Reinvigorating a Pioneering Brand With Cord Blood Registry

Challenge: 

Cord Blood Registry (CBR), a pioneer and leader in the cord blood stem cell banking industry, needed to grow the number of expectant parents who choose to bank their babies’ cord blood stem cells with CBR.

In researching the market and interviewing and surveying expecting parents, both CBR’s customers and parents who chose not to bank, we learned that there were four challenges we’d need to overcome in convincing parents to bank:

  • Low awareness of cord blood banking among expectant parents
  • Low understanding of stem cell science and medical applications
  • Relatively high cost of banking
  • Lack of agreement among physicians on the benefits of banking

We also discovered three barriers to growing preference and the number/percentage of banking parents who choose CBR:

  • Confusion around the Cord Blood Registry’s private banking offering and nonprofits that offer let parents donate cells free of charge
  • Competitors co-opting CBR’s branding and messaging, making differentiation among un-savvy expecting parents challenging
  • Low understanding of the benefits of CBR’s superior quality and research-backed offering

Strategy: 

To counter these challenges, we’d need to…

  • Make the science accessible;
  • Position CBR’s superior offering in plain English and in terms of things parents value;
  • Reach parents outside the current target audience; and
  • Leverage the credibility of physicians, parents, and others who believe in banking.

We repositioned the brand–crafting new brand messaging, value proposition statements, product benefit and feature statements, and a new brand identity.

CBR's new logo lockup
CBR’s new logo lockup

 

New storage kit design
New storage kit design

 

We redesigned and completely reimagined the responsively designed website and mobile website. The content strategy was built upon the above insights and prominently featured videos of CBR customer and employee stories and physician testimonials, info graphics to explain stem cell science and CBR’s clinical trial outcomes. We also developed an online enrollment process, designed landing pages and lead capture forms and downloads to grow qualified leads.

We developed email marketing campaigns to persuade existing customers to bank the stem cels of their second (or third) babies and to refer CBR to expecting friends in exchange for a discount on their annual storage fees. We also targeted prospective customers via email, print, direct mail, mobile, and wall boards and brochures in physicians’ offices.

Finally we created a patient education microsite that supported physicians in educating patients on cord blood banking.

My Role In The Solution: 

I was part of a great team of talented designers, developers, program and project managers. To this team and project I contributed…

  • Developing new positioning for the brand
  • Developing a new tagline that aligned with the company’s long-term vision–“Healthy Futures Born Here”
  • Developing the content and creative strategy for customer and prospect email, online, print, direct, billing, and medical office campaigns
  • Wrote scripts, created storyboards, and directed videos
  • Writing copy and managing copywriters, designers, and HTML developers who produced campaign content
  • Serving as creative director for the website, patient education microsite, and marketing campaigns
  • Designing the A/B testing strategy to identify highest-converting pages and copy
  • Developed taxonomy, tagging, personae, and tracking for Sitecore CMS

Results: 

Double-digit increases in brand awareness, preference, and referrals. Online enrollments contributed to significant percentage of new enrollments.