East-Lansing based Publicom has won three national awards for healthcare ad campaigns in three very different communities: Bay City and Mt. Clemens in Michigan, and Modesto in California.
Lisa O’Connor, president of the marketing communications firm, says competing well at a national level gives her company great bragging rights. Furthermore, she says, the 30-year-old company posted a 24 percent revenue increase in the first quarter of 2009 versus the same period a year ago.
O’Connor credits her team of 12 employees, including two she hired last month. She became president a year and a half ago, succeeding Jim Wardlaw. While the company is not recession-proof, its specialty in healthcare, insurance and education has provided steady business in a generally difficult economy.
Consumers are becoming more involved in selecting their healthcare options so hospitals are advertising directly to them, O’Connor says. That opens the door for agencies like hers.
The Healthcare Advertising Awards were given by the Healthcare Marketing Report. Publicom’s work was selected from 3,600 entries in 28 categories.
The winning dramatic print ads, prepared for the Bay Regional Medical Center’s Neuroscience Center, are almost entirely in black and white. It’s this kind of copy that snagged the recognition:
“Brain Storm: What does it take to create the perfect storm, where everything goes right? When it comes to neuroscience, it takes a combination of the biggest brains in the field, state of the art technology, and a facility dedicated to superior results.”
Ads for the da Vinci robotic surgery program at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto feature a humanized da Vinci robot saying things like: “Smaller incision, bigger possibilities.” The robot makes a one centimeter incision compared to a human surgeon’s of 12.4 centimeters, the ad explains.
Source: Lisa O’Connor, Publicom
Gretchen Cochran, Innovation & Jobs editor, may be reached here.
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