Getting Emotional — In an Understated Way — Helps a Hospital with a Good, Strong Reputation Stand Up to Another Hospital with a Good, Strong Reputation
Notable Health Care Advertising
// By Peter Hochstein //
Meet Tanner, the star of a TV spot. He’s a cute but very wary little boy with Down syndrome. He clings possessively to an old and partly broken kitchen spatula. Tanner and his beloved spatula are paying a visit to a doctor’s office.
Tanner is reticent. The doctor, a friendly woman, pretends to examine the spatula. Tanner resists this at first, but gradually warms to the game. He helps measure the spatula’s height. Then he helps the doctor out by measuring his own height. When the doctor “listens” to the spatula with her stethoscope, she piques Tanner’s interest again.
Next, the doctor uses the stethoscope to listen to Tanner’s heart. Finally, Tanner looks up at the doctor and for the first time, he smiles. Across the screen come supers that display the slogan “Love + Medicine” and the logotype of the La Crosse, Wisconsin-based Gundersen Health System.
Unlike much hospital TV advertising that is emotional because it involves some life-or-death situation, a series of TV spots for Gundersen achieve their emotional impact through modest understatement.