Research-based Campaign Helps New Yorkers Find Answers To Home Health Care Challenges Before They Occur

NEW YORK (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) August 8, 2008 -- First graph, first sentence of release should read: The Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY), the nation’s largest not-for-profit home health care organization, this week launched a new multi-media advertising campaign that will help redefine how the home health care category speaks to patients and their families (sted xxx today launched xxx).

We want people to understand how important it is for them to think about home health care the same way they think about choosing a doctor or a hospital

But we also want to provide them with the critical information necessary to make a good decision about a home health care provider for themselves and their loved ones.

Our research demonstrated what many in the industry already suspected anecdotally, that most people don't understand the home health care category and can't differentiate brands

The challenge for us was to get consumers to understand that they actually had a choice, and tell them why VNSNY was the right choice to make

Not surprisingly, this is a category where the advertising has been very quiet and traditional

We wanted to make it more real-world, more immediate, to get people thinking about the issues.

The corrected release reads:

VISITING NURSE SERVICE OF NEW YORK BREAKS WITH HOME HEALTH CARE ADVERTISING TRADITIONS

Research-based Campaign Helps New Yorkers Find Answers To Home Health Care Challenges Before They Occur

The Visiting Nurse Service of New York (VNSNY), the nation’s largest not-for-profit home health care organization, this week launched a new multi-media advertising campaign that will help redefine how the home health care category speaks to patients and their families. This new campaign addresses the most important question facing caregivers and patients: “Now What?”

The goal of the new advertising, which will cascade across print, broadcast, outdoor and online channels, is to empower New Yorkers so they can begin to make informed choices about the type of care they or their loved ones need. The “Now What?” campaign represents the first time that home health care advertising addresses people before the time of critical decision making, educating them on available resources. Traditionally, advertising in this category tells an “after the fact” story.

Key to the campaign is a new web tool featured in all ads that will guide consumers through a short series of questions to help them quickly begin to get answers to their particular “Now What” challenge, providing practical home health care information and real solutions to the issues and problems facing baby boomers and their parents today and tomorrow. VNSNY.ORG/ANSWERS will guide consumers to programs and services that will address their individual home health care needs from pre-natal care to bereavement services.

The campaign will underscore an evolving shift in home health care from a health care referral system to a consumer choice system. The new advertising will deliver on the growing consumer demand for health care in the real world. This insight led to the development of VNSNY’s new tagline -“The Right Care Now” – highlighting VNSNY’s unmatched ability to deliver patient care solutions where patients need it, when they need it and how they need it.

To help develop this new campaign and spearhead other broad initiatives that will help to raise awareness of its broad range of services, VNSNY hired Michael Bernstein, a seasoned marketing professional, in late 2006, as its first Chief Marketing Officer. Mr. Bernstein said that the decision to employ a new advertising strategy was driven largely by the growing number of patients and caregivers who want to be more actively involved in home healthcare decisions. He believes that the underlying drivers of this shift are Americans’ desire to remain independent, spend less time in institutional settings and more time at home, coupled with the uncertainty related to their own future health care costs and needs.

“We want people to understand how important it is for them to think about home health care the same way they think about choosing a doctor or a hospital,” said Bernstein. “But we also want to provide them with the critical information necessary to make a good decision about a home health care provider for themselves and their loved ones.”

Almost a year in development, the “Now What” campaign benefited from extensive consumer research focused on identifying the key questions and formidable challenges that consumers face before and during the time they actually need to think about home health care.

“Our research demonstrated what many in the industry already suspected anecdotally, that most people don’t understand the home health care category and can’t differentiate brands,” said Bernstein.

“The challenge for us was to get consumers to understand that they actually had a choice, and tell them why VNSNY was the right choice to make,” explained Matt Seiden, CEO of Seiden Advertising, the agency behind the campaign.

“Not surprisingly, this is a category where the advertising has been very quiet and traditional,” adds Bernstein. “We wanted to make it more real-world, more immediate, to get people thinking about the issues.”

The integrated campaign is a multi-year effort that includes a mix of print, radio, television, outdoor and online messages. The new web tool and online advertising campaign was handled by Digital Pulp, a New York-based online marketing and web development firm. The $4 million campaign launch budget will blanket the seven counties in New York where VNSNY provides patient services, including the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester and Nassau counties. This represents a tremendous investment in reaching local patients and caregivers, which if extrapolated nationally, would be equivalent to an advertising spend in the same time period of more than $35 million.

About VNSNY (www.vnsny.org)

VNSNY is the largest not-for-profit home health care organization in the nation. In 2007, the organization provided 2,248,000 professional home visits to more than 131, 600 patients from pre-natal to end-of-life. Licensed by the New York State Department of Health, VNSNY is fully accredited by the Community Health Accreditation Program (CHAP) of the National League for Nursing. The agency was established in 1893 by Lillian D. Wald, the founder of public health nursing in the United States. For more information on VNSNY, please call 800-675-0391 or visit www.vnsny.org.

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