When NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital evaluated its brand positioning in 2010, leaders found that its message had been lost among other big-time competitors, such as Mount Sinai Hospital, North Shore?Long Island Jewish Health System, and NYU Langone Medical Center. The trouble was that these competitors overlapped with NYP's long-time positioning, while outspending the it two-to-one in media.
So NYP launched a strategic, multimedia advertising campaign to truly differentiate itself. It worked, and they have the benchmarking data to prove it.
Analyzing Benchmark Data
Before hashing out the details of the campaign, NYP leaders analyzed market data. They hired an independent research group to conduct a quantitative study both pre- and post-campaign to track awareness and word-of-mouth/buzz levels among the target audience.
The pre-campaign study found that NYP's ad awareness was 11%, compared to scores of 15% to 20% among other leading university hospitals. Likewise, NYP's word-of-mouth/buzz was 17%, compared to scores of 19% to 25% among its competitors.
This benchmarking data provided a solid foundation on which to build the campaign. Many organizations choose to omit this extra step at the onset of a campaign and use other measurement standards, but an independent awareness study is often the best?and fastest?way to determine the true success of an ad campaign.
Targeting the "Healthcare Self-Navigator"
With benchmarking out of the way, NYP marketers began mapping out the new ad campaign by defining their target audience as the "healthcare self-navigator"?a woman aged 35?64 with an annual household income of at least $100,000.
"She either doesn't notice most healthcare messages due to their lack of relevancy, or she is highly skeptical of efforts that come across as trite or commercial," says David Feinberg, NYP's chief marketing officer. "To resonate with her, we needed something unexpected and genuine."
To determine the best way to target the self-navigator, Feinberg and his team, working with New York City ad agency Munn Rabôt, went right to the source: NYP patients. After conducting countless patient interviews, the team noticed that above all else, patients valued the positive experiences they had with NYP staff.
They decided the best way to publicize these experiences was through the patients themselves. This insight inspired the "Amazing Things Are Happening Here" campaign in 2011.
Finding the Right Spokes-Patients
To decide which patients were most suited to sharing their NYP story, Feinberg and his agency counterparts created a matrix of criteria, including the complexity of the patient's case, the simplicity of the story, and the patient's storytelling ability.
"We research the case as much as possible before we meet the patient, we then pre-interview the patient, and finally we interview and film the patient," he says. "Even after this vetting process, not all patients' stories are able to be reduced to 60 seconds, and often these stories are used on the web in a longer format."
The testimonial ads are displayed in black and white, in order to stand out and better convey emotion to the viewer. The only color in the minute-long spots is the hospital's logo, which is displayed briefly at the end.
NYP created five ads featuring patient stories that involved hospital staff. The spots were edited from interviews where the patients spoke freely and are noticeably unscripted?which is rare and refreshing in hospital advertising these days.
The star of the "Amazing Things Are Happening Here" campaign is a nine-year-old girl named Heather, who tells her story of having a malignant tumor successfully removed at NYP after failing to find the right surgeon at several other hospitals. She can't even pronounce "Presbyterian" correctly, but the girl's candor and unique storytelling ability would keep just about anyone's attention.
From Heather's and the four other TV spots, the agency also created print, outdoor, and online ads, as well as a dedicated microsite (nyp.org/amazingthings) that includes longer patient interviews and physician information.
In 2012, if your campaign doesn't have a microsite, you are missing a valuable opportunity to reach consumers who are looking for quick access to more information. Simply linking back to your main website isn't good enough.
Blowing Away the Benchmarks
After the campaign's first four-week run, the independent research company conducted another benchmarking study and found that NYP's unaided advertising awareness had more than doubled, from 11% to 24%, surpassing all competition. It sustained this level for three months while the campaign was on-air. Word-of-mouth/buzz also increased from 17% to 26%, again outdoing the competition.
"Because it is such a low-interest category to consumers, hospital advertising is one of the most difficult business sectors to do effectively," says Orson Munn, CEO of Munn Rabôt. "Marketers have to try to think like an everyday consumer who is not seriously ill and currently looking for a hospital. We believe the work needs to rise above the obvious and complement and acknowledge the viewer's intelligence."
By studying benchmarking data, defining the target audience, using their best patient advocates, and delivering a multi-pronged campaign featuring simple creative work, NYP was able to best its higher-spending competitors. There's a lesson here for every healthcare marketer.
Marianne Aiello is a contributing writer at HealthLeaders Media.