CASE HISTORY #1
Client: TENET HEALTHCARE SYSTEMS
Project Overview
Montgomery Stire Partners created an on-going public awareness campaign for diabetes in New Orleans through the sponsorship of Tenet Health Systems. The goal was to increase the positive perception of Tenet Health Care Systems in the metropolitan New Orleans market. Montgomery Stire Partners paired Tenet with the American Diabetes Association to create a highly emotional campaign to urge people to get tested for the disease.
The community goal for this campaign was to 1) educate the public about the extremely high incidence of diabetes in New Orleans (the highest in the country), 2) urge people to get screened for the disease, and 3) if they test positive, have them follow-up with a doctor’s visit.
Our public relations goal for this campaign was to create good will toward Tenet as the healthcare leader in fighting this disease as a good corporate citizen. This campaign took time to make the public aware of what a good corporate citizen Tenet is. First, we made the public aware of the incidence of diabetes in New Orleans through the auspices of Tenet. Next, we got them to go to a Tenet screening. And finally, we showed the positive aspects of what the Tenet screening could do to save people from diabetes. It was a great campaign for a great cause that greatly increase Tenet’s public image in New Orleans with excellent applications for a regional or national campaign.
Television acted as our only medium. The campaign ran in three phases: Intro Image, Screening Message, and Screening Results.
Phase 1: Intro Image
The first phase of the campaign was an image campaign for Tenet to educate the people of New Orleans about the high incidence of diabetes here. Since this was a spot that would initially run before Tenet had announced their diabetes screening sponsorship, we were not able to tout Tenet’s screening involvement with the disease at that time. It served only to increase awareness of the disease in New Orleans, with the message brought to you through the auspices of Tenet.
The commercial produced was a top-quality, highly emotional spot, using a local celebrity, Anne Rice, who revealed that she has diabetes and told the story of how it affects, not only her life, but the lives of so many others in New Orleans. We shot the spot using high-quality production standards in stark black and white with dramatic b-roll shots as Ms. Rice talks. The music was evocative and touching, with the end result being a spot that both informs and touches the viewer. We, of course, brought in the message at the end that this important message was brought to you by Tenet HealthSystems.
Phase 2: Screening Message
The second phase of the campaign was to urge people to actually get tested for diabetes at a series of screening locations throughout New Orleans. We developed a second spot for this phase of the campaign. This spot was primarily the same spot from the first phase of the campaign but was tagged with a voice over that strongly urged the public to get tested for the disease and gave the locations of the upcoming free screens. We asked our media partner to produce the 10-second tags each time with supers for the new screening locations. We also had the option of using this 10-second tag to promote upcoming ADA or Tenet-sponsored seminars on diabetes.
We also produce a :10 version of this spot where we gave only the screening locations for the upcoming weekend. Even though a 10-second media buy was not included in the budget, we will ask our media partner to run these on Thursdays and Fridays in their morning show.
Phase 3: Screening Results
The third and final phase of the campaign featured footage of Ms. Rice from the original commercial followed by a real person who actually tested positive for diabetes at a Tenet screening location. This person would then express how thankful they were to have gone to a Tenet screening, gotten tested and found out early that they had diabetes.
This phase of the campaign was the real payback in terms of public relations for Tenet because we had real people thanking Tenet for providing the free testing so they, and her family could avoid the ravages of diabetes...perhaps even death. And, of course, urged others to go to the free Tenet testing too.
Project Results
The results of this campaign were extremely satisfying to both Tenet HealthSystems and to Montgomery Stire Partners. Due to the campaign, over the course of the past 18 months, more than 15,000 people in the metro area have participated in the free screenings program with approximately 25% testing positive for elevated glucose, an early sign of diabetes. Most were referred to their physicians for additional tests and consultation. Two were sent directly to the emergency room where the treatment they received helped save their lives. In both cases, the attending physicians noted that the patient was dangerously close to slipping into a diabetic coma. The screenings have gained the attention of all four New Orleans television stations and the daily newspaper. One TV station ran a series of stories on the disease, using Tenet personnel as their expert spokespersons.
CASE HISTORY #2
Client: PRUDENTIAL GARDNER REALTORS
Project Overview
At Prudential Gardner, Realtors, we created an integrated set of recruiting activities which were aimed at “new agent recruiting”. Over a period of five years we’ve averaged just over 200 new recruited sales associates per year, one of the highest capture rates for new sales associates by any Prudential Real Estate affiliate nationally. Then the market started to slow and fewer and fewer people were interested in starting a career in real estate, we needed to make a change.
