this to be as impactful as it can be, there’s going to have to be widespread adoption by the members,” he said. “We need to flood the workplace with these branding messages. That’s how branding works.”
He’s also interested to see how other SVS members use the tools. “I’m eager to see the creative ideas they come up with,” he said.
Fliers covering more vascular conditions will be added. SVS and Springboard will begin targeting consumers, “raising awareness of what we really do,” said Joseph Mills, MD, who leads the SVS effort. Following that initiative will be a campaign aimed at medical students and residents.
Another effort will target CEOs and hospital administrators. “Most of the public fails to realize how much we do,” said Mills of how vascular surgeons add expertise in OB-GYN, urology and trauma cases, among other specialties. “They don’t realize how much support we provide.”
