Akron's unscripted oeuvres

Rather than slash ad budgets, recession-hit hospitals are changing creative tactics with the times

Hospitals typically emphasize messages about their skilled doctors, caring nurses, and teamwork - or plug ratings given from a magazine or website, The New York Times observes.

One campaign by the Marcus Thomas agency in Cleveland runs ads for Akron Children hospital in Ohio that are entirely unscripted, for example. It features cancer-stricken 14-year-old Austin, who is bald from chemotherapy, leaping from footage of him playing basketball in his school gym to walking down a hallway in a hospital gown.

"It just blows my mind that I end up getting it. I knew as soon as the doctor told me, I was like, 'I’m going to beat it, no matter what. It’s just a disease.'"

Traditional testimonial spots featuring patients focus on families and about how they are coping. But whereas ads with real-life patients usually feature success stories of survivors crediting hospitals with saving their lives, the Akron campaign features patients whose outcomes are still uncertain.

The effort is aimed at mothers ages 18-49, and imitates the reality feel of popular social media like Youtube and Facebook, said the creative director at Marcus Thomas Jim Sollisch, adding that "two or three years ago you could have had actors depicting patients, but the rules of engagement are changing […] we have to be more transparent."

Moreover, the hospital itself is practically invisible in the branding of the commercial: the logo never appears, and it is referred to by name in subtitles, with only one direct reference at the conclusion of each spot, where viewers are directed towards a site that highlights the hospital’s attributes (akronchildrens.tv).

Sprite recently brought a similar low profile ad campaign to Youtube.

New York ad firm DeVito/Verdi is also steering clear of stereotypical ad campaigns in their work for Mount Sinai Medical Center.

The agency drafted a list of commandments it still follows: no pictures of doctors, no smiling people, no fancy machinery, no over-promises about medical care, and no complicated medical terminology - just truthful expressions of critical care and breakthroughs.

The agency's first ad for the hospital, for instance, depicted a small Romanian girl whose hearing was surgically restored at Mount Sinai Medical Center running along a beach, with the headline: "We turned a child who couldn't hear into a typical 2-year-old who doesn't listen." It ends with the tagline, "Another day, another breakthrough."

Another displayed a baseball with just a few red stitches (vs. the long stitching pattern) with the tagline, "Minimally invasive sports surgery."

Even the hardest hit hospitals are still actively advertising. Total ad spending by US hospitals in 2008 was $1.23 billion, compared to $1.20 billion last year and $493 million in 2001, according to TNS Media.

A report this spring found that online advertising spending by the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry will reach $975 million in 2007 - a 19% increase over 2006.

Another found that social media impacts nearly 40% of recent hospital or urgent-care center patients — and more than half of 25-to-34 year olds are influenced by it.