Aetna Brand
Photo Library
Creative Direction: Jared Johnson
Art Direction: Alyssa Vance
Photography: Gleeson Paulino
The Aetna Brand photoshoot was an opportunity to capture new photography that embodied the refreshed Aetna Brand and laddered into the Healthier happens together® platform and guidelines.
The brand photography needed to elevate and differentiate Aetna communications with an ownable, distinguished style bespoke for the brand. This unique imagery had to stand out in the sector against other health and insurance communications.
Our aim was to express the Aetna brand personality, care, and approachability through people-centric visual storytelling—showing “healthier” as an accessible possibility for all. We wanted to establish simple, authentic, and familiar settings to tell individual health care journeys and how health care looks different for everyone.
How we did it
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Real people
We represented a diverse, true depiction of Aetna’s consumer community with a varied range of emotions, body types, and health stories.
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Vibrant + fresh
We leveraged bold color as a representation of the brand’s personality — presenting vibrancy, energy, and natural light. We will champion Aetna brand colors, but we will look at organic pops of colors in all scenarios.
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Show, don't tell
We captured a full range of emotions across health care experiences, from big, celebratory smiles to expressions of grief receiving comfort, while weaving what matters most to a person’s health into every special moment.
Sea of sameness
Let's be honest—stock photos are bad. Their lightened skin tones and neutral color palettes are designed to blend into any brand, design, or color scheme by being as generic as possible. After conducting a competitor analysis, my team and I created this collage. We then asked the client to identify which competitor they thought these samples came from. After they shared their guess, we revealed that the collage actually featured images from TEN different brands—all relying on the same sterile, stock photography.
Brand photography toolkit
I developed a comprehensive toolkit to support Aetna's internal marketing team and external partners in seamlessly integrating the new photography into their brand. The toolkit included best practices for both digital and print applications, along with customizable templates to facilitate a smooth transition.
