Campaign Development & Planning

In the third quarter of 2006, United Regional Health Care Services was struggling against stiff competition from a new area hospital, Kell West, and from DFW hospitals in general. They conducted an extensive marketing agency search and selected Agency Entourage as their digital agency of record to handle marketing efforts.

Our first step was to conduct a brand strategy workshop with the leadership and brand stakeholders of URHCS. Their marketing department provided recent survey results stating there was a belief that United Regional Health Care Services delivered adequate, but not excellent, quality of care. This was particularly compared to Kell West and DFW hospitals. Furthermore, there was a strong sentiment that the technology at United Regional was not cutting edge. These were grave misperceptions that we would deal with as we repositioned the URHCS brand.

In just a few short months, Agency Entourage was ready to launch a new brand for United Regional Health Care Services. We shortened the long brand name to simply United Regional. URHCS had been around for 100 years so it was well known. The shortened version of the name allowed it to be seen as a neighbor — a member of the community. Next, we designed a new logo for United Regional; one that represented a powerful and positive image of hope, healing and renewal. The logo was followed by a new tagline: More than a day’s work. It’s our life’s work. The tagline was based on the strategic concept “The healing power of our passion”.

We developed an internal marketing strategy for the United Regional staff members as an initial step to launching our marketing campaign. Our campaign idea: A timeline giving a behind-the-scenes picture of an unfolding medical situation, underscored by the new tagline.. In the TV commercials, original music and rising sun imagery combine to create strong impressions of hope and healing. The campaign was produced as a series of TV commercials, radio spots, newspaper ads and local magazine ads. It was also the driving concept behind the new and improved website Agency Entourage developed for United Regional.

United Regional keeps a monthly record of inbound calls, including health calls, physician referrals, and class registrations. The total number of calls received in 2006 (the year prior to the new positioning campaign) was 5,404. By the end of 2007, we had increased the total number of calls to 6,851. When the campaign first launched in May of 2007, United Regional received a record number of 771 calls.

• By January 2008, we had experienced a 23% increase in total call volume over 2007
• By June 2008, total call volume had increased by 36% over 2007
• A 16% increase in web traffic in March 2008 when the new creative launched in market