Salts Healthcare


Fresh thinking for a growing ostomy manufacturer

Salts Healthcare is one of the oldest family-run companies in the UK. With headquarters in Aston, Birmingham, they manufacture and distribute ostomy appliances and additional products in 24 countries worldwide. With ambitious expansion plans and recent growth in export sales, Salts wanted a fresh, forward-thinking and simplified look to their communications. 


Insight


A few years ago, Salts Healthcare was the fast follower. Now, this family-run ostomy manufacturer is an industry innovator and the third largest in the UK. With the company’s investment in new product development and additional plant and machinery, they are on track for continued growth and increased sales, especially in emerging markets.

With international markets now representing an increasing percentage of the company’s turnover, they needed to ensure their communications had the gravitas of an international brand and could also be easily selected and translated into different languages.

Salts Healthcare has a huge range of products and, until recently, they all had different brand names. Research revealed that people living with a stoma are often unaware of which brand of appliance or products they are using and that the decision usually comes down to their stoma care nurse.

Could we find a way to simplify our branding and packaging to make selection easier for everyone and encourage people to form a relationship with the Salts brand?


Strategy


We helped Salts to hone down their vision and values and develop a new brand promise that expresses their purpose more clearly – Caring, Listening and Innovating to Improve Lives. This informed the style of the new branding and marketing communications.

Overall, we agreed to make the design feel modern and fresh, while also stripping back product names and helping Salts Healthcare to become a unified branded house rather than a house of brands.

By getting the product selectors e.g. nurses and patients to choose the Salts name, rather than trying to remember all of the individual brand names, we could position Salts as the “go-to” brand for everything from appliances to mouldable seals. 


Creativity


Branding: The brief was to create a fresh, clean, modern logo that represents a forward-thinking, diverse company. We created a design in light blues and greens to illustrate the technical and medical side of Salts as well as their commitment to comfortable products and skin-friendliness. The strapline ‘excellence in stoma care’ was dropped because it doesn’t reflect the new vision and values, with the patient at the heart of everything Salts Healthcare does.  

Packaging: All product names are now prefixed with “Salts” followed by a simple and accurate description of the product e.g. Salts Stoma Collar instead of Dermacol. They all feature the modernised logo.

Literature: We created simple templates to ensure consistency across all communications and make it easier for different distributors to represent the Salts brand coherently. Everyone has access to an online asset library to make things easier.

Website: The new Salts website is now live with even more information, advice and tips for people living with a stoma and healthcare professionals. It now offers helpful hints at every stage of the journey, from pre-op to surgery and recovery. We’ve used a friendly and accessible tone of voice throughout the site and introduced new ways to order samples. Regular blog posts enable people living with a stoma to share their inspirational stories.