2009 Gold Effie Winner

A New Way To Look At Healthcare

Category: Healthcare Products & Services Brand/Client: HealthPartners Primary Agency: Preston Kelly Media Agency: Marketing Midwest

Strategic Challenge
Smiling doctors. Smiling patients. Smiling doctors with smiling patients. Historically, this was the creative standard for all healthcare communications in the Twin Cities market. Throw words like hope or quality care into a TV spot, outdoor or direct mail execution and a healthcare ad is born! HealthPartners was operating in the same healthcare tone until they directed us to free them from the healthcare advertising mold with something new. HealthPartners is the #3 healthcare brand in Minnesota, behind Blue Cross Blue Shield and Medica1. The organization has a unique business model; along with its healthcare plans for more than 1 million members nationwide, HealthPartners also gives direct care to patients at 30 clinics and 2 hospitals in the Twin Cities region2.
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Advertiser (HealthPartners) Data Advertiser (HealthPartners) Data HealthPartners.com

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2009: The information available through effie.org is the property of the Effie Awards and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. This brief may be displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal use only. By using this site, you agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, sell, publicly display, publish or broadcast the information to anyone without the prior written consent of the Effie Awards.

For more than 3 years HealthPartners.com had offered patient tools that allowed registered users to get lab results within 24 hours, schedule visits, correspond with their doctors and view immunization records, all online. But for that entire time, monthly registrations for new users remained stagnate3. It seemed that revolutionary tools existed, but no one was coming to the revolution. We knew other industries like travel and banking had gone before us. Eighty-five percent of consumers now book travel online and nearly 70% bank online4. But did a stigma exist with healthcare? Were consumers too concerned about putting their personal medical information online? Focus group research told us no, they simply didnt know all these tools were an option5. These consumers revealed the web was still an unconventional way to access personal healthcare but they could see the potential5. Client data also revealed that the lowest hanging fruit for online patient services were members and patients that received a lab test. More than 200,000 lab tests were done per year at the clinics, with 50% of those test results available in 4 hours and 93% of test results available in 24 hours6. But lab tests were not exclusive to any one demographic, so externally our target audience was based on a mindset; adults who use or are open to using the web for more than checking email. Our strategic communications challenge was to create a campaign that motivated members and patients to register for online patient services, with advertising that would completely break the cycle of standard smiling doctor healthcare advertising a new way to communicate this new way of accessing healthcare.

Objectives
1. Increase healthpartners.com average monthly registrations by 30%. (Quantifiable & Behavioral) This percentage increase was agreed upon by the client and agency after discussion with a healthcare organization in Seattle who underwent a similar campaign. Their efforts began approximately 2 years ago and we matched our goals with their results. 2. Exceed campaign advertising awareness by 10 percentage points over nearest competitor. HealthPartners traditionally ranked 3rd or lower in awareness measurements, behind its top competitors. Looking to create a campaign that broke out of the smiling, happy people mold truly a new way to look at healthcare the awareness goal was set high at 10 percentage points above competitors.

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Advertiser (HealthPartners) Data Monthly Activation Yankelovich 5 Advertiser (HealthPartners) Data Web Site Design Study May 2007
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Advertiser (HealthPartners) Data 2007 Clinic Services Report

Effie Awards 116 E. 27 St., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016 Tel: 212-687-3280 Fax: 212-557-9242
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2009: The information available through effie.org is the property of the Effie Awards and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. This brief may be displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal use only. By using this site, you agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, sell, publicly display, publish or broadcast the information to anyone without the prior written consent of the Effie Awards.

The Big Idea

Non-traditional healthcare tools can only break through to consumers in non-traditional ways. Unless youre sick, healthcare is a low-interest category. Smiling doctors and patients in a sea of blue and green are all consumers see in the market. An awareness study revealed that 37% of consumers believed HealthPartners had TV spots airing when in reality, HealthPartners hadnt been on TV for more than 4 years7. This proved the point; consumers could not differentiate one healthcare provider from another. Receiving lab results, corresponding with a doctor and viewing medical records online is a nontraditional way to access medical care and records. This required that we create non-traditional healthcare advertising to reach our healthcare users with a new, non-traditional look, in new, nontraditional places. By naturally extending from this fresh delivery mode, we created our strategic lever and themeline; A NEW WAY TO LOOK AT HEALTHCARE. With that benchmark, our big idea was LITERALLY a big idea. GIANT medical props led the campaign tone. Looking at the top user benefits we matched each with common medical items. This then gave us an internal checkpoint for our ideas and executions are we doing this in A NEW WAY or does it look like it could come from any healthcare organization?

Bringing the Idea to Life

OUTDOOR: An outdoor billboard schedule served as our mass awareness tool to shout A New Way To Look At Healthcare as the theme for healthpartners.com. With the themeline either flipped upside down or extended off the board, these served as broad reach visuals. This was a cost effective channel to reach our mobile consumer through the summer months (campaign ran May through August). MEDICAL PROPS: The giant medical props that served as the cornerstone of the big idea were first placed in urban and downtown settings, where high numbers of HealthPartners members and patients live and work. We matched our end user benefits with specific medical props: END USER BENEFIT Receiving test results: >>> MEDICAL PROP Specimen cup (hereto referred to as pee cup) Throat culture swab Tongue depressor Syringe Pill capsule

Corresponding with doctors online: Accessing immunization records: Refilling prescriptions online:

Once constructed, the bigger than life pee cup weighed more than 400 lbs. and was 7 feet tall. The
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Advertiser (HealthPartners) data 2007 Awareness Study

Effie Awards 116 E. 27 St., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016 Tel: 212-687-3280 Fax: 212-557-9242
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2009: The information available through effie.org is the property of the Effie Awards and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. This brief may be displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal use only. By using this site, you agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, sell, publicly display, publish or broadcast the information to anyone without the prior written consent of the Effie Awards.

giant pill was nearly 300 lbs and the syringe 10 feet long.

