To celebrate 30 years of delivering high-risk newborns, The Newborn Center at The Regional Medical Center at Memphis launched an awareness and fundraising campaign in July that raised awareness of the Center's unique value to the community as one of the country's oldest and largest newborn intensive care units.
The center has delivered more than 30,000 babies, some with birth weights as low as one pound. Spreading the news, however, was a challenge for this public hospital that has never had consistent advertising monies.
With a shoestring ad agency budget of $10,000 to $15,000, Memphis-based O'Connor Kenny Partners developed a heartwarming and entertaining campaign featuring a champagne cooler chilling a bottle of baby formula. "We wanted to use the campaign to build a bigger 'high touch/high tech' image of the facility because it really didn't have one," says Melinda Gross, the agency's senior account manager.
To get the biggest bang for its client's buck, the agency worked on marketing concepts that the center could easily execute using internal resources. The agency developed the advertising materials and press releases and the center handled its own media placement.
The overall campaign price was $150,000 and involved billboard and newspaper advertising, direct mail to families who had used the facility and PR to support the fundraiser event and a "Shake Your Booty" free concert, according to Deannie Parker, the center's VP of communications and marketing.
Ironically, the hospital didn't set a financial goal for the fundraising campaign because many of the people the center serves are indigent and could not afford to attend the $125-ticket event. Instead, the objective was to raise awareness about the center in an entertaining way among community philanthropists and families who had positive experiences with the center.
The center's important work went a long way toward attracting big-name entertainment, says Parker.
The fundraiser featured television actress Nel Carter, who has adopted children with special needs, and the free concert featured popular rhythm and blues group, The Isley Brothers.
The campaign's image-building efforts worked. The fundraiser attracted nearly 400 attendees and the free concert had an audience of nearly 10,000, according to Parker. The biggest challenge now, she said, is sustaining the momentum of the campaign with no significant advertising resources.
(The Newborn Center at The Regional Medical Center at Memphis, Deannie Parker, 901/545-7117; O'Connor Kenny Partners, Melinda Gross, 901/458-2529)
O'Connor Kenny Partners
Founded: 1992
Headquarters: Memphis
Billings: $20 million
Employees: 40
Other healthcare clients: American Heart Association, NovaFactor
Web site: http://www.okadvertising.com