What happens when a fast-growing healthcare company outgrows the story it tells about itself?
In this conversation with Ryan Rieches, Harrison Richards, VP of Corporate Marketing at ICU Medical, discusses the refocusing of the corporate brand after a series of transformative acquisitions, integration challenges, and operational changes. They discuss why the brand tagline “Human Connections” matters more than ever, how customer research reshaped the company’s thinking, and why emotional truth matters even in the world of healthcare brand strategy.
This is an insightful discussion on brand evolution, post-acquisition integration, internal alignment, and the human side of healthcare marketing.
Episode Transcript
[This is an edited version of the transcript. Listen to the full interview by clicking the player above.]
Ryan: Welcome to another edition of Expert Opinion. I’m Ryan Rieches, CEO of BrandingBusiness. Today’s guest is Harrison Richards, VP of Corporate Marketing at ICU Medical.
A little background. BrandingBusiness had the opportunity to work with ICU Medical approximately 10 years ago, helping them define and communicate their brand story more clearly. Fast-forward to today, the organization has grown significantly through major acquisitions, becoming a $2 billion company. So Harrison, maybe you can start by giving us an overview of ICU Medical and that growth journey.
Harrison: Ryan, thank you for having me. You’ve really seen us grow up. It was about 16 years ago when BrandingBusiness and my first boss and mentor, Tom McCall, took on the challenge of helping this specialty infusion company develop a more human brand and bring more life to it. That’s really where it all began.
We’re an infusion therapy company. Without getting too technical, nearly everyone who goes to a hospital receives some kind of infusion therapy involving the delivery of fluids or medications. Every step in that process, from compounding medications to safely delivering them through IV pumps to accessing the bloodstream itself, carries risk and complexity. That’s what we address at ICU Medical.
Over the last decade, we’ve grown significantly through both innovation and two major acquisitions that dramatically expanded the company. Throughout that growth, we never lost sight of our focus on infusion therapy. We stayed committed to that core competency while bringing together products and capabilities in ways that better serve our customers.
Over the last several years, it became clear that we needed to better articulate why all of this matters. We needed to explain, in a meaningful and differentiated way, why customers should trust ICU Medical and what makes us unique. That became the driving force behind this brand refresh project.
Ryan: That’s a great overview. At what point post-acquisition did it become important, from the C-suite down, to redefine your value proposition? What were the trigger points?
Harrison: Our leadership team does a great job explaining our value, but we also have hundreds of sales and marketing people speaking with customers every day. A common request was, “How do we explain who we are?” or “Can you send us slides introducing the company?”
When we looked at the content we had, it became obvious we needed a clearer and more meaningful way to communicate who we are and who our customers are. We’ve grown tremendously over the last decade, but our audience has evolved too. Post-COVID and amid all the pressures healthcare professionals face, the last five or six years have changed the environment significantly.
We needed to address customers in a way that reflected their reality. There was broad support across the organization for figuring out how to articulate that.
Ryan: ICU Medical has long been known for innovation. Some of your early products became industry standards. But the broader corporate story needed to be told more clearly. Maybe you can talk a little about that need.
Harrison: The products matter, but even though we’re a B2B organization, we’re still talking to people. We serve them through innovation and products that improve their work, but we also have to connect with them on a human level and earn their trust.
With the breadth of offerings we now have, we can’t simply overwhelm people with product messages. We needed something higher-level. Why should customers trust what we have to say?
Jeff Warlick, our creative director, who you’ve worked closely with, said something the other day that captured it perfectly: “We have to start with their reality before we earn the right to talk about ours.”
That really defines it. Our products reflect the DNA of the company and the thoughtfulness behind how we’ve assembled our portfolio. But we don’t have the right to talk about ourselves until we establish a more authentic value proposition.
Ryan: When we do our work, we build the brand from within based on where the organization is headed. We also listen closely to customers. Through your research and ours, we learned more deeply about the impact ICU Medical has on people.
Years ago, we developed the brand line “Human Connections.” Beyond the physical connections, maybe it wasn’t fully activated over time. It lived next to the logo, but didn’t fully develop its own meaning. Through this process, we revisited the line and asked whether it still fit. Looking at where ICU Medical is headed, it clearly did, but now it could take on richer meaning.
Harrison: We talked about that a lot. Were we outgrowing it? Once we got into the research, we realized we weren’t growing past it, we were redefining what it meant.
You did such a thoughtful job identifying that tagline 15 years ago because it still reflects who we are today. We’ve simply given it new meaning and new energy.
One of the most impactful parts of the process was the research itself, especially the one-on-one interviews. We sat down with dozens of employees, customers, and clinicians, including clinicians on our own staff, and had these incredibly in-depth conversations. In many cases, they became deeply emotional experiences that still stay with us.
That process reinforced that we were on the right path. “Human Connections” truly represents who we are. It also reinforced how important emotional connection is in building customer relationships moving forward.
Ryan: You’ve done a wonderful job bringing that idea to life. “Human Connections” works externally, but it also works internally. We also worked together on guiding statements, purpose, vision, mission, and values. I really enjoyed working with you and your leadership team, especially HR, on those.
Maybe you can talk about the purpose statement and how it ties back to your founder, Dr. George Lopez.
Harrison: That goes back to authenticity. We joke about it all the time because we spend our days looking at LinkedIn ads and marketing content, not just in healthcare but everywhere. If you covered the logos, so much of it would blend together. It becomes content for the sake of content.
We wanted to make sure we stood apart for the right reasons and made promises we could genuinely stand behind.
