• by Les Luchter , January 7, 2025

“Triumph is not a word that’s often related to healthcare,” but it applies to those moments when “you find a doctor who takes your insurance and can see you soon,” Jessica Aptman, chief communications officer of Zocdoc, tells Marketing Daily.

Vignettes of patients achieving such triumphs play out in four humorous new Zocdoc commercials from 72andSunny. The spots, in :15 and :30 versions, each end by debuting the 18-year-old brand’s first-ever sonic logo: a two-second ditty nicknamed “The Little Victory,” developed with Made Music Studio.

In one spot, a bickering couple finds a therapist. In another, two lisping hockey players missing front teeth find a dentist. There’s also a woman with double pink eye using the app in front of her disgusted daughter and a roommate duo uttering differing meanings of the word “sick.”

Each commercial ends with the line “You’ve Got Options, Book Now” as the sonic logo begins to play. The sonic logo itself ends with a split-second “wink” in which Zocdoc’s visual logo -- a “Z” that looks like a face -- appears to do just that.

That logo is colored yellow, another unusual touch in healthcare according to Aptman, and “we wanted something similar from an audio perspective.”

“A multisensory brand expression -- considering what people see, hear and feel about the brand,” is important, concurs John Taite, Made Music Studio’s executive vice president of global brand partnerships & development,

The wink, though, will also be heard without the visual as Zocdoc’s sonic logo becomes “omnipresent” across the brand’s creative output. “Repetition is what has the power,” Aptman says, noting that “creating something we felt was flexible enough to use everywhere” was part of the goal for its sonic logo.

Such repetition will help create an “evocative emotional response” in audiences, she says, “when they hear it on a podcast, they hear it on streaming audio, they see it on the TV commercial, they hear it in a testimonial or product video.”

She adds, “Cementing the connection with Zocdoc will help our creative perform even better for us over time… and increase brand attribution.”  

Another goal in creating the sonic logo was that it could be used flexibly not only on consumer marketing but also on marketing to healthcare providers, Aptman says. “When a new patient finds and books with them, that should also feel like a moment of triumph.”

“The Little Victory” is an outgrowth of Zocdoc’s “ramped up” marketing into new channels over the past five or so years, she explains. “As we increased our investment in marketing, a sonic logo felt like a really missing tool in our brand toolkit.”

The sonic logo has two elements, Taite explains: an ascending melody, with “a lot of warm, human sound that just naturally feels encouraging and optimistic when you hear it…and then the wonderful conclusion -- the little sonic wink. In that short space of two seconds, you’ve got this musical journey of challenge, triumph, accomplishment.”

Zocdoc’s new ad campaign, meanwhile, is set to run all year over linear TV, with that buy handled by Horizon Next; OTT media via Bliss Point Media; and paid social via Power Digital.

While Zocdoc wants its creative to be “resonant with a broad audience -- everyone is a patient,” Aptman says that the brand’s core users skew female and millennial.”

The campaign’s goal, she relates, is “to continue to increase awareness and use .”