CASE STUDY: The Wesley Community

For more than 50 years, the Wesley Group has served the needs of a predominantly eastside population of aging adults with facilities for independent living, skilled assistance and nursing-home care. In recent years, challenges facing Wesley have included increasing competition from new and restructured facilities, as well as medical advances and new home-care options, which allow the elderly to forestall seeking residential supervised care.

In our review of competitive marketing efforts, it quickly became clear that promotion among adult-care facilities typically falls into the rut of asset-based marketing, e.g., number of beds, rehabilitation programs, recreational facilities, etc. As a result, while adult care facilities have done a fair job of building awareness and interest in the category, we found that their individual brand identities were rather undistinguished.

THE IMPLEMENTATION STRATEGY
The strategy Cognitive Marketing developed for Wesley began with an evolution of the organization’s name to The Wesley Community. This new identity ties together all of the Wesley facilities (each of which had separate identities) and underscores several facets that make Wesley unique in the marketplace. Primary among them is a continuum of care on a single campus that provides facilities for each stage of aging without requiring residents to move outside of the community to which they’ve become accustomed.

The strategy also included the development of a long-term positioning articulated in the words: “Nurture the Spirit.” This line changes the rules of selling adult-care facilities by shifting the focus away from a facility’s assets to a focus on the underlying needs of the resident and his or her guardians (typically their grown children). The new Wesley Community proposition is reflective of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. It’s not about “comprehensive programs and health care requirements”—these are the basic expectations at the bottom of the pyramid. Rather, we discovered that customers in this case wanted the “ability to retain the spirit of life in the face of declining health,” and “the opportunity to define for themselves their own form of social and spiritual fulfillment.” The Wesley Community promises far more than the fulfillment of basic needs; it addresses the needs of the whole individual—body, mind and spirit. As in other examples of pre-emptive and effective marketing, the answer couldn’t be found in something only our client could do, but it was found in the distinct voice we gave it.

EVIDENCE OF RESULTS
Staff buy-in to this campaign strategy was 100%, perhaps largely because the strategy shone a bright light on the highest value of service these dedicated professionals provide. In doing this, it helped the management of the organization clarify why the Wesley Community is a superior place to work—and important contribution to limiting turnover in this challenging category.

Since the public campaign began in April 2001, the Wesley Community has increased and stabilized its occupancy rates. Anecdotally, Wesley has received praise and many positive comments about the promotional campaign and its messages.