Nash Health Care’s Success Demonstrates Just How Well It Pays to Advertise
by Peter Hochstein
Next time some doubting Thomas clears his throat and asks how you can be sure hospital advertising pays, cite this case concerning Nash Health Care in Rocky Mount, NC.
Nash Health Care, anchored by a 403-bed general hospital, is located in a mostly rural area, flanked roughly 80 miles in one direction by the teaching hospitals of Duke University and the University of North Carolina and roughly 45 miles in another direction by a teaching hospital that’s part of Vidant Health. Nash also competes with a few nearby community hospitals.
Before late 2007 – with the exception of a brief campaign relating to heartburn – the hospital did almost no advertising at all, according to Jeff Hedgepeth, director of public relations and marketing at Nash. That all changed when a new hospital administrator came aboard, say Hedgepeth and Reese Adams, senior vice president for account management at Lewis Advertising, Nash’s agency, which is also located in Rocky Mount.
Some strategizing led to a decision to advertise, starting with one of the hospital’s strengths, bariatric surgery. It didn’t take long for positive results to start rolling in. “The results were so strong that we expanded to other service lines,” says Hedgepeth. Among those service lines were joint replacement and cancer care.
Specifically how strong were the results?