Healthcare Image Management Done Right

Walking around London on vacation recently, I hardly expect to see any healthcare ads. Retail ads, meanwhile, hit you at every turn—bored Lana Del Rey wearing H&M, coy Mila Kunis toting a Dior bag, and of course, the ubiquitous David Beckham modeling… well who can focus enough to figure out what.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when I was walking through Trafalgar Square, a double-decker bus rounded the corner with a large ad promoting National Health Service (NHS) nurses.

This is unexpected for two reasons. First, Britons are quite proud of and loyal to the NHS, the UK's publicly funded healthcare system created after World War II. The organization doesn't need to do a whole lot of general advertising.

And when they do put out a marketing push, most NHS-sponsored ads are in the form of preventative care education. So an ad promoting a group of NHS staff struck me as particularly odd.

I was curious, so I did some digging. The campaign, called "This is Nursing," turned out to be a public relations attempt to mitigate the damage done to the nursing profession after a series of negative reports regarding nurses, notably the Winterbourne View abuse case.

The transit ads, sponsored by the Royal College of Nurses, ran on buses and in Underground stations for two weeks in September. RCN marketers hoped the ads would highlight the realities of modern day nursing by showing caregivers combining their clinical skills with their emotional strength in challenging situations.

"It took skill and expertise to save Emma's life," one of the ads reads. "And compassion to make her smile again. It takes a remarkable person to be a nurse. This is a profession where joy and sadness come in equal measure. This is where inspiration is met by frustration and where courage must outweigh fear. This is challenging. This is rewarding. This is nursing."

The copy reads more like recruitment material than an image campaign, and the wording is refreshingly honest. Granted quaint writing is par for the course in England. The Brits have a knack for making the mundane sound adorable. This is a land, after all, where a bottle of sparkling juice touts it contains "absolutely no nasties" (preservatives).

Along with the poignant copy, RCN executives spoke openly about the campaign's objectives.

"We also want to show that despite all of these skills, nurses work under a great deal of pressure. We want to invite members of the public to imagine what it might be like to be the nurse, dealing with life or death situations and being with people at the crucial moments in their lives."

Each billboard invites viewers to log on to the campaign microsite containing a promotional video. Below the video, the site asks visitors to identify whether they are a healthcare worker or member of the public.

From there they go on to a more targeted landing page with information about the campaign, a video message from Peter Carter, and positive nursing news stories.

"We want to invite members of the public to imagine what it might be like to be the nurse, dealing with life or death situations and being with people at the crucial moments in their lives," said RCN Chief Executive and General Secretary Peter Carter.

The straightforwardness and honesty of the "This is Nursing" campaign is a lesson for U.S. healthcare marketers. Sure, the NHS and RCN are playing with a different set of rules. They don't operate in a competitive marketplace like we do here.

But coming forward to own up to the mistakes of a small group and following that with a nationwide campaign lauding the work of the majority of nurses is a simple yet effective approach to restore their public image.

I am also intrigued by the idea of turning an image campaign into a recruitment effort, which the NHS and RCN could easily do. In many ways the messaging is the same, so they may as well ride the wave of momentum generated by "This is Nursing."

Every once in a while, it's nice to take a step back and look at what other healthcare organizations–and countries–are doing in the marketing space. You might just glean some ideas to take home.