How to Quickly Raise More Than $1 Million in Contributions to Your Hospital and Burnish Your Brand Image, Often with Advertising You Don’t Pay For
Notable Health Care Advertising
// By Peter Hochstein //
All right, time to fess up. The headline above this story skips a few critical details.
The campaign you’re going to read about had the voluntary participation and support of the New York Giants football team, and especially of its star quarterback Eli Manning. The players gave their time and endorsements free.
Not to mention that the ads raise funds to aid research that will help kids with cancer, a particularly empathy-arousing group. The campaign is called “Tackle Kids Cancer.”
The Tackle Kids Cancer advertising also features a teaching hospital system that’s big enough to do pediatric cancer research. And some of the advertising appeared nationally on the NBC Network, as free public service announcement time.
But in a way, all those qualifiers are the point: A phenomenon you might call “big synergy” is powerful stuff. If you have the resources to somehow combine several strong elements of human interest seamlessly into one emotionally touching marketing and advertising campaign, each element can support, reinforce, and energize the others. This creates efficiencies of exposure and impact that eclipse most traditional advertising. And the benefits can include not only generous contributions of time, money, and endorsements, but also a halo branding effect.
Okay, end of Advertising 101 lecture. Here’s the story.
Well, actually, not yet. Let’s first list some of the story’s participants. The Children’s Cancer Institute is at the Joseph M. Sanzari Children’s Hospital in Hackensack, New Jersey. The Sanzari Children’s Hospital, in turn, is part of the Hackensack University Medical Center. The Hackensack University Medical Center Foundation is an entity that supports the cancer research program at Sanzari. The New York Giants, Eli Manning, and NBC—probably no explanation needed. Got all that?