CASE STUDY: Lifespan

Lifespan, a social service agency for adults in the "second half of life," had a generally positive but unfocused and fragmented community image. Many members of the community were aware of Lifespan, but were unaware of the specific services Lifespan offered. Even those who were familiar with Lifespan did not have an integrated awareness of its services-they only knew the one or two services that they had used.

One of the biggest challenges for Lifespan was the fact that the majority of their services are provided to the "frail elderly," but the services for which they can charge sliding-scale fees are for the younger segment of their audience (those 50 to 65). These were the programs that Lifespan wanted to boost participation in, so therefore we wanted to appeal to this younger audience segment. People, however, don't generally like to think about the "aging issues" that Lifespan addresses. People tend to procrastinate when it comes to these issues, which leads to a population of frail elderly who are not adequately prepared (financially or otherwise) for life as a dependent adult.

IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY
Cognitive Marketing began with its Market Voicing process to develop the appropriate positioning for Lifespan-what it's best at, for whom, and why. We interviewed administrators, board members, staff, community leaders, referral sources, volunteers, and clients. What we learned is that the Lifespan brand is an attitude, not just a set of services. The attitude of the staff and volunteers is contagiously empowering and the nature of many of the services provided are for proactive, self-determining adults.

This brand fits well with the attitude of Baby Boomers, and the branding project came at the point in time when America's 78 million aging Baby Boomers were turning 50 at the rate of 10,000 a day, and had been for six years. It became apparent to us that we needed to focus communications on this younger segment's attitude-while not forgetting the needs of older adults. Our intention was to build a relationship with this demographic as they entered the "second half of life."

Because the community had an unclear image of Lifespan, we needed to make the brand message clear. It needed to be seen as the vibrant, resourceful agency for take-charge older adults who are proactive rather than reactive to crisis situations. Lifespan knew that they were going to get the elderly crisis clients no matter what. However, by targeting people age 50-plus, we would be marketing to people who could use Lifespan services themselves or for their aging parents, relatives, and friends. It's a win-win situation for Lifespan.

We articulated Lifespan's brand in the following positioning statement:

Lifespan is the comprehensive resource for people determined to seize the Opportunity of Age. Lifespan is more than the sum of its high quality, responsive programs, services and staff; it is an energetic community of self-motivated people who have in common an appreciation for the richness of the human experience. Lifespan enables people to take hold of the freedom they earn by living, and use it to realize all that makes life worth the effort.

Furthermore, we gave Lifespan the tagline Take it on! We redesigned their logo and stationery to incorporate the tagline and better reflect the positioning, and we developed a branding campaign that consisted of three print ads and a television commercial.

EVIDENCE OF RESULTS
Though it is too soon for results of the branding campaign, the initial internal buy-in within the Lifespan organization was overwhelming. The board and administration connected strongly with the brand position and asked us to prepare the positioning and our new creative approach for presentation at their prestigious yearly luncheon. When the positioning was presented to the staff, they responded enthusiastically. The new logo and tagline now appear prominently in Lifespan communications.