Dojo Agency

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the system creative director at Adventist Health; I essentially handle all marketing, communication, strategy, and advertising work. We are an integrated network healthcare system and we cover four states: California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. Our network consists of 25 hospitals, 420 clinics, and we're one of the leading health providers in that four-state footprint. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Dojo Agency?

At the time, Adventist Health just went through a big refresh and rebranding process at the system level and one of the projects we came up with, the Living Well program, needed a refresh as well.

The program is a community-based effort that we run across the entire system and it is unique because it was purely developed for the community — all of the resources, information, access to care, and so on are based at a local level. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

They worked with us from soup to nuts. They developed a new style guide, which included everything from logo, imagery, colors, and fonts. They also worked on our voice and tone, and how we would interact with people.

We fleshed out the main touchpoints with them — how we could connect with communities, what our goals were, what made the program distinct from Adventist Health in general, and so on. On the functional side, they also created a new website, printed materials, social media posts, and advertising campaigns.

What is the team composition?

We worked with an account manager and Jeff (CEO).

How did you come to work with Dojo Agency?

I've previously engaged with Jeff when we were both working together at another hospital network. Dojo Agency has done a lot of work with insurance co-ops and they had a really good grip on community health and population health in general, so that's why we brought them in.

What is the status of this engagement?

They worked with us on the Living Well project from May 2018–February 2019.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

When I first put together the creative brief for Dojo Agency, I was very clear upfront that we were looking at three areas — we were looking for an overall percentage increase in awareness, image, and preference of the brand.

At the start of the program, it was sitting at around 25%–28% awareness in the competitive markets where we were doing business. We’ve had a lot of campaigns since it first started, but after the first campaign, we jumped to 31%, which was a pretty good bump.

Initially, our image and preference were sitting at around 7%, and their work brought it up to 8.5%, which was to be expected. By the time the third campaign was done, we would have only been in the marketplace for around six months, so I wasn't looking at a huge increase in image and preference.  

How did Dojo Agency perform from a project management standpoint?

Their project management was great. The team was very transparent — they kept us up to speed on where they were with the project, letting us know if there was anything that was holding him back on our side or any issues on their team.

Their account manager was in direct correspondence with my marketing manager when they worked on the site and they had biweekly meetings for updates and so on. Jeff also had his own account management system, which we had access to. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

I think the highlight was bringing the community engagement aspect to the brand, which we were lacking. As I said, one of the reasons why I picked Dojo Agency was their previous work on community-based programs. 

I’d worked with a lot of agencies over the years, some of which were the biggest firms, and they just told us what we wanted to hear all the time. With Jeff, he told us how it was, so I appreciated the honesty. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only constructive criticism I could possibly give would be while they are very passionate about the work they do, there would need to be more data to back up that passion if they were to work in a corporate environment.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Customers should be very specific with their needs, especially around the scope of the project, their budget, and what a win looks like for them. Dojo Agency is a very small, nimble team and they can really work well if you give them a lot of information.