Founded by a world renowned physician and inventor, Avinger is a medical device company that is changing the way vascular disease is treated — and the way devices are marketed. We were tasked with proving this to the world through a comprehensive rebrand — from logo development, to event promotion and design, to various forms of physician education.
Nothing Dr. Simpson accomplished in his career had been by the book and his new company’s approach to branding and marketing a medical device couldn’t possibly be an exception.
So our job wasn’t simply to design the logo, the website and some print collateral pieces. The brand look and feel needed to flow into all communications materials both internal and external—anything and everything that carried the Avinger logo mark had to be on message and on-brand. And because Avinger’s product pipeline was fast and furious, the identity and naming system needed a flexible brand architecture that was able to handle quick turns.
“Everything we've done and everything we will do, others have said (and will say) it’s not possible. But we are Avinger. We are Beyond Possible. And we hired Recreation because they were the only agency uniquely qualified to operate with that mindset.”
Our branding started by designing an iconic and industrial logo that paid homage to Avinger’s innovative history, while also remaining timeless and easily adaptable to future initiatives and product lines. And it worked. After the creation of the initial logo, we used the same color pallet and look to design a family of logos for each Avinger product. They’re substantial but clean, and paired with a tagline that’s become Avinger’s internal rallying cry.
Lumivascular was an entirely new way of treating patients and required a much larger capital investment and training component. To compensate for this, we created a four part program to promote, educate, train, and sell the technology to physicians, technicians, and hospital executives.
INTOUCH for physician referral and lead generation, ENGAGE for giving key opinion leaders speaking opportunities and forums for influence, LAUNCH for new customer training, support, and increasing product utilization and REACH for public relations and promotion to drive patients to hospitals using the technology. Avinger customers weren’t just buying a piece of equipment, they were buying an entire program.
A series of 8 documentaries highlighting the life changing effect that Avinger’s technology has had on patient’s lives around the world. Shot on location as a day in the life of real patients, the short films illustrate the struggle patients suffering from peripheral arterial disease have and how Avinger’s technology helped save their legs and in some cases their lives. These are not your typical patient testimonials and they changed the way medical device companies approach telling their stories through video.
Digital was a crucial component to the overall marketing communications strategy. We knew we had to go beyond the obligatory corporate website which was largely controlled by bandwidth and regulatory, so we also developed custom mobile app sales tools, training games, microsites, and eBlasts.
To give the sales force the most up-to-date materials, we developed a sales tool distribution application for the iPad called SOAPBOX. To train physicians on how to interpret the images they see with OCT, we developed an application called BEAM.
We used photography to both show off product detail and product in action. Arresting photographs let surgeons visualize Avinger in their own ORs.
