"The following contains material which may be offensive to those suffering with knee pain," the TV spot for the Bone and Joint Hospital at St. Anthony begins, "Viewer discretion is advised."
After giving viewers a chance to recover from their collective double-take, the commercial features a montage of people bending their legs to creaking sound effects. The Oklahoma City, OK, hospital's marketers created the multimedia campaign, which includes print, outdoor, online, and TV elements, to promote MAKOplasty—a new robotic technology now available at the hospital.
"This marketing effort was important because, normally, patient recruitment is driven by the physicians, but this effort depends mostly on our advertising efforts," says Shane Brock, principal at Stubble Creative, Inc., the agency that worked with the 102-bed hospital. "Therefore, the main objective is to get the potential patients to call a dedicated phone line for more information."
The hospital also used social media to create buzz around the campaign and posted teasers on its Twitter account (twitter.com/Boneandjointokc) and officially announced the new technology on Twitter and Facebook.
"The feedback from the advertising effort has been very positive, with 25 calls received on the dedicated phone line in the first week of the campaign," Brock says. "Additionally, more than 50 people have registered for a community education program on MAKOplasty."