At the same time, buyers are doing more research before they ever talk to sales, increasingly using AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude to find and evaluate information. 

That was the backdrop for our recent V2 Communications webinar, “Building Healthcare Brands That Win in Today’s Market.” I moderated a conversation with three brand leaders navigating this landscape from very different perspectives: 

• Melanie Marcus, CMO at Surescripts 
• Holly Spring, VP of Corporate Communications and Brand at Included Health 
• Mel Poitras, founder and CEO of Oraeya 

We covered everything from differentiation and trust to measurement and AI. Here are five takeaways that stood out. 

Watch the full webinar →

1. Your healthcare brand promise has to match the experience

A brand is more than a logo, campaign or tagline. It’s the gap — or alignment — between what a company promises and what customers actually experience.The panelists agreed that strong healthcare brands make complicated systems easier to understand and easier to trust. That starts with a clear promise, but the product and customer experience have to deliver on it.

The takeaway: Before refining your messaging, make sure the experience can back it up. In healthcare, credibility is hard to build and easy to lose.

2. Know what makes you different — and keep evolving the story

One of the most useful distinctions from the conversation was between a company’s lasting differentiators and its evolving narrative. 

Surescripts, for example, has maintained core differentiators around its network and trust while evolving how it describes the company and its role in healthcare. 

Included Health takes a similar approach from a different angle: one overarching brand promise, translated differently for employers and members based on what matters to each audience. 

You don’t need a different brand for every audience. You do need to understand what each audience needs to hear. 

The takeaway: Find the few things you can truly own, then adapt the story without losing the thread.

3. Trust is earned through behavior

Healthcare marketers talk about trust constantly. But the panel made an important distinction: trust is something you demonstrate, not something you can simply claim. 

That means backing up promises with evidence, being transparent about what you can and can’t deliver, and owning mistakes when they happen. 

As Mel put it, “a brand isn’t made in a moment, it’s made in 10,000 moments.” 

Those moments can be a customer interaction, a product experience, an executive interview, a media story or an employee interaction. Together, they shape how a company is understood. 

The takeaway: Every trust claim needs proof behind it — a customer outcome, metric, process, experience or third-party validation.

4. Make the business case for brand

Brand can be difficult to measure because its impact often happens long before a buyer is ready to purchase. 

But that doesn’t make it less important. Melanie described the goal as getting onto a buyer’s “day one list” — the companies they already know and consider when a need arises. 

The panel shared several ways to connect brand activity to business outcomes, including: 

• Marketing-influenced pipeline over longer buying cycles 
• Brand and reputation research 
• Sales feedback and cycle length 
• Talent and employee engagement metrics 

The key is consistency. Rather than trying to prove the value of every individual activity, connect brand investment to the business outcomes leadership already cares about. 

The takeaway: Treat brand as a long-term growth driver, not a quarterly marketing expense.

5. In the age of AI, focus on what the machines say about you

Perhaps the biggest shift discussed was the changing role of AI in how people discover brands. 

The question is no longer just, “Can people find us?” It’s increasingly, “What does AI say about us when they ask?” 

AI platforms pull information from across the web to answer questions, compare companies and make recommendations. That makes consistency across owned, earned and third-party channels more important than ever. 

It also means communicators need to understand how their brands actually appear in AI-generated answers — including what sources are being cited, how accurately the company is represented and where gaps exist. 

And the answer isn’t simply to create more content. The panel emphasized the importance of focus: go where your audiences actually are and prioritize the work that creates meaningful visibility and credibility. 

The takeaway: Know how your brand shows up in AI, strengthen the signals that shape that answer, and do fewer things better. 

Where to start 

We closed the conversation by asking each panelist for one action marketers could take immediately: 

• Ask AI about your brand. Mel suggested asking your favorite AI tool about your company, then writing down what you wish it had said. The gap is a starting point for your brand work. 
• Talk to your customers. Melanie recommended going directly to customers to understand how they describe your company, what they value and where your reputation stands. 
• Talk to people, not personas. Holly encouraged marketers to look beyond labels like patient, member, provider or buyer and remember there is a person behind every audience. 

The brands that win in healthcare won’t necessarily be the loudest. They’ll be the ones that understand their audiences, know what makes them different and consistently deliver on their promises. 

Watch the full “Building Healthcare Brands That Win” webinar →

Interested in building a healthcare brand that stands out with the audiences that matter most? Explore V2’s healthcare expertise → or get in touch with the V2 Healthcare team!