Yield Branding

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director, Development of Ontario Medical Foundation

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

The Ontario Medical Foundation (OMF) is the charitable arm of the Ontario Medical Association. The OMF works to achieve a more equitable, effective, and efficient health-care system in Ontario.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Yield Branding to accomplish?

OMF Rebrand

SOLUTION

How did you find Yield Branding?

Other

Why did you select Yield Branding over others?

Referred to me

What was the size of Yield Branding’s team?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The OMF tasked Yield with coming up with a brand strategy to support our new Case for Support. Yield helped to develop a public facing creative articulation of our strategic platform.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Key collateral pieces to be developed, including a designed Case for Support, Executive Summary, Image Bank/Graphics, and PowerPoint/Proposal/Report template.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Yield worked within our very tight timelines to turn around some fantastic work for the OMF. The team was responsive, attentive to detail, and worked hard to understand our project needs. The team worked extremely hard to deliver results on time.

What was your primary form of communication with Yield Branding?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their ability to take our thoughts and bring them to life creatively was extremely impressive. They took the time to listen, ask questions, and understand our work.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Yield Branding could have done differently?

N/A.

UPDATED REVIEW

Wendy Seed

Senior Director, Ontario Medical Association

Healthcare

201-500 Employees

Toronto, Canada

Confidential

$200,000 to $999,999

May 2019 - Ongoing

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the senior director for member communications and marketing at the Ontario Medical Association. My role is to manage all the marketing and brand management as well as oversee a number of communications channels with our members online and offline. 

The OMA is the provincial body that represents all physicians in the province of Ontario, which is the largest province in the country, with the largest number of doctors. Our role is to represent them with the government in negotiating pay. We also provide them with other services to support their everyday business, professional life, medical qualifications, maintenance, and advocacy in some personal life support, too.

We do a lot of public marketing, advertising, and market research with our members being our primary targets. We also do a lot of work in terms of strengthening the brand of physicians with the public so that it keeps us strong in negotiating with the government.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Yield Branding?

We needed a go-to agency for a couple of projects, so we hired Yield Branding.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Yield Branding had already been working with our sub-brand, OMA Insurance. We are a nonprofit, but we create and curate insurance programs for our members so that they can get business and personal life insurance at good rates, which we negotiate on a group basis. They had been doing a lot of product marketing for the insurance programs for a couple of years already.

When I came in, the program people had created a brand new product, which is a group retirement plan for physicians in Canada, the first of its kind. We wanted to create a really good marketing plan for that, which Yield Branding has worked on. 

There was also a master brand. We had to create an ongoing project to support the continuous efforts of building the brand of physicians. This meant going out with a message that was relevant but not necessarily tied to any specific call to action. Yield Branding has created something for us, The Value of Doctors campaign, which is completely tested and evidence-based. It was launched in January 2020, and it was in the market for a month before we had to pull it. 

What is the team composition?

We work with Ted (Partner & President) but Brad (Founder, Head of Strategy & Creative) is our key guy. He is phenomenal. We have worked with project managers and creative folks. My team works very closely with Yield Branding, so I would say there are about 6–7 members that we have worked with.

How did you come to work with Yield Branding?

Yield Branding was already the agency of record when I started at the OMA. They had been with the OMA previously for about a year or so, hired by a predecessor of my boss, but I had worked with Yield Branding for a different configuration 25 years ago.

All the agencies’ contracts were up last year so we had to go to market according to our procurement rule. They competed with a whole bunch of other people and won the ad agency vendor of record competition by a mile. It was not just because they showed all the work that we had been doing with them, but because they showed that they had all the capabilities that we were looking for.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them in May 2019, and it is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Even though we were only out for a very short time, the branding had a huge impact with the public and especially in advance of a pandemic. We won a bunch of awards for that campaign, and what’s more is that people really, really connected with it. It was almost like it was a good primer for COVID-19.

After a week in the market, at least a quarter of Ontarians had seen at least one of the ads. Three quarters described their overall reaction towards all the ads as very or somewhat positive. Even many of those who were not satisfied with the healthcare system and those who have less trust in doctors said they had an overall positive impression of the ads. 

All three ads scored 75% or more for believability, personal importance, and relevance. There was really good awareness and high positivity after a week. It had an impact on shifting perceptions of doctors, with 44% of Ontarians who said they had a more positive impression after seeing the ads, including 27% who were unfavorable towards doctors initially.

How did Yield Branding perform from a project management standpoint?

They are brilliant. I don’t think I have ever seen an agency manage projects so well. I can’t speak highly enough about them. End to end, the creative strategy, project management, and the courage of their convictions were solid.

I think we have met pretty much everybody that works on the account more than a couple of times. They aren’t one of these agencies where you only see the CEO and the creative head; you get to see whoever is working on the business.

Yield Branding shares my philosophy that whoever is working on something needs to understand and needs to be present when in discussions. I don’t want to have people second-guessing how to translate what anyone on my team has told them, and then they have to go back and tell their team. It is sometimes more efficient to have everyone in the room.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was really impressed with how they went about the branding strategically and creatively. Yield Branding is honest and courageous. They don’t take any guff from us, and I mean that in the best possible way. If we start going down a rabbit hole that doesn’t meet with our objectives or our strategy, they will bring us back, keeping us on task and on strategy.

They make us feel like they are taking really good care of our business. They really care about doing a great job for us and really care about bringing their best game. It’s not difficult to have a heart for the work that we do because we represent 43,000 people who are saving lives every day. 

They put so much effort into everything, and I feel like they are an extension of my team. I don’t feel like they are listening because they have to or because we pay them to; I feel like they are listening because they really want to contribute to the work that we are doing.

I had previously worked in the government for 20 years and in the health sector which had a 25-million-dollar annual marketing budget — unheard of anywhere else. We had a lot of money to spend and as a result, I got to work with the best agencies in the country and Ontario. I was impressed by Yield Branding because they had matched anyone I had worked with during that time as well.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I have difficulty finding anything. I would be nitpicking.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be honest and forthright with them, and appreciate their honesty and forthrightness back to you. They will never bring you back something that is off your brief. They will always stretch the limit, and they will always bring you ideas that you didn’t think you needed. You need to give them latitude to do that because they will listen and will manage your business. 

Brad himself comes in really handy in that he has real courage when it comes to presenting his creative ideas. There are times where I wasn’t sure I could get behind something, but he won’t stamp his feet and dig his heels in. Instead, he will give it his best shot, which is what I like about Brad in particular. He is awesome.

RATINGS
Overall rating: 5
Quality: 5
Cost: 5
Schedule: 5
Willing to refer: 5