About the Client
Meddcare Somerset is a trading name of the not-for-profit social enterprise Devon Doctors, which has been providing urgent out-of-hours GP care in its home county for more than 20 years.
In April 2018, Somerset Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), went out to national advert to procure an Integrated Urgent Care Service based upon NHS England’s national service specification. The CCG invited ‘expressions of interest’ from any qualified service provider. This procurement was conducted on behalf of Somerset CCG by NHS South, Central and West Commissioning Support Unit.
Devon Doctors was initially named to reflect the area it served. After being awarded the contract to provide an Integrated Urgent Care service to Somerset (It is NOT the same as just having an out of hours GP service and a 111 service.)
It is an Integrated Urgent Care Service and there are a number of important differences. The CAS ( Clinical Assessment Service) for example.), they decided to rename and rebrand themselves to better reflect their values and with a view to the future and securing contracts in other locations throughout the UK.
The aim was to come up with a name that encompassed the organisation’s values as well as being something that would be transferable to other location’s, were they to grow and be awarded contracts for other regions of the UK.
We had numerous meetings with the team at Devon doctors to present ideas and take feedback. These meetings were a valuable source for some of the bigger decisions that were made on the direction of the brand.
Industry
Services
Naming
Renaming the existing Devon Doctors brand for Somerset
Our first task was to come up with a new name for the Integrated urgent care service.
We held an initial workshop to help us identify the brand positioning and what each stakeholder felt was important for the brand name to communicate.
We needed to find a name that would clearly communicate the service with its target audience, enhance awareness, differentiate itself from competitors and establish trust.
It was explained to us early in the process that whilst members of the public may come into contact with the brand, that it was not going to be user facing and was in fact more likely to be seen and interacted with by healthcare professionals and industry workers.
We took the information from the initial workshop and began exploring naming concepts and keyword associations.
The naming structure needed to be direct, distinctive, memorable but not too funky or abstract.
We conducted a number of stakeholder meetings throughout the process. Once we had generated a group of names everyone was happy with we once again met with the team, as well as held and managed some focus-groups with members of the public, for feedback and market research on what feelings and thoughts these names could provoke in terms of assumptions on the services provided.
This was really valuable when looking at the next steps.
Exploration & Concept Development
The existing Devon Doctors brand
Part of our initial discussions raised the importance of heritage, Devon doctors had become an established name in its industry and it was favourable (but not essential) that we included a nod to this in our designs. Brand colours, the initials ‘DD’ and the Devon hills were also discussed.
We sketched many concepts that were inclusive of the DD being retained as well as trying out many styles and colours in the process.
The choice of words was very important and choosing the name, and involved a lot of investigation and many factors – names already chosen, negative connotations, other services with a domain name that may use the same name as well as registered businesses and not only in the UK.
The end results was a fantastic brand and design for the customer-facing and internal appearance of the new service, was professional and attractive.
