ZORG's solid growth story

ZORG is proving a real breath of fresh air in the healthcare landscape of the Flemish Ardennes, stemming from the intensified cooperation between AZ Sint-Elisabeth (Zottegem) and az Glorieux (Ronse).

Having worked closely together since 2018, the two healthcare institutions are also part of the E17 hospital umbrella network. Today, and certainly in the future, this cooperation is set to push even harder for exceptional, top-quality and accessible care for all residents of the Flemish Ardennes with specific needs.

Establishing a dedicated healthcare brand for the Flemish Ardennes
How exactly do you go about marketing a new partnership between two separate hospitals? And how can you ensure that such a great initiative is supported by people both inside and out of the organisation? More importantly, how can you bring this new, top-notch and affordable healthcare initiative closer to people in the Flemish Ardennes?

Creating a brand that offers a helping hand and closeness to the people
Following thorough brand research, Springbok were able to clearly position the brand. This led to the development of a whole new brand identity and associated communications strategy, both tailored to a diverse set of target groups..

In-depth brand research
Everything starts with good insight into the market. What are the various trends affecting healthcare institutions? Which target groups do we need to consider? How do the day-to-day operations of AZ Sint-Elisabeth and az Glorieux actually work? The answers to these questions provided the lion's share of the content for this project.

A combination of solid desk research, targeted site visits and extensive stakeholder interviews allowed us to lay out our guiding principles and carefully define the brand's positioning. When it came to the most relevant stakeholders, Springbok was also able to develop appropriate target group descriptions in the form of marketing personas.

A clear brand strategy
The new branding needed to be adaptable and relevant – and stay relevant - to the various target groups, which include patients, doctors and other staff at the two healthcare institutions. What’s more, we were mindful of incorporating two of ZORG’s key pillars: innovation and the validation of patients, employees and achievements within the organisation.

The brand identity
ZORG is profoundly embedded within the Flemish Ardennes, and we wanted to make that clear with a brand-new logo. The logo, depicting a hill and a road that are simultaneously two helping hands, symbolises the road to ZORG (care) itself. What’s more, it also symbolises ‘caring’ and ‘working together’.

The accompanying slogan ‘dicht bij jou’ (close to you) shows that the organisation literally brings care closer to the people. At the same time, this also serves as a reference to its mission: to gain a good understanding of each target group and put together a relevant and affordable healthcare offering.

In terms of photography, we chose always to depict people interacting in non-clinical scenarios, focusing on interactions between doctors, patients and staff. Springbok also developed a library of illustrations that convey themes of growth, health, humanity, and so on.

We delivered a complete brand toolkit, including an informative landing page for internal use, an internal launch video, presentation & newsletter templates, stationary, merchandising etc.

A well-thought-out communication plan
The greatest challenge was to account for the variety of audiences that would be receiving the communications at different times. We had to tailor the communication plan carefully to four separate target groups, each with their own specific needs: patients, internal employees, external medical target groups (GPs, healthcare organisations, etc.) and potential candidates.