Co-ops are non-traditional third party plans that came into existence with the passage of the Patient Protection and Accountable Care Act of 2010. At one time, there were 23 co-ops in operation; however, the vast majority failed to remain financially solvent and ended up shutting their doors not long after going into operation.

While there are many reasons for the failure of these companies, marketing and branding challenges have been cited as one reason. In this scenario, there is a small group of venture capitalists that have been approached to make a sizable investment in the formation of a new health insurance co-op to replace Iowa's now defunct CoOpportunity Health.

You work for an advertising firm that has been hired to develop an overall marketing and branding strategy (plan) that will ensure the successful launch, and then growth of the co-op should the VCs elect to invest their capital in this venture.

This graded activity is designed to familiarize you with concepts typically associated with strategic marketing to include, but necessarily limited to: target marketing, advertising and promotion management, brand management, social media, website and search engine marketing/search engine optimization, Internet marketing, and marketing research to include analytics and qualitative analysis.