Johns Hopkins Medicine opens its new clinical buildings in a big way

Johns Hopkins Medicine wanted to share some big news. It opened its new clinical buildings, the Sheikh Zayed Tower and The Charlotte R. Bloomberg Children’s Center, in 2012. These two new facilities would span five acres, and feature 560 private patient rooms and 33 operating rooms, plus two new emergency departments.

But how would everyone learn about it? Johns Hopkins Medicine started a massive PR effort with multimedia advertising, online marketing, a website, and events. For that, we give it the Grand Prize for Campaign of the Year (Large Budget) in Ragan’s 2013 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

First, Johns Hopkins pitched reporters what they wanted to cover. The team pitched reporters who focused on medical news, the arts, architecture, and food. It sent off invitations for its grand opening and a media kit for reporters.

For the community, it created a new website, ExploreHopkinsHospital.com. This featured an online video tour, which garnered more than 10,000 views. It also developed a Facebook advertising campaign and saw a 20 percent increase of likes during the campaign.

More than 350,000 households in the coverage area were mailed information about the new buildings and what they could expect. In addition, 20,000 referring physicians were mailed information about how to refer patients to the new buildings, and more than 100 physicians attended an event that was geared for them.

More than 1,000 people attended the grand opening. About 30 print and broadcast reporters and photographers covered the event before and after, too.

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