In April 2024, Nebraska Medicine launched an employment brand called “Together. Extraordinary.”
The internal campaign cost plenty of dollars and included several expenses, such as indoor murals at both Nebraska Medical Center and Bellevue Medical Center; a dedicated, specially branded selection of apparel and merchandise for employees; and improved resources for development and career paths.
“This was based on the input and voices of thousands of our colleagues collected over many months in 2023. This reimagined approach did not replace our consumer tagline, “Serious Medicine. Extraordinary Care.,” but it was complementary to it,” said Frank Lococo, vice president, Marketing and Communications. “This was not a ‘marketing campaign,’ but rather a movement. This was a collaboration with our people team, and marketing and communications. It involved many different areas of our organization, taking colleague feedback and then packaging it up, internally and externally. The results have exceeded expectations, positively impacting the retention of our amazing colleagues and welcoming more talented patient care and support individuals.”
An internal movement of this kind is easy to make, and makes a large impact with an organization as large as Nebraska Medicine, but it is just as important for companies of any size to focus on marketing. Marketing and communications employees are not just spending dollars to place a company’s name on air or in print, they are strategically trying to figure out what is best for a company.
Elizebeth Murphy, president of Emspace + Lovgren, said, “It’s important for us to have that direct conduit to leadership, so we are always…aiming to be working with that C suite, and hopefully it is their CEO. When we have direct communications with the leadership of the organization, it allows us to really understand and internalize what they are aiming for. And once we are kind of in that head space with them, we are able to really help them think on long term strategy.”
No matter whether a company has a dedicated marketing and communications team of 20, of one, or of zero, there are key questions that relate to strategically creating a marketing messaging. Those questions include:
What does the company want to see happen?
What does a company need people to know, and what do they want people to do once they know?
Getting those high-level strategies right takes time and effort, but they pay off in the end.
“We create perceptions that drive consumer choice, which is growth,” Lococo said. “We nurture and protect the brand, internally and externally, through exceptional story telling using our various owned, earned and paid channels, and we interact with consumers and respond to comments, questions, inquiries, and other methods of outreach to be engaged and to grow and protect our reputation.”
Even within a team, marketing tactics can really help create a great company culture.
“We’re working in a bit of a softer world. A huge amount we do is internal communications,” Murphy said. “How are they communicating with their teams? That tends not to factor in ROI, but those dollars often come through having a great team.”
“We also want to do our part to support and protect the many faces of our brand, including the CEO or other senior leaders,” Lococo said. “We do this by fielding media inquiries, for example, understanding the ask, determining the pros and cons of responding, and then ensuring we understand the brand or CEO position, working with him or her so we have clear alignment with what we want to say and how we want to say it.”
With a great team in place, it’s easier to create great rapport with the community, which is sometimes easier to measure.
“How many new partnerships have you been able to develop?” Murphy said. “There are lots of strategic measures such as likes, clicks…How your service to the community is impacted?”
The number of the people on the marketing team is up to individual organizations, but hiring managers and C-suite employees should research what roles best suit their organziation.
“There is such a conflation with roles and responsibilities,” Lococo said. “Marketing is different from communications, which is different than public relations, which is different from sales, etc. While there are similarities, there are clear differences. To me, it depends on the size and complexity of the organization, what we are tasked to do and then ensuring the right skill sets are in place to support enterprise goals and objectives. Sometimes, subject matter expertise is needed whereas smaller, less complex organizations could maybe try to get away with a ‘jack-of-all-trades.’ There are pros and cons to both approaches. And there are resource and cost implications to consider.”
As marketing is done strategically, intentionally, and by the right team, growth will happen.
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This article originally appeared in the April/May 2025 issue of B2B Magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
