Smart OR® Elevator Signage
SITUATION
After investing heavily in the technology and clinical talent it needed to transform itself from a community hospital to a regional tertiary care center, Sacred Heart Hospital in Eau Claire, Wisconsin found itself continuing to be perceived as the region’s warm, compassionate community hospital. While its major competitor, a Mayo Health System affiliate, enjoyed a reputation as the leader in technology and innovation.
STRATEGY
Position the hospital to compete more effectively on technology and subspecialty physician expertise by unveiling the groundbreaking technology and world-renowned neurosurgeons in the hospital’s new Brain & Spine Institute.
EXECUTION
Two hard driving, high-energy campaigns where created around the positioning line “Change Your Thinking.” The first introduced a “revolution in medicine”—the Brain & Spine Institute’s intraoperative magnetic resonance imaging (iMRI) smart operating suite (Smart O.R.®) for brain surgery. Besides the traditional print, radio and outdoor, this campaign’s “revolutionary” marketing tactics included a series of three “rock video” style television commercials, a microsite, a guerrilla marketing component, community open houses and a two-minute “movie trailer” theater commercial.
The second campaign announced the opening of the hospital’s second Smart O.R., with its sophisticated intraoperative computed tomography (iCT) scanner—an “evolution in spine surgery.” It played off the first campaign with two additional “rock video” television commercials, a new two-minute “movie trailer” theater commercial and a series of print ads, as well as patient and physician education materials.
RESULTS
According to 2009 National Research Corporation’s market data, four weeks after the start of the first campaign, the competition’s perceptual lead for the “latest technology and equipment” diminished. The Brain & Spine Institute also experienced a 7.5 percent increase in patient cases following the launch of the first campaign and was on track for a 12.5 percent increase with the launch of the second. |
