Marketing Works, a York, Penn-based advertising agency that caters to the healthcare market, aims to craft specialized campaigns for its medical-practice clients to help them stand out from their competitors. To date, the ad agency has received four awards this year for its campaigns.
“If you’re in an inherently low-differentiation industry, like healthcare, you can’t afford to do what the rest of the crowd is doing,” said Tina Rudisill, president of Marketing Works. “You have to stand out to even get attention in the first place, let alone get a message across that differentiates you as a better choice than your competition.”
The challenge is that many practices fall into predictable patterns of advertising imagery, said Gail Schwartz, vice president of healthcare at Marketing Works.
“Doctors in lab coats, lifestyle photographs of smiling patients, ad copy that focuses on the credentials of your board-certified clinicians—in healthcare marketing, those are the clichés that make you look like everyone else,” Schwartz said. “But we encourage our healthcare clients to think differently.”
Marketing Works’ successful campaigns have featured unusual imagery such as baseballs and trees to help practices stand apart, an approach that has garnered much recognition over the past several years. Marketing Works has received four awards in 2014, including a Gold Healthcare Advertising Award and a Silver Aster Award for a new logo for the Physicians & Midwives Collaborative Practice in Northern Virginia, along with a Gold Aster Award and a Silver Healthcare Advertising Award for a campaign for Princeton Radiation Oncology in New Jersey.
Winners of the Healthcare Advertising Awards, organized by the Healthcare Marketing Report, are selected from a pool of nearly 4,000 entries. The Aster Awards, hosted by Creative Images Ltd, accept entries from healthcare organizations and marketing agencies both in the United States and internationally.