Phase #1: Building the System
The decision was made that we needed to shift the recruiting focus to “experienced sales associates.” We began by working with the company branch sales managers to identify a list of experienced agents with other brokers in each of their markets. The sales managers were responsible for obtaining the target agent’s name, home address, company name and accurate email address. Each sales manager entered this data into their contact management system (Sharper Agent) which we had branded, “Your Marketing Productivity Tools (MPT)”. The sales managers were then instructed to add and continue to add to this list. At the same time we began designing creative materials for both an emailing campaign and post office mailing campaign.
The creative materials we created and continue to create and produce are a series of postcards which tell "Our Story" using ten categories which we define internally as our “VALUE Proposition” and which differentiates us from our competitors.
We designed the first series of cards to inform the targeted recruits about the tools or services we provide to our agents, then the second series of cards show the “evidence” that our agents are succeeding using these tools and services. These second series of cards use actual agents and/or actual events with our agents which we use as testimonials.
Phase #2: Contacting the Recruits
After using the drip campaign for about 28 weeks (a card every Monday) we began having company wide Sales Managers call sessions. Over a scheduled two hour period each week every managers would make calls to sales associates who had received the on-going cards and would work to set up a meeting with these sales associates. The calls were designed to be informal calls with just a mention of a posssible meeting. After the scheduled two-hour calling period the sales managers were required to then call into our “Recruiting Central” hot-line where the company General and Regional Manager received and logged the called-in appointments. Each of these appointments must have a specific time, place and date.
Project Results
Approximatly one month after the sales managers began calling to set up meetings, a total of 21 meetings had been set. After the first six months of the campaign, a total of 16 experienced sales associates from other brokers had decided to join Prudential Garder, this total was more than the total amount of experienced sales associates recruited to the company over the course of the last six years. The previous year total sales production of these 16 experienced sales associates equaled over $63 million dollars.
CASE HISTORY #3
Client: CIRQUE DU SOLEIL’S ALEGRIA
Project Overview
Travelers to Las Vegas have long been enamored with the unique entertainment provided by the Canadian performing arts troupe, Cirque du Soleil. But when Cirque agreed to stage “Alegria” at the new Beau Rivage Resort in Biloxi, there was concern about acceptance in the region, since no Cirque show had ever played within 400 miles of the Gulf Coast. Cirque executives chose Montgomery Stire Partners to help introduce them to a targeted audience in ten southern states and to help Cirque become part of the local landscape.
Project Objectives
The campaigns’ objective was to successfully introduce this unique type of entertainment to a southeastern ten state region. Once introduced, the objective switched to maintaining at least a 90% occupancy at every showing.
Project Strategies
Through a series of strategic, well thought out special appearances, the targeted audience and market were exposed first hand to the breathtaking uniqueness of the show. These exposures, to large numbers of people in settings that already were filled with momentum and excitement, helped build the shows’ position like no other medium could.
We arranged for Cirque performers to entertain at the pre-game and half time festivities of the New Orleans Saints-Tennessee Titans game in the Louisiana Superdome. With over 50,000 spectators, it was the largest crowd to witness a Cirque performance in the history of the company. We topped that with the placement of an Alegria float in the Krewe of Orpheus parade, which was witnessed by several hundred thousand revelers on Lundi Gras (Mardi Gras eve). The following spring we placed Cirque du Soleil in the middle of the post-race celebration of the Crescent City Classic, another high-profile event.
For the shows’ premier, we developed a VIP list for invitations to the show and the post performance party. Demand for the tickets was so high that the event sold out immediately and the show became the hottest ticket in the South.
With regards to media, MSP utilized an aggressive media relation’s plan to secure extensive coverage of the Alegria premiere at Beau Rivage in Biloxi throughout the ten Southeastern states.
We designed a teaser mailing campaign to pique the interest of the media, including a music CD, a program, a video and finally a press kit to a media list of several hundred reporters, newspapers, radio and television stations.
Periodic press releases, slides, CD’s and videos were mailed to media in a 10-state region ranging from Texas to North Carolina. Video news releases were distributed to television stations and cable networks.
Promotional efforts consisted of radio ticket giveaways in a variety of cities throughout the gulf coast, from Lafayette to Pensacola to Jackson to Memphis to Houston and all points in between.
Project Results
The agency achieved a 97% across the board attendance for the 18 month stay of the show. In the space of less than 12 months, we helped Cirque du Soleil become a familiar name in the targeted markets and earned more than one million dollars in media exposure. Our media relations’ efforts placed Alegria artists on several news shows across the region, as well as regional exposure on the Turner Cable Network and national exposure on Good Morning America. We generated hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles throughout the 10-state region. The show was featured in the travel section of nearly every major newspaper in the target market.
