Today's healthcare organizations face mounting pressure to develop rock-solid brand awareness with limited resources. Healthcare PR & Marketing News found that industry marketers and PR professionals are overcoming these challenges with strategic partnerships, aggressive media negotiations, sound market research and integrated communication efforts.
These are the key components of the campaigns selected this month as winners of our Best Integrated, PR and Marketing Campaigns of 1998.
The third annual contest drew a wide array of PR, marketing and integrated campaigns from the hospital, health plan and pharmaceutical sectors of the industry. A panel of editors and marketers judged the campaigns in the key areas of message development, targeted media coverage and marketing/PR outcomes as measured against goals.
In this special issue we profile the winning campaigns.
They offer stealable marketing/PR ideas for enhancing community outreach, boosting patient referrals and introducing new service lines.
The award winners also will be recognized at the Fourth National Forum for Customer Based Marketing Strategies conference in Phoenix on April 25-27.
These are the campaign that took top honors:
- Best PR: Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital's "Partners in Health Technology" campaign with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This unique informational partnership leveraged the cutting edge image of both organizations in the area of medical research by educating the community about medical aerospace spin-off technologies in Salinas, Calif. (SVMH, Susan Hanks-Marscellis, 831/759-1825)
- Best Marketing: University Health System's NurseLink campaign which helped the San Antonio-based system overcome a negative image as a county hospital and increased call volume for all of its services by more than 50 percent. (UHS, Mary Rozar-Hogan, 210/358-2335)
- Best Integrated: Lambda Medical Group's Introductory campaign, a first of its kind primary medical group for Los Angeles' gay and lesbian community. The campaign used sound market research and integrated communication strategies for educating various audiences about the need for preventive medical care for this underserved group. (LMG, Keith Waterbrook, 323/993-7534)
Two campaigns earned honorable mentions:
- Fischer & Partners "Duet" campaign for LXN Corp. This national diabetes campaign informed the medical community about the Duet Glucose Control System. It resulted in more than nine million media impressions among key diabetes news outlets, and the trade show promotion attracted more than 850 diabetes educators. (F&P, Aimee Corso, 310/577-7870, ext. 158)
- Eisner Petrou & Associates' "Free Labor Doula for a Year" program for Helix Health Women's Services, which educated new parents in Baltimore about the benefits of labor and postpartum health advocates (doulas). The campaign strengthened community awareness about the facility's innovative parent-focused birthing services. (EP&A, Mary Beth Morseberger, 410/685-3390)