• USMLE

The Challenge

The United States Medical Licensing Examination® (USMLE®) examination is a critical milestone in medical education, incredibly well-respected and somewhat feared. USMLE enlisted FWD People to help reposition and rebrand in a way that would feel less daunting to students, while maintaining its reputation as a high-quality medical licensure examination.

Fwd People helped USMLE update and invigorate their long-established brand in order to strengthen relationships with examinees, partners in the medical education community, and beyond.

Project Snapshot

• Industry
  Medical education
• Category
  Assessment
• Services
  Discovery, Creative Calibration, Creative Concepting, Brand Identity

FWD Thinking in Action

Refocus on purpose.

We knew we had to refocus and clarify USMLE’s purpose, and reflect it in a brand that would resonate with and reassure today’s aspiring physicians.

ABOUT THE WORK

Uncovering attitudes
Through a program of brand perception research, insight interviews and workshops with both internal and external stakeholders, we defined what the USMLE brand stood for today and where it needed to go to best support the medical community.

Defining a position
We extrapolated and rationalized the research program into an ideal brand positioning, before setting out to create visual and written brand identities to reflect it.

Aligning stakeholders
To balance the need for multi-stakeholder buy-in we facilitated a creative calibration workshop in which staff and partners shared their perspectives and reactions to visual and written concepts.

Balancing authority and accessibility
Those agreed-upon parameters guided our efforts to balance the respect and trust a medical licensure examination requires with the need for a more human-centric approach. The modernized brand uses softer visual elements, a more colorful palette, greater use of photography, and a clear structure to guide medical students through the three steps of the USMLE.