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Brushing Up on Branding by Drs. Stevie Roberts and Robert Johnson

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Categories: Marketing; Practice Management, HR and Accounting;
Brushing Up on Branding 

The art of building a genuine brand for your practice

by Drs. Stevie Roberts and Robert Johnson

You never get a second chance to make a first impression is a cliché that is as true of social encounters as it is of patients, potential hires and your community discovering your practice. Your brand is an expression of the identity of your business that communicates value and serves as the foundation for that lasting first impression.

As clinicians, the brand of our practice is an extension of ourselves and our personality, which makes building a brand a deeply personal process. It’s also a ton of fun!

In this article we explore the power of building genuine brands and what to expect when working with a brand designer.


Our story
Our story as husband-and-wife dentists began in Boston at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine, where we first met in the throes of dental school. Dr. Stevie Roberts is from Philadelphia and the daughter of two dentists. Dr. Robert Johnson is from Seattle and a third-generation dentist. Dentistry has always been a part of our identity and family life. Roberts’ parents spent most of their careers practicing out of their family home, a brownstone in Rittenhouse Square, and Johnson grew up working in his dad’s dental practice in the same building where his grandfather practiced.

Fast-forward to today, and Roberts is a general dentist and the owner of Dentiste in Kirkland, Washington, while Johnson is an oral surgeon practicing in Seattle. We are fortunate to also be co-founders of Duo Toothpaste, a tablet toothpaste company that we started with friends to address health and sustainability problems in the monopolized toothpaste market.


Creating a brand from scratch
Our first brand-building project was Duo Toothpaste. We approached a brand designer when we had a prototype tablet (created after months of pressing tablets in our garage) but otherwise did not have a company name or any branding—we were building a consumer-packaged goods brand from scratch.

The first step in the design process was to communicate the mission and purpose of the company in the context of our target audience. We created Duo with a commitment to science and to also elevate the brushing experience with beautiful, recyclable bottles, clean ingredients and added supplements such as vitamins D3 and B12, bridging oral health and systemic wellness. While we were clear in our mission as a company, we had not sold any products and therefore had to hypothesize about our audience.

Our belief at the time was that millennials would resonate with our mission to improve oral health with a product that was eco-friendly and an elevated departure from crusty plastic toothpaste tubes filling up landfills and gooping up bathroom countertops.

With our mission and audience defined, we created mood boards to visually communicate our vision with clippings from comparable brands, cultural references and anything else that inspired feelings we wanted our future customers to experience. We then presented this information to our brand designer during an introductory meeting, where she also asked us open-ended questions to get a sense of us and the company.
Dental Office Branding
Naming the company “Duo” captured the mission of dual benefits:
oral and systemic health, personal care, planetary care and two minutes of brushing.


The importance of a good name and a good logo
The next step was to come up with a company name. Our designer took what she learned in that meeting and carefully processed the information before proposing several names that captured the essence of the company.

We landed on the name Duo, which we felt captured our mission and the dual qualities of our product: providing toothpaste and functional ingredients, oral health and systemic health, personal health and planet health, and the two minutes of brushing we all try to promote for our patients.

Next came the logo. A logo must bring the name to life and be adaptable to all mediums, including digital, print and swag. At this stage in the process, seven grayscale logos were presented. We found that we were quickly able to eliminate four of the possibilities, but deciding between the final three was a prolonged and emotional experience between the four co-founders. We all came to appreciate the value in taking time to digest the information and all our opinions changed several times over the course of many productive conversations with each other, our designer and with confidants outside of the company.

Once the logo was established, we entered the final stage of the brand creation process, which is brand expression. Brand expression is the look and feel of the brand and includes the color palette, typography, photography and illustration styles. The final product is a brand guidelines document that includes the name, logo and brand expression that is referenced for website design, physical signs, marketing and wherever else branding is needed. This provides consistency across mediums to promote brand recognition.

Building a brand is only the start. Our brand continues to evolve as we learn more about our customers and the value they find in our products, but building a brand that is genuine to the company and founders that is well-articulated has been fundamental to our success.


Rebranding an office
Roberts worked at Dentiste for a year as an associate before acquiring it from a woman who had started the practice out of dental school 18 years prior. Dentiste is a four-operatory boutique practice in an affluent suburb of Seattle with an all-women staff and family-centric patients. Our rescue dog, JoJo, goes to the office every day, making for a wonderful and welcoming patient experience and working environment.

Given that Dentiste had brand recognition in the community, Roberts decided that she would keep the name but that a rebrand was necessary to make the practice her own and to update a brand that was developed in the early 1990s. Notably, the logo featured a frog. To this day, we still don’t know where or how the frog came to be associated with a dental brand.

