Are Stats Boring? Not When Presented Well.

In the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, Ochsner Health System bought up several of the independent hospitals in the New Orleans and Baton Rouge area. It rehabbed and upgraded them, and incorporated them into Ochsner’s system. But even by 2007, the newly acquired hospitals had not been branded as part of Ochsner.

“When we got involved with Ochsner, the assignment was to pull these disparate hospitals into the Ochsner brand,” says Kerry Graham, Vice-Chairman and CEO of Bohan Advertising in Nashville, Tennessee. Bohan was the advertising agency for Ochsner from 2007 to 2012. “Several were community hospitals … that were still identified within their parish or community as stand-alone entities.”

Branding was especially important because participating in the Ochsner system meant patients could have access to services from the main campus, and a consequent range of important benefits.

“That main campus is where they had, and still have, a teaching curriculum where they bring in physicians from all over the country, and in some cases from all over the world,” Graham says. “They’re really doing some extraordinary things—leading edge in certain services lines and procedures. They were teaching other doctors. They had some pretty fantastic surgeons and physicians.”

The key to branding success in this situation? Statistics, and lots of them, used in dramatic fashion. In fact, notes advertising guru and Strategic Health Care Marketing writer Peter Hochstein, “Bohan devised a technique that turned statistics into a bravura performance.”

To learn how your numbers can work for you when presented well, check out Hochstein’s recent SHCM article: How Louisiana’s Ochsner Health System Turned Dry Statistics into a Powerful TV Campaign.

Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President