Healthcare marketing is evolving. As patients become more informed and discerning, healthcare organizations must rethink their approach to brand visibility and engagement. Enter sports sponsorship. It’s a strategic move that positions healthcare brands in front of passionate, engaged audiences, especially when high-profile FIFA and MLB events are headed our way.

The Shift to Healthcare Consumerism

The traditional patient-provider dynamic has changed. Today, consumers expect more from their healthcare experience, weighing quality, cost and convenience like any other major purchase. Rising deductibles and out-of-pocket costs are driving consumers to make more deliberate choices about their care. Healthcare organizations must compete for attention and trust—and sports sponsorships offer a powerful way to do just that.

Why Sports Sponsorships Make Sense

For decades, beverage brands, fast-food chains and tech companies have capitalized on sports sponsorships. Now hospitals and insurance companies are catching up. The connection is natural: Sports embody physical health, wellness and peak performance—values that align seamlessly with healthcare.

In 2023, NewYork-Presbyterian became the first health system to put its logo on an MLB uniform, through a partnership with the New York Mets. Currently, there are healthcare organizations that are patch partners with the MLB, WNBA, NBA, MLS and National Women’s Soccer League. The NBA patch deals are estimated to be worth $7 million to $10 million annually, according to The Athletic. Health systems are using varying levels of partnership to promote initiatives like Breast Cancer Awareness Day and youth wellness programs, and to reinforce their commitment to community health. These partnerships go beyond logo placement; they engage audiences through meaningful activations that drive awareness, trust and even patient acquisition.

The Competitive Advantage

A well-executed sports sponsorship does more than boost brand recognition. It fosters community engagement, reinforces a commitment to wellness and differentiates your brand in a crowded market. As healthcare consumerism grows, strategic partnerships like these can enhance brand affinity and influence patient decisions.

Is your healthcare brand ready to step onto the field? Let’s talk about how the right sponsorship strategy can elevate your brand and create lasting impact.

Current COVID-19 trends indicate that we are on the other side of the peak in most places in the U.S. States have lifted stay-at-home orders, and we’re all starting to experience what our new normal looks like. This means that while critical care units and emergency departments are still treating COVID-19 patients every day, the numbers have decreased.Read full post...

Communicating that it is safe to get preventative care such as mammograms is essential to getting healthcare kick-started. With the advent of consumerism and the preponderance of healthcare information, we now have an “army” of informed healthcare consumers in our country. Where have they been during this pandemic? What happened to preventative medicine or annual medical procedures/treatments?Read full post...

It’s in the news every day. This pandemic is crippling some hospitals’ resources, while others are ready and waiting. But all hospitals have stopped elective procedures and are experiencing that impact on their revenue. Some have even been forced to furlough employees and staff. But what can we as marketers do to help?

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We’ve heard a lot about the importance of thanking essential workers during this pandemic. At AB&C, we’d like to make this a little easier for you. We have designed a series of posters/ads that we will customize for you to use as a print ad or as a poster displayed in your hospitals.

We will personalize any of the designs with your logo and color palette—and even resize them—at no cost to you. It’s the least we can do to thank you and your employees for all that they’re doing for your community and our country.
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Healthcare organizations have become pretty marketing savvy over the past several years. They tend to excel in having a strong brand promise, backed up by people-focused missions, visions and values. People entering the industry—especially those in direct clinical care roles—tend to be extremely mission-driven. They want to help and serve others. And that’s what they do every day.
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Healthcare SEM in the midst of a pandemic.

One thing that we can depend on is change. It’s a constant. But the massive change we’ve experienced over the past two weeks has been unsettling. Marketers are beginning to second-guess all their marketing strategies. Many are fielding nervous questions from executive teams and wondering if they should put a hold on their advertising budgets—or scrap their digital marketing completely.

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Every once in a while, a campaign comes along, and you know that it’s special. Maybe it’s a cause that you strongly believe in, a story that needs to be told or the creative is just really unique. I guess that’s how I felt from the very beginning about MedStar Georgetown Transplant Institute’s “Living Donor” campaign. For me, it was a combination of all three.

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Most health systems/hospitals have an affiliated and/or employed medical group. The exception is California, where the corporate practice of medicine prohibits employment of physicians by systems or hospitals.

Some medical groups are faculty models, while others are the result of groups that have merged under one umbrella, and can have primary care and specialty services as part of their cadre of physicians. What is true about all medical groups is that they are the front door to patients you want to attract to your system/hospital.

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Every healthcare marketing and communications (MarCom) leader has heard this question from a service line or physician leader. Somehow, a newsletter is going to put their program on the map, drive volume, attract new referring physicians and make them profitable. But isn’t this the same fantasy thinking that supports billboards as business drivers?

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You’ve heard about it. You’ve seen the results. Maybe you’ve even been part of a rebranding effort. But do you really understand what branding means?

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Pew Research Center says 59% of U.S. adults have looked online for health information in the past year.

We know you. You’re a hospital or a healthcare system looking to increase your brand awareness or service-line volumes in your noisy city. You’re one of many hospitals patients can choose from when they have an emergency, need a doctor or are looking for preventive programs. And you’ve probably noticed that when patients come in for appointments, they’ve done their research — they are informed.Read full post...

We’re proud to be partnering with our friends from MedStar Health and Scripps Health to present an Idea Workshop at SHSMD’s Annual Conference. Our workshop will tackle seven of the most common healthcare marketing challenges faced by our colleagues around the country. We identified these challenges through a brainstorming session with MedStar and Scripps, a poll of all AB&C healthcare partners and a survey of SHSMD Annual Conference attendees. Here’s a quick look at three of the challenges that we’ll be discussing at the conference.

Challenge #1: How do I choose what to market?

Plan, plan and plan some more. Your marketing plan is one element of your organization’s planning cycle, and you should take cues from the other elements: your strategic plan, facilities plan, operating plan, financial plan, business plan and communications plan. From those plans, identify the organization’s priority service lines. Then determine if they’re ready to be marketed:

• Do you have clinical strength in this area?
• Do you have positioning power?
• Is it profitable?
• Is there competitor vulnerability?
• Is there spin-off revenue?
• Is there a product champion?
• Can they deliver on patient experience?

If you plan properly and can answer these questions, you’ll have an easier time prioritizing your marketing efforts.Read full post...

Ecstatic, thrilled and maybe even a little overwhelmed — that pretty much sums up how people are feeling here at AB&C after learning that we won Best in Show, 11 gold, two silvers, one bronze and four merit award at the 30^th Annual Healthcare Advertising Awards. Those numbers alone are pretty impressive, but what’s even more meaningful is that we won more gold awards than any of the other 268 agencies that submitted and that we had 14 different clients win with us.

These numbers validate what we already know: The healthcare marketing industry is just as competitive as healthcare these days. More agencies are entering into this specialty area, but this year’s success shows that we are ahead of the curve. Our healthcare team is steeped in expertise and our partners benefit from the years (even decades — yikes!) that we have been working in the industry.Read full post...

How do marketers make patients “brand” loyal to their PCP?

The days of doctors making house calls may be making a full circle as the new focus for insurance companies is promoting the importance of the primary care physician. In a world where people change doctors like they change their socks, how do marketers make patients “brand” loyal to their PCP?Read full post...