If you are sitting as you read this case study, and are experiencing any kind of back or body pain but would never consider chiropractic care as a solution, then you are one in a significant segment of the population that doesn't know, use, or understand chiropractic treatments.
This was the challenge facing The Joint Chiropractic in 2019.
Founded in 1999, The Joint Chiropractic disrupted the $15 billion chiropractic industry by transforming a fragmented industry run by individuals into a cohesive and consistent delivery model, making chiropractic care more accessible, convenient, and affordable than ever before. With more than 500 clinics nationwide, The Joint is now the fastest-growing chiropractic franchise in the nation.
But with this explosive growth came some growing pains:
Market saturation: Over 40,000 independent practitioners serve the 16% of U.S. adults who saw a chiropractor in the last 12 months, in addition to a few dozen multi-unit concepts like The Joint. To thrive long-term, how do we attract more consumers into trying chiropractic for the first time with The Joint?
Brand inconsistency: Most franchisors struggle to create and enforce a consistent brand presentation in their early years, and The Joint was no exception. Without a well-defined national brand, franchisees filled this void with homegrown strategies and execution. How do we unite the franchise network behind true brand cohesion and scale?
These were just some of the questions the VP of Marketing needed to tackle to chart a new way forward.
How do we change the category conversation around chiropractic care to create new markets and excite franchisees?
It's one thing to have research and quite another to know what to fully leverage it. The Joint had invested considerably in category and company research, and they wanted to extract even more insights and validate their existing positioning. So they handed it over to us. As we combed through the research, a few consistent themes emerged.
The category suffers from misperceptions:
Because of this, the logical conclusion would be to position The Joint as more of a wellness brand with their proposed campaign idea of "Live a better you."
But this campaign idea was not differentiated as the wellness category is saturated with this message. In other words, it diluted the real benefits of chiropractic care.
Which led to the insight: There’s an opportunity for Chiropractors (including The Joint) to change "chiro speak" to "human speak."
What didn't exist for consumers was a simple and easy-to-understand explanation of how chiropractic care works, why to trust that it works, and how to evaluate what your pain means.
Here’s what consumers needed to know: "Chiropractic care gets you back to feeling your best."
For everyone who goes to yoga, receives massage therapy or acupuncture treatment, why couldn't chiropractic care be part of the wellness arsenal? In fact, the audience that The Joint could serve was virtually anyone experiencing the continuum of pain, from chronic pain to circumstantial pain to everyday aches and pains and for the physically active that just want to keep themselves in great form.
You're Back, Baby was rooted in the idea of changing the category conversation around chiropractic care to help people understand how they can use chiropractic care as one way to help them "live a better you."
We knew You’re Back, Baby was a campaignable idea, but bringing it to life would require something different.
If we wanted our audience to consider The Joint as an option for all use cases, consumers, especially the ones skeptical of chiropractic care, needed to see themselves in the campaign by humanizing the practice and the brand.
We also knew that the franchise network needed to see a relatable message that attracts the new to chiropractic, all while positioning The Joint as the leader in the category. The Joint had an opportunity to do so by making chiropractic care, and the brand itself, seem more accessible and relatable.
What if we could draw a clear line between everyday life triggers, The Joint as a solution, and bring that to life through stories? What if those stories were told not by the Brand, but the core audience we wanted to serve: patients?
We brought together real patients to tell stories from their perspective and in turn, educate, inspire, and lend credibility to The Joint and the chiropractic profession as a whole. At the same time, we brought an authentic personality to a clinical and fragmented category. Authenticity was the theme: in our overall approach to photography and video, and in the diversity and relatability of the patient testimonials – a dancer, a single mom, an entrepreneur, a single dad, a young male millennial, and a student-athlete.
Exciting the franchisees was job number 1. The initial launch of the new brand creative was done internally at The Joint's annual Franchisee conference. The concept and our brand video were used to introduce the new look and feel while building excitement within The Joint community. The result: huge compliments and excitement from franchisees who couldn't wait to start going to market with the You're Back, Baby campaign.
Following the successful internal launch, we turned our sights outward. We delivered the You're Back, Baby national brand campaign across multiple channels and platforms including social, digital, out of home, retail, and TV. Franchisees could amplify their local marketing with an updated brand guidebook and a toolkit of ready-to-go assets.
By allowing patients to be the mouthpiece for the brand through their relatable stories on a national scale, we lent credibility to the practice and the brand.
Increase in intro offer downloads in the first month of the campaign.
Their average weekly digital video views went from 22k to over 60k in the first few weeks on YouTube.
Any franchise organization knows that whatever drove their initial growth may not drive their future growth. By digging deep into the research to extract the meaningful insights and translating those insights into a national brand platform that had the legs to last and evolve for years, we have changed the category conversation around chiropractic care from "clinical and not for me" to "authentic and I will give it a try."
More importantly, by bringing new users to the category and exciting our franchisees, we have successfully positioned The Joint for their next phase of growth.
“We’ve never heard such resounding enthusiasm from our franchisee community for a brand campaign. From meeting one I felt LaneTerralever recognized our potential as a consumer brand, and created the right strategic communications framework to take advantage. They followed that up with creative execution that hit the mark. We look forward to seeing where this takes our brand in 2020 and beyond.”
- Jason Greenwood - Vice President of Marketing
