Advertising stresses love, comfort, and care’
Let’s go directly to the consumer’
While hospices from coast to coast struggle with image problems, lack of public awareness, and serious misconceptions about services, Hospice of the Western Reserve in Cleveland has boldly set out to remake its community image through a $160,000 ad campaign.
The campaign builds on the powerful image of a newborn baby securely cradled in her mother’s arms. Its slogan reads, "When we enter this world, we’re surrounded by love, comfort and care. Don’t we deserve the same when we leave?" (See ad at right.) Ads will appear in local magazines, newspapers, bus taillight displays, billboards, and 30- and 60-second radio spots.
Executive director David A. Simpson, MA, LSW, explains, "We were sitting at a board meeting late last year talking about difficulties in communicating with the medical community, marketplace issues related to managed care, and our ability to negotiate third-party contracts and develop relations with hospital systems while remaining a community-based agency. Somebody said, Where the heck is the consumer in all of this?’ So the board decided, Let’s go directly to the consumer.’"
Lurking in the background was the hospice’s desire to promote an alternative to either suffering at the end of life or legalized physician-assisted suicide. The ads also emphasize the idea that dependence on others at the end of life, just as at the beginning, need not mean the loss of dignity, Simpson says.
The picture of the baby being held was very important, adds David Pumphrey, whose Cleveland firm, Pumphrey Marketing, designed the campaign. "The most important thing for the hospice movement to get across is the spirit of hospice care, and this image captures that, Pumphrey says.
The campaign was partly financed by $35,000 in pro bono contributions, but still represents an unprecedented commitment of financial resources to advertising by Hospice of the Western Reserve, which has an annual budget of $18 million and an average daily census of 400 patients.
Response has been positive, despite quibbling over the need for more racially diverse images, Simpson says. The hospice’s community relations coordinator, Amber Fisher, adds that the hospice does not plan to let the campaign drop after the major blitz ends but will continue placing ads. It also will send out a direct-mail brochure with the same image and attempt to monitor the results.
"We did not invent the idea for this campaign. We got it from the Society for Promotion of Hospice Care in Hong Kong, with which we are in an exchange program," Simpson says. He has offered the image to the National Hospice Organization and National Hospice Foundation for use nationwide but is refraining from releasing the campaign to other hospices until he hears back from these national groups.
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