“ONE OF THE best views I’ve heard about branding,” says Dr. Janet M. Wilson, owner of Bella Vision in Spartanburg, SC, “is that your brand is two things: It’s your promise and it’s your performance.”
At Bella Vision — a specialty clinic offering vision therapy, specialty contacts and dry eye treatment — that “promise” is conveyed via a wide array of branded materials including the physical office space inside and out, internal working materials, scrubs, T-shirts and outerwear, the practice’s online presence, all outward-facing marketing and patient education materials, bags, lens cloths and fluid, a striking logo and more.
Planning the practice’s aesthetic, Wilson’s vision was of a clean, transitional feel not typically seen in a doctor’s office. “I wanted our patients to feel comfortable, but also like they were somewhere luxurious and that they were going to be given the most exceptional eyecare experience possible,” she says. “Small details can make a big impression.”
To achieve this, she came up with a look that is classic, clean and can “stand the test of time.” It certainly aces that test: The logo and brand assets were designed over a decade ago but the team at Bella Vision routinely get compliments from folks convinced the brand recently received a refresh. An arresting iris sitting atop the practice’s name rendered in Ashbury Light font serves as the focal point of the branding effort, all of whose elements are registered in light greens, blues and grays. “We are able to use our full logo with both the iris and lettering, or sometimes just the iris as a standalone accent in other instances. Our vision rehabilitation clinic inside our practice is able to also utilize the iris in its wordmark,” says Wilson.
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The practice collaborates with local designers on T-shirts incorporating the town name and Bella Vision — most recently, with Burg Apparel, and previously with the “Love Where You Live Spartanburg” campaign — and a unique painting created by local artist Marsha Ward incorporating Bella Vision’s wordmark has become a focal point of the optical.
Wilson resisted the common convention of simply naming the practice after herself. “It was very important to me that the brand be about vision care and our patients,” she says. “I come from a large Italian family, so the word ‘Bella’, meaning ‘beautiful,’ came to mind. My vision for our practice was for patients to come into a beautiful, clean space and not feel like they are in your typical doctor’s office, and receive exceptional eyecare.”
That’s something she believes other eyecare businesses can achieve by, for starters, remembering that your brand is more than a logo, it’s more like a commitment. From there it’s a matter of making sure to “Be consistent, make sure you deliver on that promise, and invest time and resources in being part of your local community.”
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