The market for cancer services in NYC is very competitive. Brands like Memorial Sloan-Kettering and New York-Presbyterian are more powerful and well-known than St. Vincent’s Comprehensive Cancer Center (SVCCC), a high-quality outpatient cancer center, tucked away in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood. We had to create a distinct voice for this challenger brand, increase consumer awareness and grow market share – all on a limited budget.
Discovery sessions, physician interviews, competitive analysis and comprehensive marketing planning led us to the creation of a new multimedia branding campaign highlighting breast, prostate and lung cancer services. Faced with a limited budget, we decided to pinpoint our strategy. We would own SVCCC’s downtown market and prevent the neighborhood population from migrating out to the uptown hospitals. By focusing the geographic target down to the square block, we were able to increase frequency, make a lasting impression and grow market share.
Since Memorial Sloan Kettering and New York-Presbyterian had a reputation of being large and impersonal, the images we created for SVCCC were distinctly downtown Manhattan and reflected the personality of the community. The media we chose included customized building wraps and transit posters at targeted stations throughout NYC. We also completely revamped their website to make it more user-friendly and reflect the soul of the campaign.
The new image generated fantastic results. Immediately, calls to SVCCC for Breast Imaging increased by 163% and by 19% overall. Website visits increased 82% and more than 68% of patients listed the marketing effort as their referral source.