athenahealth provides healthcare organizations with cutting-edge data insights that keep patients healthy and practices profitable. But operating squarely between two hugely complex industries — healthcare and technology — this innovative behemoth had continuously fallen into the familiar trappings of the prototypical “medical” brand. Cold, drab and predictable, athenahealth was often confused for a hospital network or, worse, an insurance company.

To put it bluntly, people were unaware that athenahealth was one of the most innovative, tech forward healthcare companies in the world. Why? Because they looked boring and generic, just like everybody else.

Our challenge? Reimagine and relaunch the global athenahealth brand through the spirit of connectivity, while making their highly complicated offering easy for consumers to understand. All while avoiding the predictable tone and PowerPoint-friendly graphic conventions of the vanilla healthcare industry.

athenahealth connects the disparate factions of healthcare. We reimagined the brand by building a vibrant, fully saturated world of color, built on the energy of connectivity. Through clever metaphors and striking visuals, we used a human tone to express the notion that athenahealth is “innovating healthcare. One connection at a time.”

We personified human data in a fantastical world of cubism and geometry, using tactile surfaces like clay, fabric and paper. The hyper-stylized world was created using a mix of CG, live-action and stop-motion. Additionally, we created a deep asset library of studio portraits, graphic metaphors and fantastical healthcare environments. Ultimately we showed how machine learning, artificial intelligence and the democratization of data can change everything.

We targeted doctors, administrators, office professionals, medical students and CTOs from small practices to enterprise level.

Strategically, this was accomplished by transforming athenahealth’s first party data into a digitally accessible audience to drive awareness and favorability of the athenahealth brand amongst prospects. Especially when compared to traditional (Healthcare IT companies) and non-traditional (Tech companies, B2B brands) competitors who’s marketing was becoming increasingly healthcare-focused.

Using a combination of broad reaching and hyper-targeted channels, we surrounded our primary and secondary audiences to celebrate the launch of athena’s new brand platform in September and sustain the excitement to educate and capture the attention of new prospects through the end of 2021.

We reimagined the athenahealth brand, positioning and strategy- evolving the global identity system and developing an integrated advertising campaign consisting of more than 220 individual pieces of creative.

The multi-faceted brand effort launched September 27th utilizing long and short form video (:60, :30, :15), digital, OOH, paid and organic social, print (including a partnership with Wired Magazine), podcast collaborations and streaming audio placements, 3-D static illustrations, CG, live action and stop motion.

Just as important to the effort was an internal-facing campaign for the company’s employees, dubbed “athenistas,” and potential recruits/partners. Video, wayfinding signage, LED installations, multi-level office murals and banners appeared in athenahealth’s major campuses in the U.S. (Watertown, Mass., Atlanta, Belfast, ME, Burlington, VT, Seattle, Austin) and India (Pune, Chennai and Bangalore).

The primary KPI’s of the campaign were twofold. First, it was intended to raise overall awareness of the brand. The campaign saw a 129% lift in brand awareness along with a 21% lift in consideration.

The secondary KPI was to increase internal recruitment and partner excitement. The campaign generated a 40% rise in organic social media impressions, with engagement up 87%.

Finally, this total brand refresh helped pave the way for athenahealth’s acquisition for a record $17b in December of 2021, almost triple the $5.7b paid to take the company private just three years prior.