Healthcare brand valuation remains a high priority to healthcare organizations during COVID-19. The first step is to understand the inherent value of the intellectual assets that comprise your brand.
Brand assets defined. Brand assets consist of a healthcare organization’s creative output, each component of which holds economic value. Just like real estate, automobiles, jewelry, or other forms of tangible property, healthcare brands are valued assets as well. Specifically, healthcare brands are categorized as intangible assets. Unlike real property assets, brands cannot be touched or seen. Yet similar to real property, brands can be created, increase in value, licensed, bought, and sold. Brands can also be used as collateral for loans. So why not seek to leverage the equity that lays untapped in your healthcare brands? This is what several companies have already done in non-healthcare sectors. Leading healthcare organizations are doing the same.
Brand assets elements. Your healthcare brand is the sum of all of its intangible parts. This includes:
- brand names
- marketing collateral
- website content, including copy
- logos and images
- digital images, including photos
- customer lists
- patient and employee testimonials
- blog content
- articles and white papers
- professional and consumer presentations
- wellness publications and workshops
- proprietary software
Most valuable of all? The aggregate consumer trust and goodwill associated with your branding efforts.
What’s your brand’s value? Healthcare brand valuation beings with assets identification and capture. Several studies have shown that the value of a company’s intangible assets are valued higher that its real property holdings, including buildings and inventory. Why? Because a brand’s value includes its associated goodwill among the relevant consuming public. Think of it! Your balance sheet may be holding more assets than you ever thought possible. Now is the time to identify, protect, and extract your health brand’s value.
In the celebrated book, Rembrandts in the Attic, the authors illustrated how IBM and other companies leveraged the value of overlooked intellectual assets to create incremental revenue streams. This strategy is also effective to maintain competitive advantage. To do so, healthcare organizations must first identify what they own that is eligible for intellectual property protection. Second, they must institute a program to protect it. Creating a dedicated team is a good place to start.
Brand Assets Group. A Brand Assets Group (BAG) is a cross-departmental team tasked with four major responsibilities, namely to:
- implement a system to identify and capture your major brand assets;
- create a process to secure ownership or permissions to use third-party owned assets;
- monitor and mitigate the risks associated with brand use; and
- seek opportunities to monetize the value of your brand assets within your relevant geographic market
Your BAG should be comprised of people in various departments who are responsible for various components of your brand. These typically include representatives from various internal and external stakeholder groups: Each BAG member should be trained on how to identify, capture, and monetize your branding assets. They should also know which components of your overall brand’s health they are responsible for, and how they fit into your holistic brand protection, risk, and monetization continuum.
Conclusion: Just like other financial assets, the management of branding assets require a cross-departmental team that works together. The goal is to safeguard and maximize the attributes of these assets for the benefit of the healthcare organization. Creating a Brand Assets Group can help achieve your strategic and financial goals.
Editor’s Note: Brand assets protections for hospitals is the subject of one of our previous articles found here. To discuss how to design and implement a Brand Assets Group for your team, contact us.