National Rural Health Resource Center

THE STORY

The National Rural Health Resource Center (the Center) provides technical assistance, information, tools, resources and marketing materials to rural hospitals and clinics, rural health networks, State Offices of Rural Health and other rural stakeholders. The Center serves multiple communities in eight states including Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee. Having over 35 years of experience in serving the communications needs of many rural healthcare providers, McDaniels Marketing was chosen by the Center to not only create an overarching creative platform, but to then develop a wide variety of customizable marketing materials promoting the importance of cancer screenings and early detection. In addition to a public facing campaign, the Center also needed vehicles to promote awareness of the campaign to rural healthcare organizations and educational pieces to inform these audiences how to implement the campaign.

THE CHALLENGE

Because the Center serves a wide variety of institutions across multiple states, the McDaniels team had create a campaign that was flexible enough to work for any type of organization in any market. Because media needs would differ between locations, the team also had to ensure that messaging would be effective in just about every medium from small digital ads to radio commercials to large posters. And even though only four types of cancers would be targeted for screenings (Breast, Colorectal, Lung and Prostate) some populations had higher incidences of certain cancers than others, thus further complicating this marketing matrix.

SOLUTION

With such a complex assignment, we believed simplicity would be our savior. Not only would the look have to be simple, but to resonate with so many different audiences, the campaign had to be built on a simple human truth. After kicking several different directions around, we landed on the notion that while regular cancer screenings are important to the person getting screened, they’re of even more value to the people we love. Yes, living is a pretty good reason to get checked for cancer. But the importance of living for others can be an even bigger driver for those afraid to get a screening.

Various print ad sizes were created for each cancer type and each were designed with a space for an organization’s logo to be dropped in.

Eight different social media graphics were created. One per cancer type in two different sizes, both 1200x1200 and 1200x628. Each had customizable areas for different organization’s logos.

Four different posters were created in an 11”x17” size. One per cancer type with a customizable area for organizations to drop in their own logos. LAUNCH After the campaign direction was chosen by a smaller group of stakeholders from within the Center and a select group of healthcare providers, the team had to quickly build a library of customizable assets that could be used by any organization served by the Center. The team then created a booklet explaining how the assets should be used and hosted an hour long webinar with over 200 healthcare professionals tuning in to learn how they could use this campaign to motivate residents in their communities to go in for cancer screenings and be there for the ones they love.