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HEALTH CARE

Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences (formerly Whitby Mental Health Centre)

CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY

Whitby Mental Health Centre began its life over ninety years ago. When the Province of Ontario devolved control of mental health hospitals, the centre's senior leadership and board developed a strategy to change from a community hospital to a specialized, tertiary-care, academic mental health facility. But the existing name no longer supported the strategy and the reality. It cast the organization in the past rather than signalling what it had now become: a facility with a province-wide mandate and catchment area and with a research, teaching, patient care and advocacy focus for people with mental illness and those that care for them.

With a very short timeline we worked intensely with a small team of the senior leadership, while consulting with more than five hundred stakeholders using multiple techniques, including an online forum, interviews, in situ discussions throughout the hospital, town halls, brand events and very targeted market research. The results helped form a brand and name strategy as well as the criteria for the development and assessment of a name and visual identity options.

RESULTS

The new name has two parts. Ontario Shores relates to the location of the hospital and to the broad province-wide patient population it serves. Centre for Mental Health Sciences reflects the perspective on mental illness as disease open to scientific study and research. We developed the new tagline - Discovery. Recovery. Hope. - to communicate the importance of research in the treatment of patients and training of professionals.

The name and visual identity have energized the organization. Staff, board, volunteers and patients have embraced the name as a symbol of the new direction of the hospital and of efforts to de-stigmatize mental illness.

OUR ROLE

Band strategy, naming, identity strategy, tagline, brand-based communications planning.

PARTNERS

Ove Design & Communications, Kathryn Hendrick Associates

What does an respected organization do when its brand and name no longer fit the reality of what it is and what it aspires to be? We helped the leadership team, board of directors, staff and community of Whitby Mental Health Centre navigate a process that created a new name and new brand to position the hospital for its important role in mental health care.

"On behalf of the Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences team, I would like to extend my appreciation for your hard work, creativity, expertise and sound advice leading up to our AGM and the unveiling of our fabulous new name and superb visual identity.

People love it."

Susan Nakhle, Director Communications and Public Affairs