NWEH
Developing a cut-through brand with a stand-out look and feel
NWEH reached out to C21 in December 2021, after they saw we’d won the Prolific North Best Small Agency award. Established in 2016, NWEH grew out of a collaboration between the University of Manchester, Salford Royal Foundation NHS Trust, and Salford Clinical Commissioning Group, providing an accelerated and transformative approach to the design and management of clinical trials, drug and therapy development programmes using data directly from source electronic health records (EHR). Recognising synergy with our experience in healthcare, NWEH commissioned C21 to help them rebrand, reposition, and relaunch, to attract new business and build their profile within the sector.
Challenge
Commercially, NWEH aims to be a leading provider of data-driven clinical trials – design, feasibility, and recruitment. Expanding their current data network to deliver a larger number of trials at the global level, increasing sales, and building long-term, strategic relationships.
Lack of representation within clinical trials is recognised as a threat to healthcare equity. NWEH has developed a transformative system to address this. Via their proprietary software products FARSITE and ConneXon and with sanctioned access to electronic healthcare records, NWEH establishes clinical trials faster – removing the need for recruitment advertising – selecting a diverse and relevant test group. Once approved, participants are continually monitored, providing real-time data and improved patient safety.
Collaborate
From a marketing perspective, NWEH has four clear and measurable objectives:
- Build brand and product reputation and awareness
- Engage new and relevant followers through targeted digital marketing campaigns
- Increase website traffic
- Attract new business
To understand the challenge, we began with an Immersion Session to gauge internal perception. This involved a workshop with employees from commercial, marketing, development, analytics, and clinical. Whilst they are proud of NWEH, the overriding sentiment was that their work has the ability to make a real difference to real lives.
NWEH’s customers include several of the largest global pharmaceutical and research companies. We wanted to understand perceptions amongst this target audience, so we commissioned qualitative research, conducting in-depth interviews with both existing and potential customers. We also produced an in-depth competitor review that moved us from the term ‘innovative’ to ‘transformative’ as we couldn’t compete with the likes of Medable (part of Google) who use wearables to collect trial data.
Create
From our insights, we developed our creative approach which included a new positioning –
‘A true-to-life clinical trial provider’.
A new strapline ‘Discover more. Deliver Better’ was also introduced to further reinforce the positioning and value proposition of the brand – ‘We bring treatments to market faster, through smarter, true to life clinical trials’. These were all underpinned by three core brand attributes – Transformative, Expert and People First.
Change
Once the strategic positioning was complete, we moved ahead with the brand launch scheduled for the beginning of March 2023.
Our distinctive, people-first creative reflects the fact that everyone is unique. The three-line logo dynamic, making up the ‘E’ in NWEH, is simplistic yet graphically powerful. Inspired by the bright colours and linear patterns generated by DNA genome sequencing, the logo represents the individuality of every patient and embraces the unique in-depth insights NWEH products offer to discover true-to-life statistics and deliver people-centred clinical trials.
To launch the new brand we delivered display and search marketing through Google, a comprehensive LinkedIn campaign and supporting campaign material for trade and sales requirements.
The new brand has met the client’s criteria to create a clear, impactful, strategic, and durable brand positioning with a consistent tone of voice. This is now helping NWEH carve out its own clinical trial space so they are a clear choice, driving value through technology. Since the start of the advertising campaign, we have increased new LinkedIn followers by two-thirds, compared to the same period prior to the rebrand launch. Geographically, the majority of interaction came from the USA, followed by the UK. Industry-wise, the top five companies engaged include PPD, Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb, Pfizer, and Novartis. This led to six credible and active leads, with each new lead potentially being worth £3-5 million.
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821,713
LinkedIn Combined Impressions
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3,321
Click Throughs
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20%
Increase in website traffic
“From the outset, C21 was collaborative, attentive, and committed to understanding our goals. Their creative solutions and deep understanding of branding and messaging were exceptional. This outstanding piece of work has transformed our brand and we’ve received overwhelmingly positive feedback from stakeholders and clients.”
