From Television to Direct Mail, an In-House Advertising Agency Does It All for Legacy Health, While Keeping a Lid on Costs
by Peter Hochstein
If you read between the lines of what Wayne Clark says, you might conclude that when he arrived as vice president of community relations and marketing at Legacy Health in 2008, the most prominent local candidate for life support was the system’s branding.
Clark commissioned a perception research study for the Portland, OR-based not-for-profit system, which he says typically has a total of 645 inpatients in its six medical centers on a daily basis these days. “We had very low awareness,” he recalls. “The fact that we were a system as opposed to a bunch of individual hospitals was not well understood. We had a brand, but it was not well known, not fully articulated.”
Although Clark had some image renovation to do, he didn’t have to hire an advertising agency. Legacy already had in place the equivalent of a 10-person in-house agency. Officially known as the Communications and Production Department, it handles 800 new projects a year, from broadcast and print advertising to direct mail, departmental support projects, and various collateral materials. Clark, who has spent just about his entire career in various house agency operations, liked the arrangement and thinks in-house agencies are far more efficient than external outfits.