ONLINE ADS: Inherently, web users had the quickest access to healthpartners.com so a banner ad schedule was placed on all the major, local news sites, with added value banner advertising layered on at local radio station websites. A pee cup, syringe, tongue depressor and pill capsule all floated by to reveal the end user benefit of accessing healthcare online. Over half of the online media buy was designated to rich media banners and pre-roll video which revealed our street team chasing down people to explain its no longer necessary to wait to speak with a doctor or to receive test results. The jumpsuit-clad team ran with a giant tongue depressor and abruptly caught our potential users on the street, running around the cities lakes, at the mall, quickly revealing that the information they traditionally had to wait, call or go into a clinic for could now be accessed online. MASCOT: The giant props then toured sports venues and events, where they were joined by Petey P. Cup, the new HealthPartners.com mascot. A soft, approachable life-size specimen cup, with four-fingered hands and big cartoonish feet. Just the right size for hugging. A healthcare mascot was completely unexpected and his pee cup body generated reactions of raised eyebrows and huge smiles Petey embodied the fact that HealthPartners really did have a new way to look at healthcare. SOCIAL MEDIA: Petey P. Cup has a Facebook page where over 680 have friended him. It lists his appearance schedule and links to his youtube videos. BUZZ: Peteys primary role in the campaign was to serve as an approachable, memorable way to connect with consumers and create buzz for healthpartners.com, but he also played a major role in seeding the campaign with employees. This internal audience was a very important element in selling the online patients services at the clinics, so it was important that they were completely vested and enthusiastic. When a few employees made Petey pajamas and another passed around pictures of a home-made pee cup birthday cake we knew we were on to something. The entire campaign was art directed in bright orange and yellow to tie the executions together and visually display this was indeed A NEW WAY TO LOOK AT HEALTHCARE.

Effie Awards 116 E. 27 St., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016 Tel: 212-687-3280 Fax: 212-557-9242
th

2009: The information available through effie.org is the property of the Effie Awards and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. This brief may be displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal use only. By using this site, you agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, sell, publicly display, publish or broadcast the information to anyone without the prior written consent of the Effie Awards.

Communications Touch Points

TV
Spots Branded Content Sponsorship Product placement

Packaging Product Design Cinema

Trade Shows Sponsorship Retail Experience

POP Video In-Store Merchandizing Sales Promotion Retailtainment

Interactive
Online Ads Web site Viral video Video skins/bugs Social Networking sites Podcasts Gaming Mobile Phone Other_____________

Radio
Spots Merchandising Program/content

Print
Trade/Professional Newspaper Consumer Magazine Print partnership

Guerrilla
Street Teams Tagging Wraps Buzz Marketing Ambient Media Sampling/Trial

OOH
Airport Transit Billboard Place Based Other_____________

Direct
Mail Email

Consumer Involvement
WOM Consumer Generated Viral

PR Events

Other __Giant Medical Props__

Petey P. Cup Mascot

Additional Marketing Components: None Reach: Local Total Media Expenditure: Under $500 thousand

Results
1. Increase healthpartners.com average monthly registrations by 30%. (Quantifiable & Behavioral)
Effie Awards 116 E. 27 St., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016 Tel: 212-687-3280 Fax: 212-557-9242
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2009: The information available through effie.org is the property of the Effie Awards and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. This brief may be displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal use only. By using this site, you agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, sell, publicly display, publish or broadcast the information to anyone without the prior written consent of the Effie Awards.

2. Exceed campaign advertising awareness by 10 percentage points over nearest competitor. A NEW WAY TO LOOK AT HEALTHCARE CAMPAIGN RESULTS MET AND EXCEEDED GOALS, CLIENT DATA IS CONFIDENTIAL

Anything else going on that might have helped drive results? The HealthPartners.com mascot, Petey P. Cup, grew to be a true brand ambassador for HealthPartners. With over 22,000 views on youtube.com and 680 Facebook friends and counting, this unexpected healthcare mascot generated press and consumer dialogue like nothing before in the history of HealthPartners. In the category of healthcare in which consumers are skeptical and increasingly concerned about costs, it is difficult to create positive buzz around a healthcare brand. In this case, consumer generated chatter was overwhelmingly positive. Petey has even been requested to officiate a wedding (he respectfully declined as he is instructed only to wave, not speak). Both major newspapers in the Twin Cities ran extensive feature stories about HealthPartners new mascot, with one reporter signing up to be Petey for a day and writing about the experience from inside the cup. Other various TV and radio stations discussed Petey and the uniqueness of this mascot. ABCNEWS.COM ran a story about The Worlds Weirdest Health Mascots in which Petey was pictured alongside Prosty the Spokesgland. The external campaign has ended with the exception of Peteys schedule. He remains active on Facebook and in the community, with at least one event appearance per week.

Effie Awards 116 E. 27 St., 6th Floor, New York, NY 10016 Tel: 212-687-3280 Fax: 212-557-9242
th

2009: The information available through effie.org is the property of the Effie Awards and is protected by copyright and other intellectual property laws. This brief may be displayed, reformatted and printed for your personal use only. By using this site, you agree not to reproduce, retransmit, distribute, sell, publicly display, publish or broadcast the information to anyone without the prior written consent of the Effie Awards.