COMPANY: Exec. Health Exams
AGENCY: Danielides Comms.
TIMEFRAME: 2003-ongoing
BUDGET: $2,000 per beneficiary
At Executive Health Exams (EHE), President and COO Deborah McKeever believes in helping herself by helping others. Since October 2003, the preventive-healthcare provider
has kept its name in the news through a series of efforts designed to promote other people's work.
This summer, EHE teamed with the New York-Presbyterian Cancer Prevention Program to raise awareness of skin-cancer issues. The tool for this promotion? A window, but not
just any window. This one is located at 10 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, right next to the "Today" show studio. EHE leases the fourth floor of the building for its offices,
and it gets the window as part of its rental deal.
"About 250,000 people are supposed to pass through Rockefeller Center every day," says Nicholas Danielides, whose Danielides Communications coordinates the window's PR
efforts. "If you break it down, we believe that window delivers $100,000 in promotional value every month."
EHE donates the window space to various health-related causes according to an annual schedule of events. The American Cancer Society, for instance, typically gets the
space in time for the annual "Great American Smoke-Out" that takes place every November. Then the American Diabetes Association moves in to promote its yearly October walk.
When questions arise, Danielides turns to McKeever, who always has made the window a priority. "She is so incredible about getting back to us with whatever information we ask
for, even though she is the president," he says. "This was her brain child, and she is available to us 24/7 in order for us to do our job."
Mounting the display takes a considerable amount of coordination between agency, client and nonprofit partner. From the outset, "we make sure we communicate to the potential
window holder. We tell them everything we have seen in the past, putting all our experience in a package in order for them to clearly see the picture and to understand the pros
and cons," Danielides says.
The beneficiary organization typically creates the window's display. For example, the skin-cancer program included a beach scene with all the trappings: slouchy chair, beach
ball, sand bucket and a shovel. In addition, every time the display changes, Danielides crafts a personal letter from McKeever that hangs on one wall of the display. The letter
discusses the particular cause showcased in the window and describes the work of the beneficiary organization.
Then the agency works with the medical people at EHE and at the beneficiary organization to create press materials. These go out to science editors, medical editors and trade
publications, and then to mass-media health-segment producers. Although the window is occupied virtually every day of the year, Danielides is able to generate ongoing publicity
thanks to the timeliness of the various displays. There is always something in season.
Danielides doesn't just promote the window itself, i.e., "check out the cool display." Rather, the window is the catalyst to pitch substantive stories on medical issues.
To help pique editors' interest, "we provide material and backup information. We give them incredible physicians from EHE's advisory board," he says. "We can give them access to
the best minds in medicine."
And that's where the whole program pays off. More often than not, editors are ready to grab at a ready-made source, as long as that source is credible. EHE doctors fit the
bill, especially when they stand alongside medical people from the beneficiary agency. The resulting media play is where EHE comes out ahead.
While the window is "a wonderful place for a message, as a way for us to help other organizations that don't have the resources," McKeever says. "We've also gotten lots of
national attention for ourselves and lots of national media hits because of the windows we've put out there."
She adds: "We are almost 100 years old, we are a national organization and, when we get a 15-minute segment on Fox News that includes myself and our vice president of
medical affairs, that is a wonderful piece of branding for us."
Typically, the windows effort is generating at least three major feature stories a month, Danielides says. In addition, EHE picks up ancillary coverage through the follow-up
efforts of the beneficiaries. As a result, the agency now is getting at least five calls a month from groups interested in getting window space for their own causes.
By using the window to promote other people's causes, "EHE is able to share its know-how with all of those organizations," Danielides says. This in turn helps to get the word
out about EHE, "not just in these organizations, but in the general public as well," he adds.
Contacts: Nicholas Danielides, 212.319.7566, [email protected]; Aziza Johnson, 212.319.7566, [email protected]; Deborah McKeever, 212.332.3700
Stating Things Clearly
You can give the people what they want, but that doesn't mean they'll know what to do with it. Executive Health Exams (EHE) allows healthcare organizations to use its display
window at Rockefeller Center, but getting those displays in place can be a challenge.
"One of the biggest issues that we face with the window display is people not understanding the parameters of what they can do within the physical limitations of the window,"
explains Aziza Johnson, an account executive at Danielides Communications, which manages the effort on behalf of client EHE. "We really encourage them to come and see the space
before they start designing."
According to Johnson, beneficiary companies sometimes want to make something too text-heavy, and they don't realize that many of the near-quarter-million people who gaze at the
EHS window on any given day only want to "take away some key information and a Web site. People don't want to read a book."
The fix involves intensive handholding. The Danielides team shares with window decorators past examples of successful windows, and they walk through the technical aspects of
installation, i.e., beneficiaries can't drill into the ceiling.
Agency execs also work with a healthcare organization's in-house PR staff to pitch media as a team and also to work together to craft the follow-up communications that will
originate from the healthcare organization. "We encourage them to put some information about the window on their Web sites," Johnson explains. "We as PR people do our best to get
this out to the public, but those people who regularly visit the organization's Web site represent a key audience."
That's all fine, says principal Nicholas Danielides, but none of these tactics will work without an upfront commitment from his client. "There has to be a vision from the
head of the client's organization. There has to be somebody there who has a concrete vision for what they want to do," he says.