Hospital chain to debut ‘familiar’ ad campaign on Bowl stage
By Christine McConville cmcconville@bostonherald.com
Friday, February 4, 2011
Heads up, football fans. There’s another kickoff planned this weekend.
During the Super Bowl, in between the blockbuster soft drink commercials and the showboating by Internet firms, an emerging hospital chain is planning its debut.
But the commercial from Steward Health Care System, the new owner of what used to be the Caritas Christi hospital chain, won’t feature a handsome doctor in scrubs.
This ad, and the ones that follow later, aims to focus on the health-care needs of working-class Bostonians who live in some of the city’s more authentic neighborhoods.
“All the people in the ads will look familiar,” said Brian Carty, Steward’s chief marketing officer. “We want you to watch the ad, and say, ‘Oh, I’ve met that person.’”
Selling health care from the consumer’s point of view is one of the many goals of the new venture’s marketing blitz. The firm also wants to introduce itself to its new 13,000 employees, at the six former Caritas hospitals.
“This is our debut,” Carty said about Steward, a subsidiary of the Cerberus Capital Management L.P. “And we wanted to launch it on the biggest platform possible, and that’s the Super Bowl.”
Steward also aims to modernize health-care marketing with its new ads, said Carty, who would not disclose how much the company spent on the nearly two-month campaign.
“In terms of marketing, health care is about 20 years behind everything else,” he said. “There’s a lot of direct mail and a lot of billboards.”
The consumer-focused Steward ads, which also will air during “American Idol” and “Glee,” he said, will be groundbreaking.
“It’s a really interesting time for health care, and the ads will portray that,” he said.
2011 Superbowl Commercials Cost
September 22, 2010
Reuters has confirmed that the 2011 Super Bowl commercials will cost around $3 million dollars for a 30 second spot. CBS claims that 90% of the ads have been sold.
In early news, PEPSI has said it will run at least six commercials and GM has announced that they will be back after a two year hiatus. Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch have yet to confirm the number of commercials.
Doritos is also expect to “crash the super bowl”.
More news follows as we get our hands on it ..
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