Best in Show, Medium Hospitals: Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital

When marketers at Helen DeVos Children’s Hospital held focus groups to gauge the impact of their “40 Specialties” marketing campaign, they knew they had succeeded when participants would quote the campaign’s recurring tagline unprompted: “That’s like a gazillion.”

And the campaign wasn’t just popular with locals-it won a Best in Show award among medium hospitals at the HealthLeaders Media Marketing Awards. The Grand Rapids, MI, hospital launched the “40 Specialties” campaign in 2007 because it needed to capture additional market share and promote its new brand identity-a name change, new logo, and, in 2011, a new hospital.

“There was lots to be done to update the brand and also to communicate the idea that this organization was making a significant commitment to improving children’s healthcare by expanding pediatric capabilities through addition of new specialists, and with them new medical capabilities,” says Tom Hanley, director of marketing and communications.

The campaign consisted of print, outdoor, television, and radio ads and aimed to stress to parents that children have different medical needs than adults and should therefore see pediatric specialists, something that challenges many children’s hospitals.

“With that campaign we emphasized the 40 specialties that we have-neurology, cardiology, orthopedics, whatever it might be-and then began the process of informing parents and educating parents about how their kids’ bodies are different than adults. A hospital that understands these differences can be crucial in the treatment of children,” says Chris Cook, president of Fairly Painless Advertising, the agency that worked with the hospital.

Because the Children’s Hospital is currently part of an adult hospital facility, the campaign’s main goal was to increase awareness and market share. The hospital set a goal of increasing market share by 1% per year and 2% year-over-year volume growth.

“Part of our challenge is that until the new children’s hospital opens in 2011, we are a children’s hospital within an adult hospital system, so it’s not like we’re visible from the road,” Hanley says. “There’s not a sense of place yet.”

Quantitative research done before the campaign launched found that there was 24% of unaided awareness in the hospital’s primary service area and 28% of marketing share in the primary and secondary service area. Twelve months after the campaign launched, unaided awareness rose to 47% and market share reached 33% in the first quarter of 2008. Helen DeVos has also seen a 3% market share increase, compared with 0.5% for all Midwest children’s hospitals.

“No other hospital in west Michigan could make that claim in terms of having 40 pediatric specialties, so that was our area of distinction,” Hanley says. “This [campaign] is helping get attention. And it’s also supporting other marketing and physician relations and business development goals.”

He says the hospital is currently working with referring physicians in 37 counties to explain the value of having a children’s hospital with numerous pediatric specialties in the state.

Hanley says Helen DeVos has already launched the next phase of the campaign as they prepare to promote the new $250 million children’s hospital that is set to open in the first quarter of 2011. They plan to submit it for consideration to the 2009 Marketing Awards.

“It’s basically taking the theme of ‘40 Specialties’ and elevating it up to a higher level,” says Cook, who accepted the Best in Show award at the Marketing Awards event Oct. 15. “Strategically when you land upon a good idea it makes sense to go ahead and explore and embellish that idea.”

–Marianne Aiello