A little while ago, we were assigned a pretty fun and unique project for Anderson Regional Medical Center. It’s going to seem like a fairly simple and small task, but it actually took days of brainstorming and, well, courteous agreeing to disagree. Here’s the story:
Anderson’s computer software was going to be updated. This is actually quite a huge deal, because it involved everyone (administrators, technicians, doctors, etc.) at every level, who had been using the existing version for many years. Anderson thought it would be best to make this process of change a lighthearted, fun event.
The main issue here was that nothing like this had ever been undertaken by the hospital – there was bound to be some employee resistance. But, if Anderson could find a way to get everyone on the same page and realize that this was for the better, employees would understand and go with the flow. This was much more than just an announcement.
That’s where Paradigm came in – we were asked to come up with a concept that represented teamwork. This involved creating a clever campaign name, slogan, ideas and possibly mascot.
After much brainstorming, Paradigm decided the name/slogan definitely needed to be something rather short, to the point, and not over the top. After playing around with multiple acronyms, catchy phrases and symbols, everyone came to a conclusion and narrowed down our ideas to two options. We decided a train represented teamwork, because you could relate the train’s linked cars to the employees “linking” together to make this process as smooth as possible. And since the technology was a major upgrade, we suggested using a futuristic, customized train as the symbol for the campaign. We later learned that Anderson Medical fancied this idea. Success.
The moral of the story is that this was not easy, even though it seems like we came up with a rather simple concept in the end. Sometimes just going to the drawing board gets you only a (very) small step further. Paradigm wouldn’t have come up with an option we all thought was best if each individual didn’t do their own research, then brainstormed together, then spoke up, not being shy to say what ideas we had – silly sounding or not. In the end, it was pretty cool to be a part of Anderson’s teamwork project, while realizing we needed to use our own teamwork.
So there’s your lesson for the day. Now go Google images of bullet trains, they’re cool.
