SNAPSHOT

Institutions:

White Rose Medical Center, a 325-bed, not-for-profit establishment providing general medical and surgical services

Century Medical Center, a 290-bed, for-profit provider of general medical and surgical services

Vista Cinemas, a regional chain of movie theaters

Location:

Newcastle (population 113,544), located in the West North Central region of the United States

Characters:

Mr. Matthew Fields, Vice President of Marketing, White Rose Medical Center

Ms. Veronica Mitchell, Sales Representative, Vista Cinemas

Context:

In this case, the top marketing executive of a medical center experiments with a seemingly brilliant form of advertising and learns a valuable lesson about audience receptivity.

Matthew Fields, Vice President of Marketing at White Rose Medical Center, is cautiously optimistic. He has just committed resources to an advertising method never before used by his establishment and he has high hopes that his gamble will yield excellent results. Specifically, Matthew has decided to promote White Rose Medical Center using cinema advertising and he has just signed a contract for such with Vista Cinemas, the largest theater chain in the region, providing one 30-second spot featuring White Rose Medical Center to theater audiences prior to each movie shown over the course of a 3-month contract period.

White Rose Medical Center is a financially sound, well-operated general health and medical facility located in Newcastle, a city of 113,544 situated in the West North Central region of the United States. The not-for-profit, 325-bed establishment competes with four comprehensive healthcare providers in the city. As might be expected, these systems compete vigorously with one another in the battle for market share, something that compels Matthew to be especially innovative in his efforts to reach and attract tar-get audiences in Newcastle and the surrounding region.

Outshopping is not much of an issue for the healthcare providers in Newcastle, the physical center and largest city of an expansive geographic region. As most of the surrounding area is rural, consisting of several moderately sized cities and many small communities, residents across the region look to Newcastle's comprehensive medical care providers to deliver the vast majority of their healthcare wants and needs. Given the market captivity, the greatest threat faced by White Rose Medical Center is not from out-of-market competitors, but from Newcastle's other medical providers.

Formally trained in marketing at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, Matthew has led the marketing operations of White Rose Medical Center for 12 years and he is largely credited with achieving and maintaining the medical center's razor thin market leadership position over its arch rival, the for-profit Century Medical Center. With such a small mar-gin separating the two facilities, Matthew understands the importance of consistently communicating White Rose Medical Center's benefits to target populations in the region and he does this very well.

In accordance with guidance from his marketing education, Matthew's approach to marketing communications is consistent with textbook recommendations. He meticulously formulates the marketing communications mix, investigating advertising, public relations, personal selling, sales promotion, and direct marketing opportunities in the context of given promotions goals and objectives, selecting the mix that he believes will best accomplish designated mandates. Importantly, Matthew does not simply throw caution to the wind and hope that marketing communications deliver results; instead, he studies various communicative mechanisms and establishes methods for measuring results.

He operates on a strict mandate that if he cannot measure the results of a given marketing communications device, he does not make the purchase. Just as with any progressive marketer, Matthew always keeps an eye out for new opportunities to communicate with target audiences. In fact, this mindset is exactly what led to his decision to try cinema advertising, prompted by a recent visit from Veronica Mitchell, a sales representative for Vista Cinemas.

Vista Cinemas is the region's largest movie theater chain, operating 12 theater complexes for a grand total of 48 screens, each typically running up to five movies per day on a 7-day per week basis. Vista has long been running coming attractions and concession promotions in the 10-minute period preceding its movies, but it only recently began to offer opportunities for businesses to purchase advertisements in the time slots situated just before feature presentations begin.

After studying data supplied by Veronica, Matthew was impressed. Vista Cinemas intentionally selected highly diverse movie mixes to attract equally broad cross-sections of the population, a "something for everyone" approach to entertainment

. Matthew did not see this approach to be problematic; in fact, he viewed it to be a benefit, especially given that White Rose Medical Center provided services that were equally di-verse, spanning the gamut of human life. Given this, he believed that a general advertisement reminding audiences of the excellent care and attention that one receives at White Rose Medical Center would yield optimal results.

