Center for Prevention at Blue Cross

The
Challenge

The Center for Prevention at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota is taking on one of the toughest health issues facing Minnesota: health inequity. They work tirelessly to implement bold and sustained strategies to bend the curve. They’ve challenged us to help create awareness and develop public-facing communications and experiences that move their work forward.

Our Approach

We’re learners. That’s the best way to describe our approach. We engage in extensive, custom research. We ask questions in ways that haven’t been asked before to arrive at new insights. Then we integrate what we’ve studied, and synthesize it so we’re conversant in the space in which our clients work.

Nowhere is this more true than in the work we do with the Center. A deep understanding of the issues and the nuances of health and public awareness-building are the backdrop to our creative process. Our aim is to create visual storytelling around health inequity that’s evocative, real, and clear. The visuals and messaging center around truth-telling, accessibility, and breaking through the wall of complacency.

Start Seeing Inequity

The Center conducted seminal research about Minnesotans’ attitudes toward health and health equity. While the research approach was academic, the findings were not. The aim was to create a campaign that brought forward the facts about health inequities in the state in a way that would catch the attention of the general public. The client had heard about a “hydrophobic” product called Rainworks. Doing some earlier blue sky thinking, we’d concepted the idea of “Start Seeing Inequity,” but hadn’t yet used it. The two ideas converged.

We placed Start Seeing Inequity sidewalk messaging in locations across Minnesota. The messages only appeared when it rained. Working to get permissions with municipalities and private properties, such as theaters and brewpubs, we were able to target high-traffic areas with the incisive messages. We also applied the sidewalk art on property around the expansive Blue Cross campuses.

Interactive

The Center has a broad, varied constituency and is continuously developing new programs and initiatives. They needed to re-energize their digital presence and to restructure the delivery of information. Because of the large amount of content and the need to manage the content in an easy, fluid way, we sought to contrast the previous site’s bulkiness. We created a website with a more vibrant look and feel, relying heavily on images, readability, and information hierarchy. Devising repeatable modules allowed us to create consistency in the interface for the user, and streamline our design and development of other pages.

Podcast Identity

The simplicity of the podcast format has generated a boom in podcasts in the marketplace. We were tasked with creating a brand identity for the Center’s podcast series, The State We’re In. As always, we generated many preliminary concepts to better understand what the Center wanted the brand to convey. This first concepting is a part of our discovery process.

The brand as it finally shaped up gives a nod to Minnesota and embodies the diversity within this great state. It’s unmissable in the rabble of podcast brand identities. The identity mirrors the Center’s border-to-border work, the boldness of their thinking and the ideals of diversity.