Rebranding Campaign Soars

When St. Joseph's Healthcare System redesigned its logo it could have simply swapped out the old for the new organization-wide. But the hospital decided to literally put the icing on the cake by hiring a celebrity chef to incorporate the hospital's new logo into a designer cake and displaying it at an event documented by a TLC reality show.

The focal point of the logo—a yellow biplane—is folded into many elements of the rebranding campaign the Paterson, NJ, hospital launched in March. The hospital's marketing team worked with the Wilmington, DE, ad agency Aloysius Butler & Clark to create the campaign in the hopes of becoming the dominant provider in Northern New Jersey.

"Our goal was to get across the fact that now we're a fully integrated system and push out who we are to the community," says Nancy Collins, director of public relations and marketing at St. Joseph's. "We wanted to focus on who we are as an organization, our mission, our vision, and our values."

Before it launched the campaign, the 1,000-bed health system worked to improve its services so that when they launched the campaign the message they sent would match the care patients experience.

The next step for the marketing teams was to create a tagline. They chose "inspired care." That tagline was included in all of the campaign elements, including print, digital, billboards, flyers, and brochures.

"We're trying to shape perception and increase awareness," says Collins. "The inspired care tag to me really captures the uniqueness that is St. Joseph's."

The digital campaign launched on June 9, targeting active searchers who were interested in learning more about stroke recovery and surgery. By June 30, their Web site (www.StJosephsHealth.org) had received 227,485 impressions and 218 unique site visitors. Visitors spent an average of 1 minute and 26 seconds on the site.