Y2K issues kept healthcare PR professionals plenty busy throughout 1999 and around the clock on New Year's Eve.
Chances are one of the key reasons you had to ring in the Year 2000 at a hospital was to handle the wildly anticipated hype surrounding the first Y2K babies born in your market. Back in April you got a taste of what was to come. Thousands of moms who wanted to enjoy the auspicious notoriety of giving birth on January 1, 2000 did their homework on how to deliver a Y2K baby. The media and, in particular, Web sites that cater to new moms rose to the occasion by providing detailed information on the best medical guesstimates on target conception days in April for delivering the first Y2K babies.
In preparing for the phenomenon hospitals had to develop PR strategies that struck the right balance of appropriately celebrating the event without overhyping it, which was not always easy to do given the media's voracious Y2K appetite. While the media can always be relied on to devote some coverage to babies born on New Year's Day, several hospitals HPRMN spoke with anticipated that the media's interest in Year 2000 babies would be in another league, considered by one hospital to be the Super Bowl of these kinds of celebrations. Local media outlets camping out at hospitals throughout the night to cover Y2K compliance issues or glitches underscored the need for hospitals to have rock-solid media relations plans.
Here's a snapshot of how hospitals had planned to handle the hype.
Mum's the Word
The PR staff at Sentara Health system in Norfolk, Va., which includes four hospitals with obstetric units, made a deliberate decision not to over-promote its first Y2K baby. That's not to say they didn't go all out. For instance:
- the first baby delivered at Sentara - deemed the Sentara Baby of the Millennium - received a $1,000 savings bond and other promotional items like a T-shirt and other tchotchkes;
- the last baby of the 20th century and the first baby of the 21st century at each hospital received gift certificates;
- through March 2000 parents of newborns will receive gift baskets; and
- starting Dec. 20, interactive kiosks were installed at each hospital site that allowed parents of newborns to communicate with off-site family members using live video of the baby.
Although the hospital system planned a series of events to celebrate its newest bundles of joy it avoided pre-promoting them. "In conjunction with the wishes of our physicians, we did not want to outwardly promote what we were doing for Y2K babies [beforehand] because babies come when babies come," says Vicky Gray, Sentara's VP for marketing and communications. In Sentara's case, physicians deliver 10,000 babies a year and on any given day 27 babies are born. With that kind of volume it was also important to have contingency plans in place for high-risk births or situations where the patients would not want the media involved, such as with a teen mother who delivered on New Year's Day. Those situations, says Gray, demand sensitivity where patients would be insulated from the media who were expected to be on-site throughout New Year's Eve.
Not Just Another New Year
For the Asian community, the Year 2000 is an extremely desirable time to give birth because it is also considered to be the Year of the Dragon - an important dynastic icon. The Year of the Dragon, however, won't be celebrated until Feb. 4, 2000, which means hospitals that cater to the Asian community had to develop PR plans with a one-two punch.
Garfield Hospital in Montairie Park, Calif., is one such hospital. Garfield, which caters to a predominantly Asian patient base, devoted equal promotional attention to Y2K and Year of the Dragon births, says Erik Jiang, the hospital's director of business.
Its PR strategy involved pitching both mainstream and Asian media on the momentous events. Jiang anticipates that births on the first day of the Year of the Dragon will draw significant mainstream coverage from Los Angeles media outlets. To handle the interest, Garfield will provide cultural fact sheets on the importance of the event, which occurs every 12 years. Press releases will be prepared in Chinese and English and physicians will be prepped to handle media calls from the Asian and mainstream press, says Jiang.
A Korean physician group in the Los Angeles area also seized the opportunity to build on the excitement of Y2K babies by linking with the Queen of Angels hospital there and marketing its obstetric services. For six months prior to January the Hana Medical Group targeted the Korean community with an advertising campaign that promoted the top-notch obstetric care new Y2K moms could expect. To sweeten this claim, the medical group provided limousine services for women who delivered on New Year's day. The marketing campaign and limousine service were meant to convey to the Korean community that the medical group was Y2K-ready to deliver babies on or around New Year's Day with top-notch care, says Brian Wilson, director of business development at Queen of Angels.
(Sentara Health, Vicky Gray, 757/455-5949; Garfield Hospital, Erik Jiang, 310/385-8530; Queen of Angels, Brian Wilson, 323/644-4486)
Promoting Multiple Y2K Bundles of Joy
While hospitals took key precautions to avoid overhyping Y2K babies, a consumer parents magazine was equally conservative.
TWINS Magazine ran a "Millennium Multiples Contest" that will celebrate the first multiple births of the Year 2000 in its mid-February issue. Parents are asked to send a photo of their Jan.1 newborn multiples and a copy of the birth certificates by Jan. 20.
These parents will receive a free subscription to the magazine, a birth announcement and a gift certificate to the TWINS gift shop. Managing Editor Sharon Withers says the magazine made a conscious decision to do a "low-key" Y2K twins promotion because pregnancies involving multiples are often difficult with gestation periods six weeks shorter, on average, than single births. The key for these parents is to remain pregnant as long as possible which would make a Jan. 1 delivery more of a coincidence for these parents than a strategically planned event.
(TWINS, Sharon Withers, 800/828-3211)