Afaal’s Column

Many people still ask me about the change in the Hospital logo. It’s been over an year since the logo has been changed through a process of corporate rebranding that all the companies in the ADK Group went through. This article was previously published in my old blog and now I republish it for those who keep asking the question.

“Rebranding is the process by which a product or service developed with one brand, company or product line affiliation is marketed or distributed with a different identity. This may involve radical changes to the brand’s logo, brand name, image, marketing strategy, and advertising themes. These changes are typically aimed at the repositioning of the brand/company, usually in an attempt to distance itself from certain negative connotations of the previous branding, or to move the brand upmarket.” (Wikipedia the free Encyclopedia)

Today many corporates are rebranding themselves for many reasons. Some companies rebrand themselves to renew its publicity and acceptability to the public. Others do it to establish themselves in the market with business growth and some others do it to get a new vibe to the business.

Many people ask me about the change of ADK hospital logo. One of the first tasks that I took up when I joined the hospital was to rebrand it. But then this came as a combined effort from all other ADK businesses with an internal reform process of the ADK structure. The prominent ADK letters in a triangle is a simple and nice logo, but it did not seem appealing that all ADK companies use the same logo since it kind or devalues it. The younger companies of the ADK umbrella, namely ADK Travels and ADK Trade and Shipping both came up with new logos. Hospital and ADK Company as well as the parent company ADK Enterprises were using the triangular logo. Thus, to give the prominence to the original ADK logo, the restructuring process made this the identity for the parent company, i.e. ADK Enterprises Pvt. Ltd. Hospital and Company went for rebranding.

The things we looked for when getting a new logo was for it to be modern, soft and acceptable and catchy to the general public. Also we looked at the meaning of the logo, what the logo depicts.

Designers came up with over twenty possible logos for the hospital. A panel of judges selected the top five among those. The staff of ADK Hospital decided the final logo. Once we got the top five, we conducted a poll among all the staff of the hospital. This was very exciting for them since this was the first time that they got to participate in such a decision. The reason I did it was to get staff motivated by indicating to them that they have a say in things we do. Also it gave ownership of the new brand to the staff. Some 42% of the staff voted to adapt the current logo.

Finally coming to the logo, the logo depicts the following meaning.

The snake wrapped around the wand represents the rod of Asclepius used as the international medical symbol, depicting healing through medicine. The apple denotes health and well being as well as prevention. This is used in modern subtle way to reflect the artistic features that we looked for.