Insight Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising

Public Relations is one of the most overlooked sales tool. Many organizations, especially hospitals, have
historically combined the functions of Public Relations and Marketing in the same department. I was lucky to have
started my healthcare marketing career as the director for a small hospital who had no PR budget to speak of and who
suffered from a bad community reputation. To make things worse, the small hospital was run by a management
company who was focused on the bottom-line and little else. Added to that mix was a Board of Trustees who didn't
trust the Administration, a Medical Staff who didn't trust the Board or the Administration and a small town newspaper
editor who really didn't like any of them. I really had my work cut-out!

Since perception is a reality in most people's minds, the first order of business was to win the media over while working
on internal healing and consensus building. There was a HUGE credibility factor that had to be overcome. In all
honesty, the patient care at the hospital was terrific, the facility was one of the cleanest I've been in and the clinical staff
was quite competent and caring. So what was the problem then you ask,... years of mistrust compounded by lack of
clear communication with the media and community leaders. The rumor mill, especially in a small town setting is
POWERFUL. You can either be proactive and make it work for you ...or forever be in a reactive state. I chose to be
proactive and camp out at the doors of all of the media (with coffee) and attend every community bake sale, knitting
circle , Rotary meeting or any event possible to talk about how things were different. It was exhausting and very
effective. Meanwhile we held internal "Market to the Marketers" meetings to motivate and train the 800+ employees
who went home everyday and talked about the hospital. We brought in motivational speakers and held
communications workshops, created financial incentives and started the slow process of building a new positive
culture with renewed hope. Momentum began and by the time I left to go to a bigger health system, the newspaper
editor was writing complimenetary editorials and the community was feeling more connected to their community
hospital.

The take home lesson: PR begins during good times and pays for itself during the bad. PR is everyone's job in
the organization. You don't have to spend an enormous amount of money on public relations, but you do have to
CONSISTENTLY fund this function, knowing that you will be rewarded later.

Good, consistent, public relations and community education is VITAL!
When the new owners of a recycled paper mill retained me for public
relations support, the image of the old mill was based upon memory
of the original 1920s coal-burning mill that used wood pulp in their
papermaking process. For years, they polluted the air and
surrounding streams, but eventually the mill closed and relocated
under environmental pressures.

When my clients purchased the mill, the community did not see the
millions of dollars spent inside the mill, nor did they understand the
paper mill now only used wood chips to fire their boiler and used
cardboard instead of trees to make their paper. They only saw the
giant smoke stack and multiple smaller stacks pouring out white stuff
everyday. To make matters worse, a nice bold river runs through the
property that everyone assumed was being polluted just like the
original company had done earlier. In fact, the new operation used a
closed-loop system that prevented any discharge into the river.

We implemented a massive community education series which
included radio, newspaper articles, media kits with a dvd explaining
the new recycling process, facility tours for local leaders and a
Speakers Bureau for community clubs. Our core message was "We
have a clean operation and We live here too!". In addition we
changed the Corporate Identiy with a new logo, new colors, signage
and website. Our message began to spread as people started
understanding their water wasn't polluted and the white stuff coming
from the mill was a combination of steam for drying the paper and
wood smoke coming from the giant stack.