A Campaign for Broward Health Has Patients Laughing All the Way to the Operating Room
Notable Healthcare Advertising
// By Peter Hochstein //
Sickness, pain, and mortality, the matters that hospitals deal with, are pretty grim stuff. Yet every so often, hospitals find an opportunity to do humorous ads. And while this can raise eyebrows, it also can raise awareness and patient traffic.
In my last column we looked at how a dermatologist effectively used humor in an ad to promote his tattoo removal services. Now, another success story worth exploring is a TV spot for joint replacement surgery, which is part of a much larger hospital branding campaign for Broward Health. Broward is a Florida hospital system with four campuses, five hospitals including a children’s hospital, and a total of 1,700 licensed beds.
The spot for its joint center featured men and women, most of them either seniors or middle-aged, setting off alarms as they passed through an airport metal detector, agilely wriggling and dancing their way past flustered security guards. Meanwhile, a voice-over announcer explained:
“Broward Health does the most joint replacements in Broward County. Our humblest apologies to the staff working the metal detectors at the airport. Visit Broward health.org for a free physician referral. Broward Health. Powerful orthopedics.”