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The Art of the Brand
Why Your Social Strategy Fails: Lessons from Dr. Lara Devgan’s Branded Growth
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The reason why your social media is not working is because you're not doing anything different. In order to stand out in your industry, you have to diverge. Today I'm going to highlight a professional that is killing it. Her name is Dr. Lara Davgan and she is a plastic surgeon out of New York City. And it is worth studying. Dr. Lara Devgan. If you're in a professional based business, you're a service provider and you're struggling to stand out. So one of the things that really set her apart and made it made a name for herself was creating this concept called facial balancing. But she's also trickled into the other areas of where consumers start to pattern to surgeons before they've made the decision to have surgery. She also revolutionized a surgical stitch which made her within the industry quite respected and well known. Now, where she's done a really good job with her social presence is she shows her work as well as shows her personality in a way that's not over the top, not overly charismatic, not overly personable or personality focused, but is showing enough of her as a professional that sets the tone and standard that she's the best at what she does. Now, the way that Laura Devgan has, has structured her personal brand, you can tell, is quite authentic to who she is as a person. And that's also very important. I see a lot of professionals that will hire a marketing agency and will feel the need or the urge to do things that doesn't feel authentic to them like dancing or doing silly meme videos or being direct to do things that they wouldn't usually do in their practice. Now if you're someone that's sillier, that loves to dance, that this feels authentic to you, then that's a great strategy. But if it doesn't feel authentic to you, it is not authentic to who you are and it's not going to attract the right kinds of patients. The way that Dr. Lara Devkin has situated herself on her personal brand and socials feels very authentic to who she seems to be as a person. Now her work is also fantastic and speaks for herself. But that is not the only reason why she has stood out. What I've also loved about what she's done is she's created her own medical grade skincare line. Now why this is great is it's a fantastic entry point into the world of surgical and forever beauty. So most often people that are in their 20s or their young 30s are not opting for surgery. Yes, there are, you know, a few instances of elect Surgeries that you may take on. But for the most part, where the money is made in plastic surgery is the long tail of aging. Having a skin care line that's based on headlines like, I was sick of patients having products that didn't work allow people to enter into the Lara Devgan brand before they're ready for surgery. Now, what I saw from Dr. Lara Devgan in New York is actually what prompted me to create this video. I had gone into this smoothie bar called Just Plants in the meat packing district and I was blown away by when I walked into the smoothie store, her name was on the TV screen and it instantly hit me of how brilliant this was as a move, because this is allowing people to pattern and to connect an image and an idea with her name before they're entering into the conversation on plastic surgery. But when I walked into the Just Plants and I saw Dr. Lara Devgan with a smile smoothie, I instantly wanted to buy it. It gave credibility to her brand and to this brand, the Just Plant smoothie brand, for them to have a collaboration. What's interesting is the Smoothie bar is a chain throughout New York City and it's not near her clinical office. So she has sought out where she thinks her next gen patient is going to be and is creating brand awareness and brand credibility within her market segment so that they're connected with her when the time comes to have surgery. And not enough professionals realize this. Your investment in branding is for tomorrow, it's not for today. It's understanding that if you want to have a business for the next 10, 15, 20 years, for your foreseeable future or your foreseeable forever, you need to be constantly investing in tomorrow. By having a partnership with Just Plants she can't measure on a balance sheet, probably if she got 10 extra surgical bookings per month, she probably doesn't even care because she's booked a year in advance. But by creating strategic partnerships like the Just Plant partnership, she's able to cement awareness. And this matters because the buying for your service happens before the customer starts buying your service. And I say this all the time to professional service providers, I would rather you be connecting and creating content that's relatable with no call to action way before they need your service, because it's more likely that when the time comes that they need your service, it's going to cost you less calories to the customer as well as less advertising and marketing spend at the bottom of the funnel because they've already created trust and credibility with you. And when you're fighting at the bottom on Google AdWords, on PPC, on some kind of bottom of the funnel marketing metric, you're spending way more and you're not getting the right kind of customer. The kind of customer that you want is one that has decided they want to use you before the problem or issue has arised because they're already sure they've done their work, they've made that connection and that relationship with your brand that you're the right person for the job. So I thought this partnership was brilliant. As an aside, this was a plant based smoothie, smoothie bar. I felt smoothie could taste better, but I thought the concept was absolutely brilliant and I wanted to give kudos to her. She also created her own line of surgical tools in order to work against the gender inequality within the surgical field. All of the surgical equipment to date, so like all of the scalpel knives and all of the different tools and utensils they use to cut people open and to perform surgery were designed for man's hands, which are traditionally much bigger than a female's hands. So she created effectively the first line of surgical tools for females. So what this, what she has done in her marketing and branding strategy is she has aligned herself to be among the best within her surgical field, within her industry as well as within the consumers. And this is an awesome strategy that professionals don't realize. Enough is there are certain things that you can do asymmetrically within your industry that translates to how the public perceives you as a provider. There's a disproportionately a massive upside in value that her brand receives by transforming and revolutionizing the surgical field. Now her scalpel line as well as her skin care line both carry her namesake and are both called Dr. Lardev can surgical tools or Dr. Lara Devgan skincare. So regardless of if you're on the consumer package good side or, or if you're on the I'm a surgeon business to business side, both sides of the coin, both sides of the industry are using products with her brand, elevating and increasing her brand value. Lastly, what I thought was brilliant that she's been doing is she's been doing collaborations as a personal brand with other brands within New York City, making her more relatable, more approachable and intersecting with fashion and culture, which is fascinating and makes perfect sense considering where plastic surgery lives. Lives in the middle of the zeitgeist. It's absolutely in desire right there with fashion and culture. Now she has become quite a, quite a Celebrity surgeon. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and children, and she's definitely in the heart of it. But she prioritizes and make time outside of her busy schedule to be writing in programs like Real Self, Vogue, Elle. She's writing in publications and in columns on the B2B side as well as the B2B, B2C side. She's engaging with brands that are connected specifically with her consumer so that she's constantly top of mind for where people are. She understands brand awareness. Now, for many of you listening to this whole who don't work with surgeons or doctors or people, and the kind of the higher echelon of service providers, you'd be like, this makes perfect sense. I see tons of other businesses and industries do this. But what's interesting is doctors and lawyers tend to fight against being a part of the public and public brands. And what Dr. Lara Devgan does is she's broken that fourth wall and she said, look, I'm of the people, I'm with the people. I'm going to engage with these brands. I'm going to, I'm going to lean into pop culture, the zeitgeist, and being where the people are and the doctors and any professional support service provider in any industry that does that is who wins. And we can look, it's easy to knock down and say, okay, yeah, sure, like, you know, celebrity doctors in Beverly Hills do this, or, but you can do this. You can get on small podcasts, you can get on local blogs. You can, you can create your own podcast bringing in Michael influencers. You can recreate what this woman is doing at the highest scale. You don't. It doesn't have to be New York Fashion Week, but you can look to your community and take from what this woman is doing at the highest level and distill it and break it down in a way that separates you and diverges you from the rest. Maybe instead of creating your own skincare line, maybe you curate brands you actually like in your clinic. Not what brand is just paying you the most or has the best margin for your profitability. Maybe you instead create a content creation corner and bring in voices and people from your community and interview them. Talk about beauty changes, talk about fashion, talk about the food they're eating, talk about health and wellness. Do things outside of just surgery in order to crease the awareness, the trust and the credibility for your practice, whatever business you're in. So Dr. Laura Devgan, she gets a gold star from me. She's killing it. I love what she does. I love what she does. And I'd love to have her on Art of the Brand. Let me know what you think of this case study.