Shore Memorial Hospital Rebrands

SOMERS POINT, N.J. — Shore Memorial Hospital has changed its name to Shore Medical Center, while also adopting a new logo and new brand as part of the process. The new Shore name, logo and brand was unveiled recently, as part of a VIP grand opening celebration in the new surgical pavilion.

“Given our new $125-million surgical pavilion and campus expansion will change the face of Shore, we felt it was important to see if the Shore Memorial Hospital name still worked with our new facility,” said Ron Johnson, Shore Medical Center’s President and CEO. “We collaborated with our new external marketing partners on a Business Intelligence Survey of leadership and administrative directors, conducted focus groups with our employees and volunteers, and got input from our Boards of Trustees, our Shore Health Foundation team and key medical partners.

“While we all shared an attachment to the Shore Memorial Hospital name, the overwhelming majority felt it no longer portrayed who we are as a facility or the services we will offer following the opening of the surgical pavilion and campus expansion,” Johnson continued. “That being said, there was unanimous sentiment that the most important thing was to keep the Shore name, since that is what people have always and in all probability will continue to call us.”

Shore Medical Center was built on a foundation of quality and caring, which research showed remained among its strongest attributes. With the opening of the Surgical Pavilion, and growing ties with leading local physicians and Philadelphia healthcare providers, Shore was faced with the challenge of creating a Shore brand that promised high-tech, quality medical treatment and caring patient-centered values.

As part of the Business Intelligence process, and in researching possible brand positioning, the word that kept popping up among all stakeholders was “passion.” At Shore Medical Center everyone including physicians, nurses, clinicians, administrative staff, leadership, Board members, affiliates, partners, donors and volunteers showed a deep passion for their work, advancing medical technology and most of all caring for patients. In the end, Shore Medical Center adopted the brand positioning – “Our Passion Makes Us The Best.”

Having communicated embracing excellence as part of its last campaign and previous embracing icon, the new Shore Medical Center logo will communicate a more organic, natural look and feel in keeping with many of the holistic features found in the new surgical pavilion and campus expansion.

The new icon, which is called the organic “S”, is a symbol that centers on the ideas of the growth and evolution that has taken place in moving from Shore Memorial Hospital to Shore Medical Center. While technology, affiliations and partnerships have helped Shore evolve well beyond the preconceived notions of what the hospital is, the two green “leaves” that fill the top and bottom ends of the icon also serve to signify leadership’s commitment to the quality and caring institutional values of healthcare organizations such as Planetree.

Two purple elements form an S at the heart of the icon, signifying juxtapositions between: old and new; medical and surgical; diagnosis and treatment; technology and caring; each as important as the other, existing in perfect harmony and symmetry.  A silver stroke surrounds the icon, tying the different elements together into one unified Shore brand.

The typeface utilized in the logo is a customized version of Century Gothic, which is widely regarded as one of the greenest, ecofriendly typefaces. With this as the base, serifs or stems were added to contribute to the overall ideas of growth and evolution that the logo is meant to embody.

Shore adopted a holistic approach in the design of the surgical pavilion, borrowing from the finest healthcare facilities and patient-centric organizations to ensure the highest levels of care for the body, mind and spirit. Patients entering from the main entrance on Brighton Avenue will be greeted at the 1st Floor reception desk and directed to one of the patient intake stations. All of the surgical pavilion’s pre-admission testing facilities, including laboratory services, radiology and patient exam rooms, are located in the same 1st Floor area for convenience and ease of access.

The heart of the new surgical pavilion can be found in the nine state-of-the-art operating suites located on the pavilion’s third floor. Each of the spacious operating rooms, some of which feature natural lighting through cathedral ceilings, provide the most up-to-date technology, including a video wall that gives surgeons instant access to key medical information related to the patient’s procedure. The second floor of the surgical pavilion will house a crossover entrance from the new 640 space self-park garage and adjacent three-story medical office building, as well as three of the pavilion’s key services: cardiovascular imaging, endoscopy and infusion therapy.

The fourth floor of the surgical pavilion probably best captures the Planetree design model, with a beautiful new interactive boardroom overlooking the bay and an expansive, open-air tree-lined garden setting. The facility, which will be used to house Shore meetings, will also be used in collaboration with community, civic and charitable groups.