Veronica suggested a 3-month package that provided roughly 20,000 advertising impressions-one 30-second advertisement presented prior to each of the feature presentations playing over the contract period-reaching an estimated 600,000 viewers. She emphasized that moviegoers would all largely be focused on the advertisement, given their relative captivity as they await feature presentations, making for high levels of attention.

As with any medium of advertising that he had no prior experience using, Matthew was somewhat hesitant, but he decided to proceed when Veronica offered him a very economical introductory rate over the 3-month term. Hesupplied the marketing communication-essentially an enhanced version of an existing 30-second television advertisement providing a general portrayal of White Rose Medical Center-and awaited the deployment of the cinema advertising campaign, which was scheduled to begin the following month.

The new month began on a Saturday, one of the biggest movie days, ushering in White Rose Medical Center's debut on the big screen. That evening, Matthew made a point to attend a movie playing at one of Vista's theaters in Newcastle to view White Rose's advertisement firsthand.

The White Rose advertisement ran as promised, wedged between the coming attractions and feature presentation. Matthew was unable to ascertain much from the audience, given the low light, but the level of attentive-ness certainly appeared to be very high, especially given the placement of White Rose's advertisement in such close proximity to the feature film. Leaving the theater, the potential of cinema advertising began to dawn on him.

On arriving at his office on Monday morning, he was surprised to find that the voice mailbox of White Rose Medical Center's community relations hotline, a line provided by the medical center to solicit suggestions from patients and other community stakeholders, was over-flowing. No less than 50 messages were left, all of them from angry moviegoers, furious at White Rose Medical Center for running cinema advertisements.

The messages from callers were highly varied in tone and approach, but they shared a common theme. Callers viewed movies to represent a sort of escape from their daily lives and they expected that escape to be commercial free, especially given the costs of attending movies.

Most callers expressed their disappointment and some current patients even communicated that they would look to other providers in the region if White Rose continued the advertisements.

A few even mentioned that if the advertisements had been related to entertainment, such as those of dining establishments or recreation facilities, they would not have taken offense, but they viewed healthcare advertisements to be out of place in the movie environment. The worst messages were from a handful of callers who threatened to boycott the medical center if it did not remove the advertisements.

These were all serious threats-especially given the tight battle for market leadership between White Rose and Century Medical Center-and Matthew well knew that the negative word-of-mouth would be brutal.

Needless to say, Matthew's initial feeling of confidence that cinema advertising just might be a good thing for White Rose Medical Center was quickly diffused, turning what he thought to be a boom into a bust. He contacted Veronica and asked her to pull the cinema advertisements.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. When White Rose Medical Center's cinema advertisements were initiated, callers immediately began leaving messages of protest on the medical center's community relations hotline, generally indicating that their movie experience was violated by the advertisements. Placing yourself in the role of a moviegoer, do you view such advertisements in the same way? Why or why not? How does the particular product advertised factor into your decision?

2. On listening to the protest messages on White Rose's hotline, Matthew immediately decided to pull the cinema advertisements; this despite the advertisements having only been running for 2 days. Do you think this move was wise? Why or why not?

3. Based on protests, the White Rose cinema advertising campaign of-fended at least some moviegoers. Assuming that the negative sentiment was widespread and the campaign indeed missed the mark, what could Matthew have done differently to reach cinema audiences via marketing communications in a manner that would make sense and not be offensive? For this inquiry, you are encouraged to think very creatively.

4. Matthew selected a cinema advertising package that provided one 30-second spot prior to each movie, regardless of its content or rating, over the contract period. Casting aside questions of whether cinema advertising is or is not beneficial to healthcare institutions, do you think acceptance of such a package is appropriate, given that some of the movies shown over the course of the contract period might possess themes that would be unbecoming for healthcare entities? Be sure to supply the rationale behind your response.

5. What lessons does this case provide for healthcare institutions in how they go about selecting various marketing communications mechanisms upon which they engage target audiences?