Salem Health Uses Video to Get Big Media to Pay Attention; Vehicle Leads New Marketing Push

by Mark S. Gothberg

Here’s a dilemma that faces many organizations. The hospital is siz­able, but network television origi­nates in a city located about an hour’s drive away and outside the organization’s primary and second­ary service areas. Television stations have long-standing relationships with major healthcare organizations in their city and do not view the hospital as having medical experts or cutting-edge technology. Broadcast media are simply unwilling to travel to the hospital, viewing it as too far away, with little opportunity for meaningful and unique news stories that couldn’t be generated closer to home. Salem Health in Oregon faced this situation two years ago.

Salem Health is comprised of a 450-bed hospital located in Salem, the state capital, about 45 miles from Portland, and a critical access facility. “We are the only organization serv­ing our county, so we have a 75 per­cent market share for most service lines and thus very little marketing has been done over the years,” says Anne Theis, until recently vice president and chief marketing offi­cer. “But we recognized that the competitive environment was changing.” Video was chosen to lead a marketing push.

Salem Health’s significant video initiative, including its rationale and execution, was the subject of a presentation at a healthcare Internet conference held late last year. Pre­senting with Theis was Mark Glyzewski, multimedia journalism supervisor, who supplied updated information for this article.

The approach that Salem Health took was to package news as B-roll, interviews, and scripts so that Port­land television stations could pro­duce stories without traveling to Salem. In the absence of media interest, the organization could pro­duce its own news and publish it online. It would also take advantage of story opportunities when Portland media were in Salem for state government and other business coverage.

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