Johns
Hopkins Medicine yesterday launched a six-month
multimedia advertising and public relations campaign in New
York. Designed to present the historic and celebrated
institution as distinctively poised to make many of the
next great advances in medical science and practice, and to
bring them rapidly to patients, the campaign also will be
seen in Baltimore, starting in January.
Created in conjunction with Eisner Communications and
aimed substantially at opinion leaders, ads in New York
will run on CBS's Face The Nation, CBS News'
Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood and NBC's Meet
the Press. The campaign also will be a sponsor of PBS
evening programming and run ads in Forbes and The
New York Times Magazine.
"This campaign is an admittedly unusual endeavor for
us, but these are unusual times," says Edward D. Miller,
dean and CEO of Johns Hopkins Medicine. "There is so much
'noise' in the marketplace about research and clinical
advances that what's distinctive about Hopkins is often
unclear or unrecognized. This effort, at a special moment
in time, is a way to communicate directly with patients who
need us and with those who want to help us to bring
advances already in the pipeline to patients more
quickly."
The core of the campaign comprises television and
magazine ads asking readers and viewers to imagine the
life-enhancing possibilities of research at Johns Hopkins
and to find out more about its search for knowledge,
rebuilding plans, clinical services and philanthropic
opportunities.
In one TV ad, black and white images of Lou Gehrig,
Lucille Ball, Ingrid Bergman, Winston Churchill, Alexander
Graham Bell and Leonard Bernstein appear seamlessly in
contemporary color settings. A narrator asks, "What if Lou
Gehrig had played just a few more seasons? How much longer
could we cheer? What if Louis Armstrong never suffered a
heart attack? How much more could we dance? We're about to
find out," the narrator concludes. "At Johns Hopkins,
doctors and scientists are working together to discover
bold new cures that will change medicine forever. Be a part
of the transformation. Visit
www.johnshopkins.org." The word "imagine" appears as a
tagline, along with the Web site URL.
In addition to print and television advertising, the
campaign will integrate the Web site, public relations
opportunities, a film and special events in New York.
Content is aligned with JHM's focus on heart disease,
cancer, neurologic disease and pediatrics, as well as with
plans to replace aging buildings on its 54-acre campus in
East Baltimore.
"Practicing modern, safe medicine and rapidly
translating the explosion of research under way at Hopkins
into benefits for patients isn't about building Taj
Mahals," Miller says. "It's about having state-of-the-art
means of preventing infections and ensuring patient
privacy. It's about having clinical facilities flexible
enough to accommodate changes in delivering care as we move
discoveries to the bedside, the operating rooms and
procedure rooms. It's about moving discoveries into the
marketplace and clinics. We've got the doctors, we've got
the research, we've got the programs that are ready to
transform medicine."
Miller points out that faculty of The Johns Hopkins
University School of Medicine for more than a decade have
reaped more National Institutes of Health grants than any
other academic medical center, and The Johns Hopkins
Hospital has been at the top of U.S. News & World Report's
"Best Hospitals" rankings for 14 years in a row. Nobel
laureates and Lasker Award winners have dotted Johns
Hopkins' research landscape for decades.
"We have one of the best-known names in medicine for
good reason," notes Ronald R. Peterson, president of The
Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System. "We deliver
outstanding care."
According to Joseph Bruce, executive vice president at
Eisner, "Hopkins is among many fine institutions doing all
they can to give people longer, healthier, more productive
lives and to train the next generation of physicians and
scientists who can take advantage of the genetic medicine
and other innovations now being created. What's
distinctively different at Hopkins is the faculty's
uncommon passion for tapping each other's expertise to move
knowledge forward faster, out of the lab and to the
bedside. Instead of relying solely on a 'star' system, the
legacy is a culture of collaboration. That's what makes
Hopkins so uniquely poised to realize the full potential of
the new age of discovery. And that's what this effort is
all about."
Producer Marilyn Vanderpool, who is working on a brief
film to be shown at the campaign's events, says, "I've
never interviewed so many physicians and scientists who
became emotional as they explained their determination to
help their patients through their research."
In explaining one reason the idea for this ad campaign
took hold, Peterson says, "It's a curious thing. Securing
money for bricks and mortar is a challenge for medical
centers across the nation. Most gifts are for people and
programs." Large donations, in fact, often depend on the
ready availability of modern facilities. "But most people
don't want to give money for the aging buildings we must
replace," Peterson says. "And that's part of what we hope
this campaign will help people understand."
Construction to replace infrastructure on the medical
campus has already begun, and the design process is under
way for a new children's and women's hospital and a
cardiovascular/critical care tower. A 10-year master plan
calls for $1.2 billion in new construction.
Both Miller and Peterson say they recognize that
advertising beyond Baltimore is likely to raise a few
eyebrows along with the awareness. "This is something new
for us," Miller says, "but we're doing it because we think
we have an obligation to make people aware of what's at
stake. We hope that once they know, they'll respond."
JHM, comprising The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health
System and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine,
has benefited from numerous large donations for "bricks and
mortar" in its 115-year combined history. Among them are
$20 million from the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation
and $10 million each from the Bunting Family and the Jacob
and Hilda Blaustein Foundation. When he died in 1873, Johns
Hopkins, a successful merchant and banker, left the bulk of
his wealth — $7 million — to establish both the
university and hospital that bear his name. The gift was at
the time the largest of its kind. Nearly 130 years later,
Sidney Kimmel's 2001 gift of $150 million to name the
eponymous Comprehensive Cancer Center became the largest
single gift to JHM.
Eisner Communications, a full-service, integrated
communications agency headquartered in Baltimore, ranks
among the top 10 independent agencies in the country today.
The firm has 150 employees, and its year-end 2003 billings
were $297 million. Now in its 65th year, the firm
specializes in the creation and promotion of brand identity
through integrated multichannel communications. Clients, in
addition to JHM, include the Nature Conservancy, US
Airways, Voice of America, CSX Corp. and the Washington,
D.C., Convention and Tourism Corp.
To visit the Imagine campaign Web site, go to
www.johnshopkins.org. To learn more about Johns
Hopkins' history and its contributions to medical science,
visit JHM's Web site at
www.hopkinsmedicine.org.