Dr Phil Huang

Challenge

A myriad of considerations come into account in branding a health service, let alone developing the personal brand for an orthopaedic surgeon venturing into private practice for the first time. For starters, their audience is complicated, made up of referring GP's, their professional peers, prospective patients, current patients, etc. And then ethically, most doctors (plastic surgeons being the exception) don't want to come across too glossy, rather a highly capable professional who has dedicated much of their lives to studying their craft. Perhaps for these reasons there's little differentiating one surgeon from the next... I mean, every second logo seems to be a silhouette of a running man, running skeleton, or combination of the two.

Solution

Aside from fixing an injury, we worked to identify the emotional benefit, distilling it into an optimistic single-minded proposition – 'The Joy of Movement.' It's not a revolutionary piece of copywriting by any accounts, but ask an amputee how they feel after an osseointegration and I'll bet rings true. More importantly, the proposition paved the way for us to incorporate optimistic photography of dancers and athletes (two types of people especially prone to hip and knee injuries) in motion, celebrating the desired post-surgical outcome. Using the brands elliptical device we managed to highlight the specific areas of the body Phil specialises in – hips and knees – without resorting to glowing arthritic joints like you'd expect from the likes of ‘big pharma’ brands.

Next steps

His personal brand has paved the way for a fellowship in New York and prepared Phil for the opening of his first practice in early 2020.

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