We approached the same designer that we worked with previously to start the rebrand. Similarly, the mission of the company was clear: Dentiste is a dental practice that offers exceptional cosmetic and family dentistry in a vibrant, efficient and welcoming environment to a community that values exceptional service. However, unlike our previous experience, we also knew our audience to be the people of Kirkland who value personal care in a boutique setting.

Although we were able to skip the name-finding step of the process, the branding process was very similar to our previous experience. We also found it easier to create mood boards and to visually present the business given that there was a physical space that could be captured in photos and an existing website and brand to build from.

Roberts also found it to be a valuable team-building exercise to involve her staff in the branding process. After the rebrand was complete, the staff provided a stream of suggestions for swag, window decals, building signs and had a general sense of pride for their workplace.
Dental Office Branding
Logo selection was a thoughtful and collaborative journey,
narrowing down from seven designs to the perfect one.


Growing the brand of a legacy specialty practice
Johnson graduated residency and joined another husband-and-wife dentist team, oral surgeon Dr. Thomas Maring and periodontist Dr. Susan Maring, at Maring Surgical. The Marings have been pillars of the Seattle dental community for more than 25 years and have built a brand that exudes excellence and expertise, but this raised the challenge of rebranding to promote an additional provider (with a different last name).

There are also differences in the audiences between a general dentistry practice and a specialty practice. The end-consumer and intended audience of a general dentistry practice is most often the patients, whereas specialty practices must consider referring dentists as well as patients. Given the longstanding recognition of the Maring name in the community and the desire to promote Johnson’s name as a new oral surgeon, we decided to proceed with Maring & Johnson, a business name that both promotes the individuals and communicates legacy, like a law firm.

However, Maring & Johnson could not stand alone as the business name, for fear of being confused with said law firms. We wanted to communicate what sets us apart from other oral surgery practices, which is that we have oral surgeons and a periodontist practicing under one roof. So, it became Maring & Johnson Oral Surgery and Dental Implant Center.

With the name decided, we moved on to the logo. Fortunately, there were no frogs involved and the logo that the Marings had designed in the 1980s still captured the brand we wanted to promote. The logo did, however, have design features like shadowing that was clearly designed for a non-digital world. Our designer was quickly able to modernize the logo, typography and color palette to revamp a legacy brand that communicates excellence and expertise across all mediums.


Our takeaways
Building a genuine brand is an incredibly rewarding process that should be approached deliberately. As dentists and business owners, we are accustomed to being a jack-of-all-trades and taking on roles outside of our formal training. We also recognize that the need to build a brand often comes when time and money are limited resources—following the purchase or startup of a practice. It’s tempting to assume the role of brand designer in addition to being a dentist. We’re sure there are some readers who have the necessary tools to do so, however, we have found that working with a professional brand designer is essential.

The first step is to be able to concisely define the culture, values and audience of your business—as well as what sets you apart. Then, take your time interviewing brand designers to find someone you vibe well with, and be sure to ask for a portfolio of their previous work. Our brand designer had never worked on a dental project but had an impressive portfolio of designing brands for small and large businesses.

Be deliberate with your decisions but also take your time at every step. Digest the information and gather perspectives from as many brand-aligned people as possible. The result will be a brand that is genuine to you and your business and that will define your career.
Author Bios
Stevie Ames Roberts, DMD Stevie Ames Roberts, DMD, is a general dentist and owner of Dentiste in Kirkland, Washington, as well as a co-founder of Duo Toothpaste. She is a member of the Dentaltown editorial board. She was all but raised in a dental office—her parents are both dentists in Philadelphia and practice out of their family home in Rittenhouse Square.
She completed a Master of Biomedical Science in addition to her Doctorate in Dental Medicine at Tufts University in Boston. She met her husband, Dr. Robert Johnson, while in dental school. He is an oral surgeon practicing in downtown Seattle. When they are not talking about teeth and toothpaste, they enjoy exploring the country in their RV trailer and spending time in the mountains and on the water, as well as back East near Stevie’s childhood home. She also enjoys playing the piano and reading. They live on a floating home on Lake Union with their rescue dog, JoJo, and their son.


Robert E. Johnson, DMD, MD, Robert E. Johnson, DMD, MD, is a third-generation dentist, oral and maxillofacial surgeon, and co-founder of Duo Toothpaste. His family has provided compassionate oral surgery care to Seattle for more than 80 years, a tradition he is proud to continue.
Johnson earned his undergraduate degree from the University of Washington before moving to Boston to pursue dental school at Tufts University, where he met his wife, Dr. Stevie Roberts, who practices in Kirkland, Washington. He then returned to the University of Washington where he completed medical school and residency training. Dr. Johnson co-founded Duo Toothpaste with a commitment to provide patients with a better brushing experience that is safe and effective and better for the planet.
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