Designing a brand strategy

Problem: Invisalign lost ~20% of their customer across all regions in less than 4 years. When surveyed, their dental and orthodontic partners indicated they found the company arrogant and unwilling to listen.

Role: Discovery, competitive research, analysis of customer feedback. Converse with brand and product strategy about situation. Write brand messaging options. Home in on the right messages and propose a brand marketing communications plan.

Process:

Select dentists and orthodondists for a global study.
Create research materials and conversation guide.
Conduct international brand research with orthodontists and dentists in Asia, North America, and Europe.
Create final direction and proposed communication strategy.

Brand Test A

Headline: Our mission: Getting it right.

Logo tagline: Your partnership is worth earning.

We realize our partnership with you should be more like the relationship you have with your patients—one built on trust, dependability, and flexibility.

We want to help support and build your practice for the long term. Because the more successful you are, the more successful we are.

You’ve given us constructive feedback on how we can make working with Invisalign a better experience.

We heard you and are moving forward with small but significant improvements to how we do things. And we’ll follow through on them to earn your trust.

Brand Test B

Headline: We’re working on what matters to you.

As a doctor, you have a unique perspective on what works—and doesn’t work—in your practice.

We’ve been listening to your feedback about the Invisalign experience and are taking action with small but important changes.

Our goal is to make working with us a better day-to-day and long-term partnership.

We want to be a partner you can count on—one that supports and helps build your practice at every step of the process.

Results

Feedback provided by dentists and orthodontists was telling. Align was right to take notice of their reluctance to deal with corporate staff. The arrogance and mistreatment by the Invisalign team had caused serious damage. This was conveyed to us during the research.

Outcomes

Imagery: Strong preference for the man’s image, but also wanted to have an Asian man in Asia. They found the woman’s image distasteful; especially her teeth and gums. They said a woman’s image would be okay, but not this woman. They also indicated that the photo should be an actual person at Align and not stock photography.

Comments included:

Is this a person from Align or the Invisalign team. I want to know who I can complain to.
I want to see someone who looks like me.
I like him, he looks smart, confident, and technically savvy.
He looks like he cares and can help me when I have issues with Align.

Content strategy preferences were:

Headline: Our mission: Getting it right.
Logo tagline: Your partnership is worth earning.
Body copy:
- As a doctor, you have a unique perspective on what works—and doesn’t work—in your practice.
- We’ve been listening to your feedback about the Invisalign experience and are taking action with ~~small~~ but important changes.
- Our goal is to make working with us a better day-to-day and long-term partnership.
- We want to be a partner you can count on—one that supports and helps build your practice at every step of the process.
Dentists and orthodontists reminded Align that they are the customers and the processes needed to support them.
- They also wanted improvements with the Operations center in Costa Rica, especially around quality issues.
- They also did not want small changes, they wanted big changes.
- They wanted the brand campaign to signal both an apology and sincere motivation to change Align’s staff behavior.
- They did not prefer the softer approach about the relationship.