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A branding campaign to change public perception of for-profit hospitals.
The Federation of American Hospitals (FAH) is the national representative of more than 1,000 tax-paying community hospitals and health systems throughout the United States. FAH provides a unique perspective to health care policymakers, as their members are steadfast advocates of a market-based healthcare system, which benefits patients by continually providing high-quality, comprehensive care through innovation.
The Federation of American Hospitals member organizations and their caregivers were heroes during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they found themselves attacked with negative narratives around hospital uses of the Provider Relief Fund, hospital consolidation, anecdotes about the availability of personal protective equipment and other COVID-related matters. FAH needed to combat this flurry of negative publicity in Washington DC and the media, and to inform the public of its members’ beneficial role in their communities.
Lead with emotion – support with data – to humanize complex healthcare issues and policies in the hearts and minds of this audience.
We developed an inspirational campaign that drove awareness of the FAH organization and the positive impact FAH member hospitals/health systems had during the unanticipated COVID healthcare crisis. “The Real Story” campaign addressed issues of criticism head-on by reminding our audience there is always another side to every story. Our campaign platform combined impactful personal stories with equally powerful facts/statistics, so that important voices – like that of a hospital caregiver or a patient – was heard above all the negative chatter. A key visual component to this campaign was a metaphorical “megaphone-combined-with-a-stethoscope” – a symbol designed to amplify the heartfelt stories of the healthcare workers and their patients.
A nationwide survey of 1,000 respondents with an oversampling of 400 “DC/Beltway Elites” found that 42% of Beltway opinion influencers reported seeing The Real Story advertising and content, along with an identical percent who reported seeing advertising and content from FAH. 79% said they saw the campaign most frequently on social media. And even better, 79% of voters nationaly said they would feel more favourably toward the hospital industry if the industry shared advertising and content like The Real Story.