HealthLeaders Media Marketing Awards 2007: Winning Campaigns

The campaign, which took home the Best Branding, Large Hospital Silver Award, was just the first part of the "This is Duke Medicine" series, Bonds said. Its success has paved the way for a second leg, focusing on advertising specific service lines.

Appealing to women and families

Queen of Peace Hospital in New Prague, MN, is located in one of the fastest growing counties in the country, says Marla Mayer, director of marketing for the 25-bed facility. In 2005, the hospital opened a women's health center and immediately launched the Queen of Peace's Women's Health Center campaign to bring patients who had been traveling to hospitals in other counties into its labor and delivery center.

"Getting a new OB/GYN is like buying a new swimsuit," said Mayer. "You don't want to do it unless you have to, so we had some work to do in terms of getting women to come in and see our clinics."

Using a very natural look, billboards, print advertisements and fliers encouraged local residents to come into the new center and see what Queen of Peace had to offer. Once inside, women were told about the warm robes worn by all patients and the spa-like atmosphere. Mayer said the campaign also carried a strong word-of-mouth component.

Bringing simplicity back to medicine

Matt Moynihan, director of marketing for Cogent Healthcare in Brentwood, TN, says his organization believes strongly that physicians are tired of the bureaucracy that goes along with practicing medicine. This is why, he said, the professional hospitalist organization found so much success with its "Pure Medicine" recruitment campaign. The campaign earned the Gold Award for Best Campaign Marketing to Physicians.

"We wanted to stand out among the clutter," Moynihan said, speaking of the print advertisements that featured colorful fruits, the boots of a hiker on a scenic trail and children daydreaming. Flipping through the typically gray journals read by physicians, "everyone has a doctor in a white coat with a stethoscope around his neck," Moynihan said.

Encouraging hospital health

One campaign in particular was the subject of several questions from the audience during the morning's roundtables. The "Because Your Health Matters" campaign, which was given the Gold Award for Best Internal Communications Campaign, announced Baylor Health Care System's decision to make its Dallas campuses smoke-free.

The campaign targeted both hospital employees and visitors, and not only spread the word about the new no-smoking policy, but encouraged those viewing the ads to get healthier and quit smoking, said Grant M. Farrimond of Baylor's corporate communications office.