Marketing that Made a Difference

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.

Read full post...

May 11, 2018

AB&C Earns 13 Honors at the 35th Annual Healthcare Advertising Awards

Agency Takes Home Six Golds and Two Silvers at Awards Show Honoring Creative Excellence in Healthcare Marketing.

WILMINGTON, Del. (May 11, 2018) —Aloysius Butler & Clark (AB&C), one of the region’s largest full-service marketing communications agencies, was recognized by Healthcare Marketing Report with six golds, two silvers and five merit awards presented during its annual 2018 Healthcare Advertising Awards. Now in its 35th year, the national competition is known as the oldest, largest and most widely respected healthcare advertising awards program. This year, AB&C received 13 recognitions for having the most outstanding work from a pool of 4,000 submissions. Collectively, the agency’s winning submissions demonstrate a diversity of strategic and creative executions.

Read full post...

What Makes a Successful CMO?

In my experience as a hospital chief marketing officer (CMO) and in working at AB&C with healthcare CMOs, I’ve found a number of attributes that serve a person well in this role. On Innovation Enterprise, which provides leading-edge ideas and information on a variety of key business channels, Rose Johnstone identifies a number of these attributes from the business world that apply to the healthcare industry.

Read full post...

Dashboards: If You Can Move It, You Can Measure It

Healthcare organizations have always struggled with measuring return on marketing investment (ROMI), mostly because of multiple systems of data collection that don’t speak to one another. But with the advent of new “tools,” that challenge is getting easier — if you have the building blocks in place.

Read full post...

Why Brand Perception Matters — and How Customer Reviews Can Influence It

We know a few things to be true about popular brands. They exist. They tend to offer a product or service. They have a physical space or online presence. They have identifiable brand attributes. And they are vetted over time through consumer experiences and perception.

Based on these truths, it seems safe to assume that in order for you to establish credibility and trust with your target audience, customers must have some exposure or real-world experience with your brand, right? Well, think again.

Read full post...

Marketing Medical Groups: Your Front Door for Patients

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.

Read full post...

March 9, 2018

AB&C Wins 10 ADDY Awards

Agency Takes Home Three Golds and Seven Silvers at Awards Show Honoring Creative Excellence in Advertising

PHILADELPHIA, PA (March 9, 2018) — Aloysius Butler & Clark (AB&C) was recently honored with 10 industry awards, including three golds and seven silvers, at the 2018 Philadelphia American Advertising Federation (AAF) Awards, also known as the ADDYs. The ADDYs, which honor excellence in advertising, recognized AB&C for work the agency created on behalf of two of their clients: Delaware Office of Highway Safety and Delaware Division of Public Health.

Read full post...

How to Socialize Your Brand

If you followed a systematic approach to build a new brand (or refreshed an existing one), you started with discovery research. You then developed a brand mantra to inform how your brand would be articulated to internal audiences and the outside world. Finally, you created or refined the outward expressions, such as the name, mark and colors.

All of this hard work was done in preparation to share your brand with stakeholders and customers. This is when the rubber hits the road. It’s important to invest as much time, and as many resources, into properly socializing and managing your brand as it is to develop, create and refine it.

Read full post...

The Writing Workshop: Basics of Punctuation

In professional communications of any kind, proper punctuation is essential. But this is especially true for marketing communications, where the copy helps define a brand. Grammar and punctuation mistakes can result in a loss of credibility—for both the agency and its clients. Here are a few tips for avoiding common mistakes.

Read full post...

The Essence of a Brand Mantra

As branding experts, we have developed our own vocabulary for what we do and how we help organizations define and present themselves to consumers. We use terminology like “brand architecture,” “platform,” “positioning,” “promise,” “proof point,” “personality,” “identity” and “tag line” to describe how we create, communicate and control the attributes of a brand. An important but often overlooked step in the process of building or revitalizing a brand is the development of a brand mantra.

Read full post...

Does My Hospital Need a Newsletter?

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?

Read full post...

February 13, 2018

Key Takeaways for Women in Advertising

By Maria Antonelli, Andrea Ferrino, Elizabeth Gluck, Jennifer Harris, Lauren Bentley, Amanda Kalbrosky and Elizabeth Howarth

Earlier this month, the Philly Ad Club hosted its annual Women in Advertising event, where a panel of women in advertising and communications imparted their knowledge to a room of marketers (men and women). The panelists—each with a different personality and job description—shared how they successfully handled adversity throughout their careers and overcame self-doubt to achieve their goals.

Read full post...

February 9, 2018

Philly Ad Firm AB&C Shares the “Spoils” of Super Bowl Wager with Boston-Based Small Army in The Philadelphia Inquirer

Page-stopping Philly pride ad featuring an underdog Billy Penn “lovingly made by AB&C and begrudgingly paid for by Small Army.”

PHILADELPHIA, PA (February 9, 2018)—They say, “to the victor go the spoils.” But one Super Bowl bet victor, Philadelphia’s Aloysius Butler & Clark (AB&C), looks forward to sharing those benefits with the entire Delaware Valley community by running a dynamic ad in the February 9 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The ad—which celebrates the Eagles victory and Philly pride—is the outcome of a Super Bowl bet the Philly agency made with the Boston-based agency, Small Army. As the winning Super Bowl city, AB&C earned the right to create the full-page black-and-white ad which is being paid for by Small Army. In the ad, AB&C embraced the Eagle’s ability to silence “non-believers” with what very well may be the first and only depiction of the iconic William Penn statue in full underdog mode.

Read full post...

February 6, 2018

AB&C Helps Client Win First Place at APTA 2018 Annual AdWheel Awards

WILMINGTON, Del. (February 6, 2018) — Aloysius Butler & Clark (AB&C), one of the region’s largest full-service marketing communications agencies, helped their client, Delaware Transit Corporation – DART, earn first place for “Best Marketing and Communications to Increase Ridership or Sales – Comprehensive Campaign” at the American Public Transportation Association’s (APTA) 2018 AdWheel Awards for their innovative DART Beach Bus campaign.

Read full post...

2018 Social Media Shake-Up

A new year is upon us, and I, for one, am more excited than ever because 2018 seems to finally be the year that social media has a seat at the big kids’ table. Social is here to stay, so brands need to make sure they’re doing everything they can to kill it with their social strategy. Whether you are just getting a social team started or you’ve been at it for years, here are a few things you can do now to mix up your mindset.

Read full post...