When a Florida heart facility geared up to celebrate its 10th anniversary it bypassed the obligatory "thank you" advertising and self-promotional tour events, choosing instead
to train the community on how to save lives. In November, the Heart Institute at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point in Hudson, Fla., teamed up with the Florida-Puerto Rico
chapter of the American Heart Association to offer free CPR training under a program called Heartstarters.
Although the hospital had never done a CPR training event, it was convinced it could break regional records by training 1,000 people in one day - a goal three times the size of
similar training programs. AHA, however, considered the goal overly ambitious and cautioned the hospital that it may be setting its sights too high. In the association's view
training 500 people was a more realistic number. But the hospital was convinced that the rural community - which has a heavy concentration of seniors - would respond in droves to
free CPR training because:
- it had been more than two years since a similar effort was offered; and
- seniors were particularly responsive to the hospital's other cardiovascular outreach programs.
As it turned out, the hospital's goals were too conservative. After the first week of the planned six-week campaign that used direct mail, TV and print, the hospital had to
pull the plug on its promotional push. It had registered more than 1,000 people and couldn't accommodate a bigger volume. "With a larger facility, we could have likely trained
over 2,000 people," says Chris Hyers, the Heart Institute's VP of marketing and planning.
The Devil's in the Details
While the campaign proved early on that there was considerable community interest in getting CPR training, the devil was in working out the logistical details and attracting
last-minute volunteer support. The first obstacle was finding a venue big enough to train 1,000 people. The hospital turned to the local community college, which provided two
facilities for video education and hands-on CPR training. The training was facilitated with five, two-hour sessions that accommodated 200 participants. In return, the college was
promoted as a key sponsor of the campaign.
But the bigger challenge was getting 100 instructors to volunteer for the program, which meant that some would have to come from neighboring communities and as far away as
Tampa - a one-hour commute. A week-and-half before the event, AHA staffers feverishly worked the phones and fax machines to convince 50 instructors from other AHA offices in the
region to kick in with down-to-the-wire support. The draw for them was being a part of a record-setting CPR training event that would reach the older population - a target that is
not typically trained on such a massive level, says Michele Money, AHA's communications director.
'Big City' Media Coverage
Direct mail and donated media were the promotional drivers of the campaign. The hospital used a two-phase direct mail campaign to target high-profile business leaders, clubs,
community organizations and leading educators. A Heartstarters flyer was inserted in two local newspapers with a cumulative circulation of 285,000. And Time Warner cable, the
dominant area cable provider, ran public service announcements.
Although the campaign generated ample placements for its PSAs, there were concerns about whether it would spark interest from reporters in Tampa who might have considered the
event small community news. "Although Tampa is only an hour away, where the media is concerned it is a world away [from Hudson], reporters rarely cover stories down there" says
Money. For this reason, the media there weren't interested in doing stories prior to the event.
But on the day of the event two of Tampa's four TV stations saw the news value of training 1,000 people on CPR with reporters providing on-site media coverage that included
tease stories by the local CBS affiliate.
The widespread regional volunteer support and media coverage helped to make it a statewide implementation model for other AHA CPR training efforts. In April, AHA borrowed
outreach strategies used in this CPR campaign to generate support for a larger training effort, which attracted more than 8,000 people being trained at 16 sites in 12 counties.
"Hospitals are an essential partner for our CPR training efforts because they have a built-in captive audience of employees, patients and volunteers who are eager to educate on
CPR awareness," says Money.
(The Heart Institute, Chris Hyers, 727/869-5461; AHA, Michele Money, 727/570-8809)
Logistical Planning In a Heart Beat
While the Heartstarters campaign helped to position the Heart Institute and AHA as regional leaders in cardiovascular prevention and education, the campaign could have been a
PR nightmare if the resources weren't in place to train 1,000 people on CPR.
Here's what helped the campaign avoid logistical pitfalls:
- a solid partnership agenda that defined the AHA's and hospital's volunteer roles;
- single-source problem resolution that identified what person would handle specific problems;
- unified sense of urgency for negotiating marketing commitments from media outlets and volunteer support.