Healthcare Category
Ideopia Earns Healthcare Marketing Awards
Ideopia Wins Two Gold Aster Awards
Ranked Among the Top 5% of Healthcare Marketers Nationwide
Cincinnati, OH (May 3, 2012) — For the second year in a row, the Cincinnati-based creative branding agency Ideopia won honors for its healthcare advertising. The agency earned Gold Aster Awards in two categories: magazine advertising and mobile applications. The Gold Awards place Ideopia among the top 5% nationwide for advertising excellence, according to the Aster Award’s organization.
The winning magazine campaign on behalf of Reliance Medical Products leverages the company’s history of hand crafting its products in America. It calls on doctors to consider the U.S. economy when they make their purchasing decisions. Reliance has manufactured ophthalmic exam chairs and instrument stands in Ohio since 1898, sourcing most of the materials from vendors within 50-miles of its Mason, OH factory. Below the interactive portion of the campaign is also shown.
“Great advertising moves the meter,” said Ideopia’s Creative Director Bill Abramovitz. “Our marketing strategies for Reliance Medical have helped to fuel 21 consecutive years of double-digit growth for that organization.”
For New Jersey-based Topcon Medical Systems, a subsidiary of Mitsubishi, Ideopia created a mobile app that qualifies prospects by guiding them through five simple questions. It was designed for use during sales calls and at medical conferences, where the cost of staffing a booth has made it imperative for sales teams to use their time effectively. The Qualifier App works on iPads and is also available through Topcon’s website.
“The app works because it’s good for doctors and for Topcon,” explained Abramovitz. “It lets doctors determine for themselves whether Topcon’s Synergy software is the right next step for their practice. It avoids the relationship misstep of pushing a product to a practice that does not have the infrastructure to get the most benefit from it.”
A panel of judges chose Ideopia’s work from approximately 3,000 entries. Ads were evaluated based on creativity, layout and design, functionality, message effectiveness, production quality and overall appeal. Ideopia and its ads will be featured in the magazine Marketing Healthcare Today.
About Ideopia
Founded in 1992 Ideopia Advertising and Interactive is an advertising, public relations, web design and social media agency that believes in branding without boundaries. With headquarters in Cincinnati, Ideopia lives in the cloud at www.ideopia.com.
MEDIA CONTACT: Liz Vogel (office) 513-947-1444, ext. 18, (cell) 631-741-7700, email: lizv@ideopia.com
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How Not to Design Hospital Logos
With urgent care, ambulatory surgical centers, physician group offices, and pharmacy based Little Clinics sprouting up in the burbs, the heat is on hospitals to become more aggressive marketers. So what is the typical first act of marketing aggression? You guessed it, a new logo. After all, what else do we have throw a pile o’ cash at, a new CT Scanner?
So it was surprising to find five different healthcare institutions with the same basic icon. It’s a square cross, where each extension is the same length. This mark was probably very clever — the first time. It bleeds off equity from the Red Cross logo, and gets the religion bit in. But, as emblems of brands, they lack utility, and imagination. Imagine this scenario. You pass out at a mall. The paramedic asks for your hospital choice. And all you can muster through the fog is “the one with the cross.” Playing safe is expensive.
So how do you avoid a similar snafu?
- Study the competition.
- Study design trends in your category.
- Make sure the underlying business and marketing strategies are competitive and clear.
- Commit yourself to creating a smart, distinct mark.
- Hire a really great branding agency. If you can find one.
Mechanical Heart Mess
Driving down the interstate in another city, let’s just call it South Park, a hospital billboard appeared that proclaimed “Mechanical Heart Bypass.” It was so wrongheaded, I almost swerved off the road. A mechanical heart bypass is scary business, and why would such an esoteric procedure be advertised on a billboard? This represents two common #Fails: 1. The failure to communicate a benefit that a consumer can understand and 2. a strategic blunder that’s splintering a marketing budget to sell stuff rather than build a brand. Chef says, “change the chow.”
Crisis Communications: The Top Line
1. The role of public relations in crisis communication is to protect your people. Guard against putting team members in the position of answering for the company. The company spokesperson has to be someone with the authority to accept responsibility and enact changes if needed.
2. Always respond to media requests—quickly and thoroughly. The rules of engagement allow reporters to ambush if their interview request is ignored or denied. In crisis communications, you usually don’t get a second chance.
