Launching a Successful Hospital Rebrand After Merger of Opposites

Barbara Kram, Senior Director, Corporate Marketing and Communications of Westchester Medical Center

St. Francis Hospital and Health Centers in Poughkeepsie, New York, wasn’t the first hospital to find itself drowning in a sea of financial troubles and it probably won’t be the last, notes veteran copywriter Peter Hochstein.

Having filed for bankruptcy, “It was accepting bids for full acquisition from other hospitals,” recalls Barbara Kram, Senior Director, Corporate Marketing and Communications of Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, New York. “And we were the winning purchaser.”

It’s hard to imagine any two hospitals being more different. The acquired institution had been a 243-bed community hospital with a church affiliation and a lackluster medical reputation. It served primarily the mid-Hudson Valley, well to the north of New York City. Depending on how you define the region, it might include parts of well-off suburban Westchester and Rockland counties.

But it also most certainly includes lots of small, less prosperous towns, some with a countercultural ethos, some with pockets of poverty. The region’s economy relies heavily on farming and tourism.

On the other hand, Westchester Medical Center, roughly 60 miles to the south, is a 652-bed regional Level I trauma center and the teaching hospital of New York Medical College. It has a strong reputation in specialties ranging from neurosciences and oncology to organ transplants.

Telephone interviews with Kram and with Doug Bennett, President of the Bennett Group, a Boston advertising agency that now creates the advertising for both hospitals, indicated that Kram and Bennett were wary of how St. Francis should be renamed and positioned. They worked hard to get a sense of the community’s perceptions and feelings, largely through focus group sessions with staff and the local community, before they worked on the advertising.

As a consequence of the research, Bennett says, “we made a concerted effort not to come in and create the impression that here’s a big academic medical facility acquiring the hospital to teach you guys how to practice medicine. We wanted to reflect the market in a way that people would connect with it. We wanted this to sound like a place where you get your community health care, but better.”

To learn how they pulled it off using a unique “regional selfie” marketing strategy, read our full article now: Resurrected and Renamed, a Hospital Reintroduces Itself to Its Neighbors by Going Folksy.

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President