Broward Health celebrates 85 years of serving the community’s healthcare needs
By Jennifer Smith, APR
By definition, an anniversary commemorates a significant or memorable milestone. For Broward Health, recognizing 85 years as a pillar of quality healthcare in the community provided us with an exceptional opportunity to tell the story of our legacy of service to the community.
“Then, Now, Forever” became our tagline for a campaign that not only celebrated Broward Health’s legacy but renewed our commitment to our community.
Our fully integrated strategic communications and marketing campaign supported a widescale and comprehensive year-long celebration that was developed based on research and careful planning. Our primary objectives were to share our reimagined Broward Health story in a manner that highlighted our history of care, our commitment to the community and to drive consumer and employee confidence.
The campaign launched in early January with a bevy of coordinated initiatives, including a new 85th-anniversary themed landing page for the system’s website, robust advertising, social media outreach, feature stories secured with local news media, and several events such as the “Broward Health Day” event at our flagship hospital, Broward Health Medical Center. All initiatives were shared on social media.
Our community ties were both celebrated and reinforced at the Broward Health Day event, where city, county and state officials, including the mayors of Fort Lauderdale and Broward County, made proclamations. Honoring special guests, including the first baby ever born at the hospital in 1938 and a 60-year employee, added a heartwarming personal touch.
Additional celebrations held in January included an 85-anniversary-themed community Panther watch party hosted in partnership with the Florida Panthers, as well as an in-game takeover. The launch phase of the campaign then culminated with Broward Health’s first-ever State of the System address at which hospital leaders shared an update on current initiatives and our vision for the future with an audience of approximately 500 community leaders, elected officials, physicians and other partners.
Internal components for Broward Health’s approximately 10,000 employees and physicians were a critical component of the campaign and ran in tandem with external initiatives. The tactics we utilized ranged from internal celebrations to videos, signage and screensavers with anniversary messaging. A variety of eblasts built awareness and engagement, including Fun Fact Friday messages sharing interesting historical tidbits by the decade.
Perhaps most unique, our internal campaign included a traveling historical display with ten banners describing and celebrating major milestones through the decades. The museum traveled around the system to each hospital, raising awareness of our rich history and instilling a sense of pride across the workforce.
The results have been impressive and are a testament to the hard work of our entire department. The metrics include a total attendance for five major community events and four internal events totaling over 25,000. We experienced an overall publicity value of $250,000 for news coverage generated by the campaign. On social media, there was a 2000% increase in impressions on Facebook, an 886% increase in Instagram and a nearly 500% increase in impressions on LinkedIn. Marketing sparked more than 33 million impressions via TV, billboards and advertisements, and more than 50,000 unique visitors navigated the campaign landing page.
As we evaluated the results of this campaign, we noted five key strategies to consider when planning future campaigns:
- Consider your audience. Your plan should reflect the different perceptions and needs of your various stakeholder groups.
- Utilize research. Lean in on research to recognize and address core issues that could be impacting your organization and your perceived role in your industry and community.
- Be proactive. Identify opportunities and milestones well in advance. These are the moments that will create the fabric for your culture and reputation, internally externally, but they take significant lead time to identify and create.
- Words matter. Deliberate language throughout a campaign sets a standard.
- Create excitement. Don’t just message the moment, instead incite an emotional response that ultimately will be memorable through events and other engagement tactics.
As our campaign comes to a close this month, we invite you to experience the campaign one last time at BrowardHealth.org/85.
Jennifer Smith is Vice President, Corporate Communications and Marketing, Broward Health.