3. Know your interviewer. Research past stories. Dig deep to discover what angles a reporter might uncover in their own research of your organization and the issues involved. Provide members of your strategic management team with examples of past stories, so they understand what the company is facing. Identify patterns and analyze how the reporter might be expected to approach coverage of your organization.
4. Screen the reporter to learn as much as possible about the planned story. The more you know, the better you can determine who should respond, and how. Ask what the story is about, when it is anticipated to run, who else is being included in the coverage and keep them talking as long as you can. Ask what they would like from your organization and how they see your content fitting into the overall story.
5. Train your spokesperson. Prepare them for anticipated questions. Arm them with research and anecdotes ready to illustrate (and prove) their points.
6. Prepare anyone who could be in the line of fire, so they are equipped with enough information to decide whether they want to comment. Offer employees tools for keeping themselves out of the spotlight.
7. Monitor all of the interviews that take place within your organization, so you know what was asked and how the questions were answered.
8. If possible or appropriate, reach out to other entities included in the coverage. Compare their experiences with yours, to get a better idea of the scope of the story.
9. Accept that this will hurt. Investigative journalists don’t usually change their tone. By they time the contact your organization for comment, the story may be mostly written or filmed. The angle of the coverage is nearly impossible to change. Accept that and speak directly to the audience—let them decide what’s right.
10. Get out in front. Be the one to capture the coverage and share it with senior decision-makers. Never learn about it from someone else.
11. Lead. Evaluate what the coverage means to your organization. Who was hurt and how? Respond directly to those constituencies.
12. Set the record straight. Following the story, communicate directly to key audiences. Reach out with email messages, letters and phone calls and online content, including your website, Facebook and Twitter. Incorporate important messages into the advertising campaign and public relations outreach through other media venues. Don’t let misinformation stand!
13. Be prepared for follow up news stories, especially if something runs in print. Television newsrooms may show up next. Have spokespeople prepared to respond. Make them available for the next few days, until the furor dies down.
14. Provide employees with the language and tools they need to explain what happened. Remember they have to communicate to business audiences. But they also need language that they can share with their family and friends when they leave the office. They need to be able to defend themselves and their organization—serving as ambassadors in the community.
15. Boost morale. Recognize that when the organization’s reputation is blackened in the media, it’s a slight on all of the people working there too. Reassure them that they are working for an organization that they can be proud to serve. Take action to make sure that’s true!
16. Look in the mirror. Does your organization need to make changes to address any accusations? Can you do better? public relations, marketing or advertising can overcome operational or ethical lapses. Come clean and clean up if that’s what it takes to address a legitimate claim.
For more information about crisis communication and public relations at Ideopia, call Liz Vogel at 513-947-1444.
Ideopia wins Gold Asters for Healthcare Marketing
Banning medical images from its ads was a winning strategy for advertising agency Ideopia. The Cincinnati-based advertising and interactive agency took the top prize in three categories in a national competition evaluating healthcare advertising.
The award-winning LENSTAR® ad by Ideopia.
Its campaigns for Mercy Health Partners, Ronald McDonald House Charities of Greater Cincinnati and medical manufacturer Haag-Streit USA, beat 3,000 submissions to capture gold medals in the Aster Awards.
Agency co-founder Bill Abramovitz says ads have to grab attention to succeed.
“Your strategy could be brilliant, but the way you execute it must break through,” said Abramovitz. “Otherwise your marketing is nothing but very expensive wallpaper.”
He banned doctors from the agency’s campaigns after completing an unscientific survey of hospital billboards. The majority used photos of doctors, patients or medical equipment—regardless of which hospital they were promoting or where they were located.
Ideopia's billboard for Mercy Health Partners
His rules for healthcare marketers are similar to the advice he offers clients from other industries:
• Start with a brand differentiation that is valid today and will hold true in five years.
• Be honest about the validity of your brand—is it true and rooted in the basic values of your organization?
• Ensure that your message is meaningful to your target audience.
• Ask whether you can create a powerful communication based on your brand and marketing strategy.
Ronald McDonald House Charities website by Ideopia
About Ideopia
Founded in 1992 Ideopia Advertising and Interactive is a spam chucking, cow patty annihilating, branding, public relations, web marketing, web design and social media agency that believes in branding with out boundaries. With headquarters in East Gate, Ideopia lives in the cloud at www.ideopia.com.
Contact: Liz Vogel (office) 513-947-1444, ext. 18, (cell) 631-741-7700, email: lizv@ideopia.com