“If you didn’t know the whole story, you’d think last October 20 was a less-than-glorious Sunday in Seattle,” writes SHCM contributor Peter Hochstein. “It was a football day, of course, and the Seattle Seahawks lost to the Baltimore Ravens 30-16. But for two local hospitals, Virginia Mason Health System, with about 600 licensed beds, and Read More
// By Peter Hochstein // Properly done, the participation of sports teams can create impressive visibility and emotional involvement for a cancer awareness promotion. Here’s what it produced for the State of Washington’s Virginia Mason Health System and CHI Franciscan. If you didn’t know the whole story, you’d think last October 20 was a less-than-glorious Read More
“You can do terrible things to a puppet for popular amusement that aren’t funny when they happen to real people,” says veteran copywriter and SHCM contributor Peter Hochstein. “You can make him horribly ill. You can afflict him with a swarm of bees. You can break off his leg, or worse. Almost no matter what Read More
// By Peter Hochstein // Meet Bebo. He’s preposterous. He’s orange. He’s always sick or injured. And he’s helping Patient Plus clinics in Baton Rouge, Louisiana carve out a strong identity in a highly competitive market. You can do terrible things to a puppet for popular amusement that aren’t funny when they happen to real Read More
// By Peter Hochstein // How brave do marketers have to be to use humor in a spot for pediatric emergency care that shows kids flirting with danger? Uh oh! Trouble in the backyard. On a steeply sloping patch of lawn, three girls who appear to be the right age for middle school have erected Read More
“[A]s part of an ongoing rebranding effort, Adventist Health in Roseville, California has found a powerful technique for getting across a message of caring,” writes SHCM contributor and veteran copywriter Peter Hochstein. “Notably, the subject of the advertising is neither the hospital, nor the technology, nor what the doctors and staff do for the patients. Instead, Read More
Here’s a new approach to hospital advertising that turns an old technique on its head. // By Peter Hochstein // It’s difficult to sift through hospital advertising month after month without regularly coming across some variation of the phrase “We care about you.” Little wonder. As hospital systems grow larger and busier, they also can Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // “Hyperlocalization” may not be a real word. But NYU Langone has made it a real advertising thing. And it turns out to be an amusing, identifiable, and highly effective technique. There’s nothing new about hospitals giving their advertising a distinctly local flavor. We described one successful Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // Fighting words and images may be just the thing some hospitals need to break through the miasma of inattention. In an upcoming issue of this publication, a fellow contributor, James A. Gardner, will write about a campaign for the Canadian pediatric hospital, Sick Kids. The campaign Read More
What can radio deliver for hospital advertisers that other media can’t? It’s more than just another way to reach your target market. Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // As often as not these days, radio advertising is an afterthought — part of the creative mix that gets done after someone has written Read More
What besides advertising could contribute to a children’s hospital brand experience? It could be a friendly bear, a playful dog, a rocky wolf, or a little girl with a perpetually broken leg. // By Peter Hochstein // There’s an enormous bear. And he’s just outside the front door of a children’s hospital. And with his Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // Here’s a powerful technique for building emotion into your advertising. If you dare to use it. Advertisers in almost any business — and the advertising agencies that service them — usually hate negativity. They look for emphasis on the upbeat. They like to portray, as the Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // How can a hospital facing lots of local competition successfully undo commonplace misperceptions in a fresh way? For Children’s Minnesota, it involved taking one approach in print advertising and another in TV. There was a good reason for the inconsistency. Sometime ago, Children’s Minnesota, a 381-bed Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // Sometimes, showing some “attitude” can sell your expertise better than simply presenting all the things you’re expert at. Here’s a case in point. What’s with the peculiar convictions some health care consumers have about teaching hospitals? They’ll seek out a top-tier school for their kids, and Read More
In the testimonial-heavy world of hospital advertising, is there a fresh way of doing a testimonial campaign? How well can it perform for you? And what can you do to increase the impact of the advertising? In our new article, SHCM contributor and veteran copywriter Peter Hochstein looks at a new type of testimonial that Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // In the testimonial-heavy world of hospital advertising, is there a fresh way of doing a testimonial campaign? How well can it perform for you? And what can you do to increase the impact of the advertising? Is there room in this world for yet another hospital Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising In a hospital setting, changing employee routines and behaviors can save lives — but the change may call for altering the entire institutional culture. A memo to staff likely won’t work. What will? Signature Healthcare discovered some of the answers, involving an internal advertising campaign that began in 2015 and is Read More
Is there a strong reason to create a hospital branding campaign that dispenses with emotional appeals to make a rational sales argument? How can you keep it visually surprising and compelling? And how can you show that you’re talking about a hospital without resorting to the visual clichés? Notable Health Care Advertising // By Read More
An inspired name — and a bit of student high jinks — transmogrifies a mass vaccination program into an annual form of entertainment. Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // Quick, which would you rather do? Interrupt your daily routine, stand in a long line, and then get poked in the arm by Read More
This may not be what hospital communicators signed on to deal with, but it can — and did — happen. How would you handle the ensuing human and PR crisis? On September 12, 2017, a Rhode Island man drove up to Lebanon, New Hampshire, and entered the intensive care unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where his mother was recovering from an aneurysm. According to news reports and indictments filed against him, the man asked for some time alone with his mother. Once they were alone, he allegedly pulled out a handgun and shot her four times, killing her.
This may not be what hospital communicators signed on to deal with, but it can — and did — happen. How would you handle the ensuing human and PR crisis? On September 12, 2017, a Rhode Island man drove up to Lebanon, New Hampshire, and entered the intensive care unit at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, where his mother was recovering from an aneurysm. According to news reports and indictments filed against him, the man asked for some time alone with his mother. Once they were alone, he allegedly pulled out a handgun and shot her four times, killing her.
How do you stand out in the crowd — especially when your #1 competitor is a world-famous brand? Pamela Maas, Gundersen’s chief business development and marketing officer, was able to overcome this challenge. “It seemed like so many systems in health care were looking and feeling exactly the same,” she says. “We recognized that brand positioning was really about building an emotional connection with consumers.” In Peter’s latest column, we’ll see how a new campaign triggered a deluge of fan mail — accolades from patients who had been touched by Gundersen staff members.
“Last month, this column dealt with two advertising campaigns that you’d never guess were for hospitals — at least not until the last few seconds when a hospital logo appeared,” says copywriter and Strategic Health Care Marketing contributor Peter Hochstein. “In recent years, marketing people I’ve interviewed at hospitals and their advertising agencies have more or Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // Last month, this column dealt with two advertising campaigns that you’d never guess were for hospitals — at least not until the last few seconds when a hospital logo appeared. In the interest of population health, one campaign demonstrated how to make a healthy and eye-appealing Read More
Notable Health Care Advertising // By Peter Hochstein // For the 36 or so years I’ve been writing this column, hospital marketing managers and their agencies have been telling me they didn’t want their ads to look like “typical hospital advertising.” And much hospital advertising really has been atypical. I’ve seen senior citizens doing stand-up Read More