When marketers at Helen DeVos Children's Hospital held focus groups to gauge the impact of their "40 Specialties" marketing campaign, they knew they had succeeded when participants quoted the campaign's recurring tagline unprompted: "That's like a gazillion."
And the campaign wasn't just popular with locals—it won a Best in Show award among medium hospitals at the HealthLeaders Media Marketing Awards. The Grand Rapids, MI, hospital launched the "40 Specialties" campaign in 2007 to capture additional market share and promote its new brand identity—a name change, new logo, and, planned for 2011, a new hospital.
"There was lots to be done to update the brand and also to communicate the idea that this organization was making a significant commitment to improving children's healthcare by expanding pediatric capabilities through addition of new specialists, and with them new medical capabilities," says Tom Hanley, director of marketing and communications.
The campaign consisted of print, outdoor, television, and radio ads and aimed to stress to parents that children have different medical needs than adults and should therefore see pediatric specialists, something that challenges many children's hospitals.
"With that campaign we emphasized the 40 specialties that we have—neurology, cardiology, orthopedics, whatever it might be—and then began the process of informing parents and educating parents about how their kids' bodies are different than adults. A hospital that understands these differences can be crucial in the treatment of children," says Chris Cook, president of Fairly Painless Advertising, the agency that worked with the hospital.
Because the Children's Hospital is currently part of an adult hospital facility, the campaign's main goal was to increase awareness and market share. The hospital set a goal of increasing market share by 1% per year and 2% year-over-year volume growth.
Quantitative research done before the campaign launched found 24% unaided awareness in the hospital's primary service area and 28% market share in the primary and secondary service area. Twelve months after the campaign launched, unaided awareness rose to 47% and market share reached 33% in the first quarter of 2008. Helen DeVos has also seen a 3% market share increase, compared with 0.5% for all Midwest children's hospitals.
"No other hospital in west Michigan could make that claim in terms of having 40 pediatric specialties, so that was our area of distinction," Hanley says. "This [campaign] is helping get attention. And it's also supporting other marketing and physician relations and business development goals."
Marianne Aiello is an editor with HealthLeaders Media. Send her Campaign Spotlight ideas at maiello@healthleadersmedia.com If you are a marketer submitting a campaign on behalf of your facility or client, please ensure you have permission before doing so.