R/GA Live with Evernorth: The Next Wave of Healthcare Innovation

During the R/GA Live's The Next Wave of Healthcare Innovation panel, Amy Monshausen, CMO of Evernorth at Cigna, joined R/GA’s global chief experience officer Ben Williams and group creative director of brand design and consulting Jennifer Vano to discuss the building of a new type of health services brand and the greater promise of digital transformation in the healthcare industry.

Moderator Kelly Harrison, VP of brand marketing at R/GA, opened the conversation with an invitation for Monshausen to introduce us to the Evernorth brand. She recalled how Cigna’s 2018 merger with Express Scripts opened the door to a reevaluation of their services. “We knew that we had an opportunity strategically with the business to look at the offerings we had across the entire portfolio to see what we might be able to do differently to deliver more value in healthcare...to create net new things for the market that our competitors couldn’t.” It was from these evaluations that Evernorth was born.

With the foundational and strategic work done by Monshausen and her team, Cigna now needed a trusted partner to help bring this brand to life. Harrison next turned the discussion over to Jennifer Vano and Ben Williams, who touched on R/GA’s process of developing what would come to be Evernorth’s brand operating system.

Vano highlighted the rigorous naming process, citing nearly 10,000 names generated, along with countless legal and linguistic screenings, global qualitative and quantitative research, and proposed “name worlds” or previews that begin to paint the potential picture for a name to take shape into a brand. Through it all, though, Vano admitted, “I think it always had to be [Evernorth]. It was always [Evernorth]...and that really came from the Cigna DNA,” crediting the strong vision from Monshausen’s team in helping to shape the rest of the brand. She then delved into the symbolism of the plus sign with its intrinsic implication of health as well as one of connection and movement.

Williams took over to outline the ways that R/GA really considered Evernorth’s brand elements - static ones like typography, color, graphics, and photography as well as motion studies and choreography - and how they would interact to give a sense of the behavior of the brand itself. 

He then touched on R/GA’s philosophy of brand as an operating system - a flexible set of tools that tie together purpose, language, and design into one living ecosystem—and how it was applied to the construction of Evernorth. Williams added, “Most importantly, the brand acts as a filter and a guide, really thinking about, in a world of millions of things that Evernorth could be doing, having that foundation acts as a filter to really enable us to filter out the noise and get to the heart of what we should be doing.”

Vano and Williams’s insight into the creation of Evernorth’s brand identity inspired many questions from the audience, including about the timeline, team size, and trademark process, which Harrison then proposed to the panel during Q&A. The final question, though—What do you want the viewers to take away from this panel?—really got to the heart of the discussion. Ben Williams stressed the more-relevant-than-ever need for a human-centered design approach, particularly in the healthcare space. Jennifer Vano emphasized the role that language and verbal design can play in solving problems. Lastly, Amy Monshausen highlighted the importance of brand authenticity, and in Evernorth’s case, the building of a brand system that can bring a belief to life, stating, “Health is not the finish line but the starting point of human potential and progress.”

For more behind-the-scenes insight into building the Evernorth brand and its vision for transforming healthcare, view the entire discussion via the recording above, and reach out to Ben Williams and Jennifer Vano for info on our Experience Design and Brand Design services. Additional resources, including the Drug and Health Trend reports mentioned by the panel, can be found at Evernorth.com.