MARKETING

The Journey to Elevating a Brand and Reaching a Worldwide Audience

It’s a nice problem to have.

Florida’s Tampa General Hospital had owned a large part of the area market share for several years. Its size, at 1,041 beds; its status as a Level I Trauma Center, boasting five medical helicopters covering 23 surrounding counties; and its affiliation with USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, in Tampa, helped make Tampa General the regional leader.

But the facility’s messaging needed a refresh to keep up with its success. As Alison Pondo, the hospital’s assistant director of marketing & consumerism, explained, “Our branding and messaging previously was similar to everyone else’s in our market. It focused on lifestyle and connection, and was very warm and comforting. The messaging was nice: ‘Medicine That Matters’.”

But this approach lacked specificity. “There wasn’t anything necessarily wrong with the marketing, but there were no true differentiating features in the messaging,” Pondo said. “You could have slapped any competitor’s logo on one of these ads and the consumer probably wouldn’t know the difference.”

That was the problem: The branding and messaging worked well enough in past years, but the hospital had progressed, enjoying success after success, and these differentiating factors were not highlighted. An academic medical center that was proud to be a local, and then regional, leader was now a national — even global — brand and the messaging failed to keep up.

“We felt it was time for a refresh to reengage our world-class physicians and expertise,” said Jennifer McVan, senior director of MarComm, media & partnerships. “Some of our programs are known nationally, with U.S. News & World Report’s ‘high-performing’ rankings in several service lines and national rankings in five. We have people from all across the country choosing TGH for our transplant program, and also our Heart & Vascular Institute and our Neurosciences Institute, to name a few. So, we care for patients who are in advanced medical situations that other hospitals aren’t able to care for.”

That story was not being told, nor was the innovative way the hospital had responded to the persistent challenge of COVID-19, for which it set up the Global Emerging Diseases Institute, which is currently involved in more than 20 clinical trials.

“We wanted to be bold with our rebranding, and we wanted to focus on our advanced care and our academic partnerships,” McVan said. 

The Work Begins
The first step in the rebranding campaign was to get the right people in the same room to collaborate and then go through storyboarding, scripting and drafting, over many iterations. These discussions, which took more than six months, included top hospital senior managers as well as marketing staff. “It starts with the leadership team,” McVan explained. “Our CEO and president, John Couris, who has been with TGH since 2017, brought a lot of talent, expertise and innovation. He always urges our team to strive for excellence and do the best we can in all areas.”

To differentiate Tampa General Hospital from other medical institutions in the area, the team focused on exemplary factors that distinguished it from the competition. Those factors include that it is the most comprehensive facility in the region, with more than 8,500 team members; it is recognized by U.S. News and Newsweek as one of the country’s top hospitals and is ranked as the best hospital in Tampa Bay; the nursing staff has been awarded Magnet recognition; it is the region’s largest teaching hospital, and has been affiliated with the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine since its founding; it is one of the nation’s principal organ transplant centers, with over 11,000 transplants to date, and was the site of Florida’s first successful heart transplant; and it is a nationally designated comprehensive stroke center, and the site of a neuroscience ICU.

Another focus of the campaign was the medical innovation that comes from the hospital’s association with the medical school. There is a full raft of clinical trials underway at Tampa General. “We are always on the cusp of what is the latest in medicine, and that’s really important to us. We are always advancing treatments,” Pondo said.

The above accomplishments, among others, demonstrate why a refreshed marketing campaign was so important. 

The New Image Rollout
“We wanted to change the adjectives that people use when they think of Tampa General,” Pondo said. “We also wanted to create engagement, which was huge for us. We wanted to become storytellers and share the incredible patient stories that we have here every single day.” The goals of the campaign were to generate awareness, influence perceptions and create engagement.

Following extensive testing with focus groups, the new branding campaign was rolled out. Testing focused on relevance, clarity and brand alignment of the messaging. “Six weeks prior to launch, we actually went dark in the market because we wanted to get a true baseline to gauge accurate results,” Pondo explained.

All measurements of brand equity jumped immediately following the rollout. Testing showed that 72% were aware that Tampa General was the best-rated hospital in Tampa Bay. Brand equity items also significantly increased, with an additional 6% of respondents over baseline knowing the hospital is committed to innovation; 5% more knowing of its good reputation; 6% more being confident should they or a loved one need treatment at the hospital; and 6% more understanding that it is considered one of the region’s best hospitals.

A Touchdown
Social media played a very important role in the new strategy. In the past, the hospital had been on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram, but all of these platforms were not overseen by the same group. In the revamped campaign, all four social media channels would be the responsibility of the marketing department, with a major emphasis on storytelling. “We changed our social strategy to align with the rebrand and for us, social media became true storytelling,” McVan said. “We want to keep the human component of all the stories in order to keep them as engaging as possible. We have incredible life-saving stories happening every single day here.”

The marketing team does not just “post to post.” The anatomy of their social media posts includes a topic that ties into a service line, an endorsement by an employee to build brand trust, and hashtags used so people can explore more about the hospital. Images might be supplied by patients as opposed to arranged by the marketing department. “Even when we are messaging about our service lines, we always want to do it in a really creative, out-of-the-box way,” McVan said. “We see social media as an engaging way to interact with our consumers and community.”

Social media is also used to highlight hospital accomplishments, such as a post following the 11,000th organ transplant performed. Each of those 11,000 patients is a possible story. Another source of social posts is the frequent appearance of the hospital’s clinical experts on local, regional and national media. “We are very lucky to have world-class physicians who are willing to spend time conducting media interviews to educate the community on health and safety measures,” McVan said. Furthermore, the hospital’s creation of the Global Emerging Diseases Institute was covered by many news outlets and resulted in significant earned media value.

Serendipitously, Super Bowl LV, in 2021, pitted the Tampa Bay Buccaneers against the Kansas City Chiefs at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, with Tom Brady as the Buccaneers’ quarterback. The hospital seized the initiative and was the exclusive medical provider for the big event, and set up giveaways (e.g., masks and hand sanitizers) and health awareness campaigns in pop-up tents around the stadium.

The hospital’s social media channels went into overdrive, scoring an astonishing $4,913,121 of earned media value just between Jan. 21 and Feb. 9.

Brady completed 21 of 29 passes, with three touchdowns and no interceptions, and the Buccaneers won easily, 31-9. But Tampa General Hospital scored, too.

This article features interviews with:

Alison Pondo
Assistant Director
Marketing & Consumerism, Tampa General Hospital

Jennifer McVan
Senior Director
MarComm, Media & Partnerships, Tampa General Hospital