MINNEAPOLIS, MN - SEPTEMBER 05: General views of the Mayo Clinic Sports Medicine building on ... [+] September 05, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Photo by AaronP/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)GC ImagesHow do you create a healthcare company that is known for being superior on some critical dimension? Indeed, there are few examples where the practice brand is more valuable and important in driving patient decision-making than the doctor brand.Among the few exceptions are brands like MD Anderson Cancer Center, Barrow Neurological Institute, and the Mayo Clinic. Each brand has achieved ownership over distinct attributes that matter to patients. MD Anderson stands for superior cancer treatment. Barrow Neurological Institute finds new treatments for the most difficult neurological diseases. And the Mayo Clinic solves the unsolvable by assigning teams of multidisciplinary doctors to diagnose and deliver superior patient carea process that is rare in healthcare.To understand how a practice becomes a great healthcare brand, conveying superiority on some important dimension, I reached out to Leonard Berry, PhD, a University Distinguished Professor of Marketing and Regents Professor at the Texas A&M Mays Business School and a Senior Fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement.Dr. Berry has been studying healthcare for nearly 25 years, including spending time at the Mayo Clinic and co-authoring Management Lessons from Mayo Clinic with Kent Seltman. Below are his insights, including quotes from the book, regarding how the Mayo Clinic became an enduring world-class healthcare brand.The Mayo Clinic BrandGreat marketing doesnt start with an ad campaign or a message. Yet many nonmarketers think that the message is the driving force. As an example, whenever political parties find themselves on the wrong side of voter turnout, their reaction is to blame the message or the communication channel rather than the policy or ideology itself. Similarly, for many companies, when sales languish, they turn to advertising as the culprit and often fail to consider the core positioning (i.e., value creation) that the product or service creates.MORE FOR YOUBut great brand-building starts with a unique (relative to competitors) and relevant (for consumers) position in the marketplace that enables the brand to deliver excellence. In other words, a great brand starts by creating real, meaningful value on some dimension via product and/or service delivery. It isnt fluff. It isnt a message. While these elements matter, the heart of a superior brand is being able to create significant, meaningful value for the target consumers.When asked to summarize the Mayo brand, Dr. Berry indicates that the Mayo Clinic was founded over 150 years ago by the Mayo brothersDrs. William and Charles Mayo. They believed that better patient outcomes emerged from team-based care in which clinicians from different specialties pooled their expertise. The Mayo brothers never believed that one doctor should be expected to know all that there was to know in caring for patients with complex illnesses. The Mayo brothers also were dedicated learners, consistently traveling to observe and learn from doctors and experts in other parts of the world. They built their practice around research, learning, and working together to diagnose and solve patient problems. This belief drove the founders to establish an endowment to support medical research and education at Mayo Clinic in an effort to identify and deliver superior patient care.Dr. Berry indicates that what underscores Mayo is the integrated health system. Fragmentation is common in healthcare, with different doctors treating the same patient not coordinating their efforts. Conversely, Mayo operates like a department store of healthcare specialists who work together.. The book states (page 5) that Mayo Clinic thinks of itself as a three-shield organization. The central and larger shield in the Mayo Clinic logo represents patient care. But integrally linked to patient care are the complementary shields of medical research and medical education.A Truly Patient-First BrandWhen talking with Dr. Berry about the Mayo Clinic brand, there is a consistent emphasis on patient centricity. This is actually quite novel. While nearly all companies claim to be consumer- or patient-centric, the reality is that there is tremendous variance in the ability to deliver consumer centricity. Simply sit in on any C-level meeting and see how much time is centered on the consumer versus cost-cutting, financial reporting, efficiency-driving operations, and so forth. As an example, I share a conversation with a former C-level leader who currently sits on a number of Fortune 500 boards. The individual recounted their experience on one board where the word consumer did not come up once in the first board meeting. The board member shared their observation with the chair of the board, who claimed the company was deeply focused on creating value for consumers. The new board member expressed surprise because the emphasis of the board meeting was on creating financial value for the firm rather than creating value for consumers, which would then lead to a more sustainable version of firm-level financial value. At that moment, the chair grasped the concept of consumer-centricity, leading