Insights on Generating Brand Love with Gen Z in Healthcare

I have been investigating human opinions and behavior for 40 years; 35 of those years in health care. We advise some of the country’s leading hospitals and health systems from AMCs to large systems to children’s hospitals to rural hospitals, leveraging insights to inform strategy and communications. 

And what our clients increasingly want is insights-driven formulas to engage and retain their patient populations, especially the younger cohort - particularly as there is increasing choice in where and how services are delivered.

We often start with what have come to be affectionately referred to as ‘Rob-isms’. While they are applicable to the broader discipline of brand strategy across virtually all industries, we find these somewhat simplistic concepts particularly relevant to health care in these competitive times. 

Rob-ism #1: “A Brand Must Invest in People Before People Invest in the Brand.”

To understand this concept, let me take you back to an experience I had working at a bank 40 years ago.  One of my first assignments as a rookie market researcher was to test various senior-specific financial products. The bank wanted to target older customers with customized products given their financial assets.

I will never forget an older lady in a focus group telling me clearly… “When I was young and poor your bank wanted nothing to do with me. Now that I am old and rich you want my money…” I won’t finish her statement but you get where it was heading.

Flash forward to today in health care. Gen Z are young and mainly healthy. Clients often say that they don’t want to target Gen Z because Gen Z don’t need hospital care…until they get older and sicker. So let’s talk about life-time customer value. We must start looking at a potential customer group like Gen Z as a brand relationship to be built and nurtured over their lifetime and not just a single present transaction. 

Gen Z do use health care services and are brand loyal. They just tend to need services farther up the sales funnel with primary and urgent care. And they are digitally native, so they are fully on the digital highway when it comes to their primary care journeys.

We make a mistake if we say that Gen Z are not at brand loyal as older patients. They are loyal; just not in the same way. Gen Z are not as loyal to the provider. They are brand loyal to things in health care that provide them convenient access such as an app to schedule an appointment or have a virtual visit (e.g., CVS’ app) or an urgent care center that understands the retail experience and brings that to health care (e.g., CityMD).

Disruptors are coming in to health care with a ‘tech perspective’ from Amazon One Medical to CVS stating that they “want to own the entire patient journey” to Oracle acquiring Cerner, a technology company providing data that fuels the EHR (electronic patient record) - a perspective appreciated by digitally native Gen Z. 

For health care providers to thrive in the future, they must invest in the customer of the future and meet them where they are today.  If these disruptors catch the eye of Gen Z today given the pace of change in health care, you may lose your chance with them years from now as they will already have developed a brand preference.

As the chart below illustrates, based on research we conducted uncovering consumer sentiment around health care, the vast majority of Gen Z have either experienced health care touch-points digitally or would if that need arose. 

Health care providers must invest in participating across every lane on the digital highway. Creating a virtual visit app or attempting online scheduling is not nearly enough to catch the attention of tomorrow’s customer today. We must meet them on the digital highway. 

Again, Gen Z are brand loyal; it’s just that their loyalty is based on different factors than their older counterparts. Things like convenience and access and digital touch-points create ‘stickiness’ to a brand not necessarily the doctor.