Central Valley Health Forum Brings Everyone Together for Good

The California Health Care Coalition (CHCC) is a membership of employers, unions and trust funds organized to improve the quality of health care without sacrificing benefits.

Challenge

How do you begin to solve a problem as complex as health care in California?
You can start by disregarding conventional wisdom that the narrower the audience, the more powerful the message. When it comes to health care, the California Health Care Coalition recognizes that improving quality and reducing costs means bringing together diverse stakeholders—major public and private sector employers, unions, health and welfare trust funds, provider organizations, services, hospitals, health consultants and vendors. Collaboration is key.

Planned for May 27, 2009, the Central Valley Health Forum was to be the first of a series of annual events in regions throughout California—from San Diego to Los Angeles to San Francisco. Each event would spark conversations on how stakeholders could work together to make health care available to all.

To reach these ambitious goals, CHCC needed a logo and marketing materials that inspired confidence in everyone who saw them. The materials needed to look distinct, while also complementing CHCC’s own look and feel. “Because we were reaching out to a broad spectrum of stakeholders, it was important to us to have a friendly, inviting, professional look to the signage and other conference materials,” said Executive Director Sally Covington. “We knew that would help us attract interest.”

Why Benz Communications?

Covington and her committee chose to work with Benz because, she said, “Benz’s own communications were clear, attractive, and very well done. They communicated their purpose well. I thought they would make a good fit. Also, we were drawn to the idea of working with a communications company that specialized in health benefits—since we ourselves were so focused on improving health care quality, safety, and affordability,” Covington said. “Benz’s own communications were clear, attractive, and very well done. They communicated their purpose well. I thought they would make a good fit.”,” Covington said.

Solution

Although health care challenges themselves are quite difficult,
the process of working together to solve them doesn’t need to be.
It can be warm, human, collaborative. It can inspire optimism and new ideas. The logo and color palette Benz Communications created for the event reflected these qualities. ”One of our challenges was to have it appeal to a broad spectrum,” Covington said. “I thought Benz did a very nice job of that. Our local steering committee was pleased with the logo and colors, too.”

In addition to creating the identity, the Benz team also created several easily-repurposable templates—PowerPoint presentation, agenda, presenter bio, name tag, folder sticker, signage, and web page. A simple, two-page style guide made it easy to customize identity and templates for future events.

Approach

The timeline was tight. But the Benz Communications team had worked together many times before——which made the entire process hitch-free. “Because we’re a small nonprofit, I play numerous roles, from schedule to coordinator,” Covington said. ”It was a bit of a surprise to have it work out so well, given our timeframe.”

Today, Covington credits Benz Communications’ project manager Caroline Lowry for helping to keep things moving, despite the obstacles her own busy schedule presented. “Caroline was terrific. I wasn’t quite expecting the way in which Caroline took charge, not only coordinating internally to ensure the team delivered on time, but also really helping me by keeping in touch about key deadlines I needed to meet. She really kept me on task. This was an added value of working with Benz. I felt very well managed by her, in a completely helpful way.”

Result

The proof was in the participation. Approximately 200 stakeholders filled the room to capacity. “We were very pleased with that,” Covington said. “I think the professional look of the invitation materials contributed to people’s interest and, ultimately, their attendance at the meeting. Especially since a few competing events were going on at the same time.”

Covington says she would definitely recommend Benz Communications to others. ”I had a very favorable initial impression of Benz. As we moved the project through to its completion, I felt they handled everything very well. They listened to our feedback; they were easy to work with; they got what we were saying; and they brought it all in on time.”