to a shift in future discussions and even in management staffing decisions.I highlight this distinction because being consumer-centric is often thrown around without any discipline or attention to developing strategies to create more unique, relevant value for consumers that strengthens the brand and business.To put the Mayo patient-centricity in perspective, consider the following quote from Dr. William Mayo in 1895: Above all things let me urge upon you the absolute necessity of careful examinations for the purpose of diagnosis. My own experience has been that the public will forgive you an error in treatment more readily than one in diagnosis, and I fully believe that more than one-half of the failures in diagnosis are due to hasty or unmethodical examinations (p. 16).When asked how a patient would experience a difference at Mayo versus another healthcare provider today, Dr. Berry indicated that there are a number of clues that signal patient-centricity.Mayo focuses on accuracy as a central priority. To increase accuracy, Mayo has implemented a plus-one system where all employees are empowered to leverage peers, superiors, and other experts to diagnose accurately. This is not hidden from patients but rather is observed by them. The patient witnesses and sees the coordination between doctorssomething that patients are not used to seeing anyplace else. They see the clinician huddles in the hallway talking about a patient. Or, a patient may observe one physician calling another physician to discuss the case in front of the patient. This reinforces the department store of doctors across different specialties coming together to diagnose and deliver care.Patients observe unhurried care. A hallmark of the Mayo Clinic is that they take their time with the patient and dont rush. Patients experience and observe something you rarely see anymoreunhurried care. A typical doctors visit today at other healthcare facilities can last 8 to 12 minutes, where the patient feels an anxious sense of urgency. Superior patient care cant feel like this.Patients encounter an elevated service experience. Mayo pools talent to work as a team to address patient needs and deliver service. A story from the book illuminates how a doctor was pulled into a patients room by a staff member, something that typically isnt done at other practices with an emphasis on hierarchy.A Macro View of the Different Types of CluesIn the book, Berry references Carbone and Haeckels (1994) three types of clues. These general signal categories are present throughout the Mayo Clinic brand. The first type is a mechanic clue, or inanimate, sensorial element that includes the sights, sounds, smells, and facility design. Berry highlights how Mayo takes great care in the design, architecture, and environment in which it operates: The space matters because it reinforces the direct medical experience. How a patient feels when they first walk into a Mayo Clinic can help them feel like they are being cared for by the best. It signals attention to detail, respect for the patient and their experience, and recognizes that although patients may have to wait for an appointment, they should wait in a comfortable setting.The second type of clue is a functional clue." This is the technical quality of the service delivered and is essential for meeting expectations. The Mayo Clinics brand rests on solving, through integrated care, the most challenging of cases. All of the research and investment in developing new procedures, processes, systems, and approaches is designed to ensure that the core functioning of the enterprise remains superior. At the time Berry wrote the book, Mayo Clinic had over 7000 active research projects designed to improve patient experience and outcomes. Mayos Plus-One approach meant that doctors and staff were constantly observing and discussing patient care. Berry described this as practicing medicine in a fishbowl doctors are especially well-trained at Mayo due to the extent to which they learn from each other, resulting from team-based observation, review, and consultation.The third type is a humanic clue. These are the ways in which service providers show upfrom their appearance to their behavior. These clues are critical for exceeding expectations and can provide patients with a feeling of being exceptionally cared for. Every interaction a patient has across the Mayo enterprise serves to create a gestalt of how the patient is cared for.Final Thoughts On The Building of a Great BrandThe Mayo brothers had a singular value: The needs of the patient come first. This value drove them to create a differentiated and deeply compelling position in the marketplacethe first integrated, not-for-profit medical group practice in the worldthat, as a result, has become one of the largest healthcare practices globally (page 4). It is anchored on the desire to more accurately diagnose and solve the toughest conditions through cooperative and integrative care. By creating processes, systems, culture, and an ecosystem of research, training, and development that supports this unique position, the result has been that people from around the world turn to Mayo Clinic for help. As the Mayo Clinic demonstrates, sustainably superior brands identify and then deliver exceptional value in ways that no other organization can.Join the Discussion: @KimWhitler