SHSMD 2009: Revisiting a Familiar Campaign

The campaign presented at a Thursday morning session at this year’s SHSMD conference was one that caught our eye before. It was the Hennepin County Medical Center guerilla marketing campaign aimed at promoting traumatic brain injury (TBI) awareness. Ted Blank, director of marketing and referral development at Hennepin, and Brent Doering, vice president of client services at Minneapolis agency Russell Herder, gave the audience a detailed look at the effort in the aptly named session, “Bathtubs, BlackBerries, & Brains: A Case Study in Guerilla Marketing.”

The “Save Your Brain” campaign came about as a result of recent clinical research that indicated more than 1.4 million Americans suffer from TBIs each year—100,000 of whom are from Minnesota, and most of whom are young adults. So, Minneapolis’ Hennepin took on the challenge of targeting that hard-to-reach market.

The marketing team decided the best way to deliver its message was a multiphase campaign that would give the facility a chance to get out into the community and engage local youths at malls and sporting events. Marketers decided to use temporary tattoos, coasters, a rolling community awareness bathtub, and a Brain Bar kiosk to maximize word-of-mouth buzz—and it worked. Within the first 24 hours of the campaign, Hennepin received more than 50 calls to schedule an examination for a potentially undiagnosed brain injury and has generated millions of impressions in broadcast, print, and online media coverage.

“Guerilla marketing can be a tremendously cost effective way to reach a large amount of people,” Blank says. “It gives a large return for a very minmial investment and you really do get some true engagement out of it.”

 Healthcare Marketing Advisor subscribers can read more about the campaign in the January issue.