Our purpose is to support a healthcare experience free from preventable harm. That traces directly back to our founder, Dr. George Lopez, who invented a safer IV connection to prevent accidental disconnections and serious patient harm.
That commitment to safety has remained part of our DNA. We design innovations that anticipate risk and improve safety across infusion therapy.
Ryan: What’s powerful about that is it honors your founding while also pointing toward the future. It becomes a North Star for the organization.
Typically after acquisitions, companies focus first on operational integration and then people integration. These guiding statements help unify people around a shared purpose and values.
You’re also putting this boldly on the website. Maybe you can talk about internal adoption.
Harrison: We’ve done a great deal to define and communicate our external value proposition with what I think is a very approachable and inspiring story. It’s equally important to turn that inward and give employees a unifying message and direction.
This becomes important in showing employees and future employees that the work we do is visible and meaningful. No matter what role someone plays, they’re contributing to patient care somewhere in the world. That matters to people.
This internal employee value proposition becomes important for recruitment, retention, and culture. We’re also a global company with employees all over the world, so having a guiding message helps create consistency in culture and decision-making.
There’s a lot of work underway there, and hopefully we can report back later this year as it progresses.
Ryan: Now let’s talk about the external work. Once we developed the brand foundation, the positioning, pillars, personality, narrative, and messaging, your marketing and sales teams were able to apply it in a much more distinctive way.
Harrison: This is the fun part. You helped us line up all the ingredients, and our creative team came in and did something really special with them.
The research didn’t necessarily change our opinions, but it gave us much greater depth of understanding about our customers, not just professionally but emotionally. Clinicians carry enormous pressure and responsibility, yet they continue to show up every day to deliver care.
The research helped us see how unseen and unheard many of them feel in today’s healthcare environment.
That insight drove the creative execution behind the “We See You” campaign. It became our way of bringing empathy and authenticity to life.
Hopefully you’ve seen some of the content already. Our goal was to show healthcare professionals that we truly understand their experience. We wanted them to feel that understanding immediately.
From the copy to the photography and tone, everything was designed to feel real. You don’t see perfectly polished clinicians with flawless makeup and hair. Everything feels grounded and authentic because that was the intention from the beginning.
Ryan: I’ve been watching The Pitt on HBO recently. It’s intense. Thank God for these people who devote their lives to helping others. You have an opportunity to celebrate them in a very authentic way. How has the campaign been received?
Harrison: We launched our brand anthem video toward the end of last year, and the response has been incredible. The engagement metrics are strong, but even more meaningful are the reactions we’ve received directly from clinicians.
We’re fortunate to have clinicians on staff who spent decades at the bedside, and some of those conversations have been incredibly emotional. People have been brought to tears. Honestly, it gets me emotional thinking about it because I can’t remember another time in my career when content connected so deeply.
I think people immediately recognize the experience we’re portraying, and that’s exactly what we hoped for.
We’re still early in this journey. There’s much more content to come, and we’re excited about how this idea continues to grow across the brand.
Ryan: What’s beautiful about this story, “Human Connections,” and the “We See You” campaign is that it’s universal. It works globally across cultures.
Harrison: I think you’re right. It’s timeless and approachable. This is really the evolution of the same process we started years ago, figuring out the genuine foundation of who we are and why it matters. I think we’ve captured that well, and we’re excited about what comes next.
Ryan: One final question. Many of our listeners are C-suite leaders or marketing executives navigating post-acquisition integration or rebranding efforts. What advice would you give them?
Harrison: You have to invest the time. You have to do the research. This isn’t marketers sitting in a room coming up with buzzwords based on market data.
You have to look honestly at your company and ask hard questions. Just because something sounds good doesn’t mean it genuinely reflects who you are or what you can stand behind. If it’s only aspirational, people will sense that.
You also have to deeply understand your customers. In B2B, you’re still talking to people, whether they’re executives or frontline employees. They’re all living their own emotional experiences, and your ability to connect with them influences the strength of the relationship.
And finally, even if you get those pieces right, you still have to communicate them in a way that is distinctive and compelling enough for people to stop and pay attention.
Ryan: Very well said. I also want to commend you on the way you managed the process internally. You involved cross-functional leaders and created organization-wide input and buy-in. This never felt like a marketing-only initiative.
Harrison: I’m glad you mentioned that because it was critical. Marketing has visibility into products and customers, but this goes much deeper than that. Having representation from HR, customer service, operations, and leaders across departments was incredibly important.
It gave us well-rounded input throughout the process and also healthy pushback when needed.
The Brand Council sessions were especially valuable. At first, people didn’t fully understand the purpose, but they quickly realized it was meant to create an open forum for feedback and discussion.
We also didn’t just launch the work overnight. We spent time reviewing everything with people, from the brand pillars to the creative executions. We showed the work to clinicians, including some of the same people who had emotionally shared their experiences earlier in the process. Watching them connect with the creative was how we knew it was working.
Ryan: From our perspective, you did a wonderful job leading the process. If people want to see the work, where should they go?
Harrison: Visit ICUmed.com for the core content. We’re also very active on LinkedIn, and the brand anthem video is available on our YouTube page. There’s much more video content coming in the months ahead. We’re focused on making our content as accessible and consumable as possible.
Ryan: Harrison, thank you so much for sharing your story. Best of luck moving forward. We’ll definitely be following your progress closely.
BrandingBusiness is a global B2B branding agency dedicated to building powerfully effective B2B brands that lead with clarity and perform with purpose. For more than 30 years, we have helped forward-looking clients to navigate change, enter new markets, unify cultures, and drive sustainable momentum toward their growth plans.