From Urgent Care, to Managed Care, to “Thought Leadership,” Crystal Run Health Keeps Its Corner of the World Covered
Notable Health Care Advertising
// By Peter Hochstein //
This somewhat complicated story starts, at least for me, with a clever graphic trick on a highway billboard.
The billboard displays the word “OOPS?” in an upward-slanted, rounded rectangle. And then the word “OUCH!” in a similar but downward-slanted rectangle. Adjacent to OOPS? and OUCH! is a headline that says “Crystal Run Urgent Care!”
Words used as a visual call attention to Crystal Run’s urgent care facilities. Outdoor and radio were chosen for the urgent care advertising because “With many residents commuting to and from work each day for 30 minutes or more, they in some ways become a captive audience,” says Mark Trocino, Director of Marketing and Public Relations at Crystal Run Healthcare.
Urgent care centers are popping up a lot in city storefronts, shopping centers, and sometimes even drugstores these days. They fill a niche between the family physician, who can be difficult to see on short notice, and emergency rooms that are often crowded and costly. I was curious to know how the “OOPS?/OUCH!” advertising was working.
But a subsequent exchange of questions and answers with the people who speak for Crystal Run Healthcare, headquartered in Middletown, New York, and its advertising agency, PCI in Alexandria, Virginia, indicated that there’s a lot more to the story—and to Crystal Run. It all might be part of an emerging trend toward marketing fully integrated health care. It’s worth a closer look.