This column was updated on April 1 to correct an outdated reference to a wage freeze at OhioHealth and the spelling of the CEO's name, and to identify a news source.
A few days before OhioHealth launched its new branding campaign “Believe in We” on March 28, marketing leaders at Central Ohio’s largest hospital system met to preview the TV, radio, and print ads that were ready for release. As usual, marketing execs worried about details like semantics – particularly the odd use of the word ‘We’ – and how physicians would react to using the word ‘Believe’ in a medical context, according to a report in an Ohio business journal.
But chief among their concerns was the expense of the campaign and how hospital employees would react to OhioHealth spending big bucks on a marketing campaign. “It will take months, a year, but it’s going to pay off,” OhioHealth CEO Dave Blom said, according to Columbus Business First.
Even with the economy on the rebound, hospital marketing teams must walk a fine line between competing with other hospitals in their market and justifying the expense of new marketing campaigns, especially those that use pricey TV ads. Marketing costs became a big issue in 2008 when the recession kicked in and drove patient volume down, forcing budget cuts at many hospitals.
In 2010, legislators in Vermont went so far as to introduce a bill that would have banned hospitals from marketing their services. “On one level, it’s competing for business,” said Steven Maier, the lawmaker who introduced the bill. “I think it’s appropriate to question whether or not our not-for-profit systems need to compete.”
The bill failed to advance but it got the attention of hospital marketing teams and got them thinking about marketing campaigns and how they are viewed by both consumers and hospital employees, who could rightly wonder whether those funds might be put to better use.
According to James Unland, editor of the Journal of Health Care Finance, hospital marketing campaigns were unheard until the 1980s when pioneering ad agencies began approaching hospital executives with the idea of TV commercials. Since then, it’s become commonplace and set what Unland suggests is a bad precedent.
“I am not opposed to hospitals marketing appropriately to their own service areas,” Unland told WBEZ in Chicago. “My issue comes with the huge expenditures on TV and broad-based media advertising that is very, very expensive.”
Instead, Unland said hospitals should focus on media-driven commercials such as public service announcements about free services and Internet advertising. “The great thing about the Internet is that the unit cost of telling the story of the hospital and what services it has is minute. And you can tell a long story. You can interview your doctors. You can give people a virtual tour.”
Unland has a good point, though any marketing team will tell you a campaign that relies on inexpensive mediums such as the Internet, direct mail, and print ads would have a limited impact. According to a 2010 study from Conde Nast and McPheters & Company, an Internet banner ad had 16% of the value of a 30-second TV spot in terms of consumer recall.
For the most part, that study vindicates the multi-media approach used by most hospital marketing campaigns and draws on the old axiom that – in any business - you have to spend money to make money.