A regional health care organization with five busy facilities in the Baltimore, Md., area, LifeBridge Health wanted to share a year’s worth of experiences in a simple, visual format. Following the example of a popular “Good Morning America” feature, LifeBridge’s Laura Bogart produced “Three Simple Words,” a video that showcases a wide range of stakeholders—board members, donors, patients and others—displaying three-word messages that sum up the organization’s mission, culture and values.

Set to the tune of Plain White T’s song “1,2,3,4,” the video highlights a series of short but meaningful messages about the organization’s work, from “Nurses Encourage Me” on hand-printed signs to “We Broke Ground” on the back of a trio of hard hats, and “Proud To Lead” on a string of paper dolls (not to mention the message created by pasting M&Ms on poster board). A graphic artist helped design the various shapes, fonts and locations for each three-part message. To overcome participants’ shyness, producers directed activities for the groups: hugging, pointing to equipment, or jumping up and down. The result: a visual snapshot that’s powerful and moving without becoming self-congratulatory or sappy.

The video was premiered at LifeBridge’s annual board meeting and posted online.

The hard work of Laura Bogart and her team paid off in a first-place finish in the Annual Report (Online) category of the 2012 PR Daily Awards.

To see this award-winning video, please click here.

Influencer marketing is the most cost-effective form of marketing available. Identifying influencers, though, can be a tedious process that involves scouring databases and analyzing blogs and other content channels. Australian healthcare company Bupa Australia had a different idea—an idea that’s won it first place in the “Influencer Content Marketing” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

Bupa Australia has hosted the Bupa Blog Awards since 2013, recognizing the best blogs in Australia (and simultaneously building relationships with those bloggers who wield so much influence over their readers). For the 2015/16 competition, the organization activated a second phase of its awards: It launched a health care site called The Blue Room, letting Bupa Awards winners feed the site’s content pipeline. 

Bupa succeeded in preventing its competition from tapping into the talent of those influencers in the Australian health and wellness blogosphere while identifying new voices that could contribute to the content stream and reach new audiences. The idea of converting award winners into content producers was particularly brilliant.

The results included nearly 600 entries in the latest competition and 9,600 unique visitors to The Blue Room. The program also helped Bupa establish a “new breed of trusted spokespeople” who have contributed to both the content and dialogue in The Blue Room.

Congratulations to Renee Bugg, Philippa Crisp, Susan Martin, Matt Allison, Mandy Griffiths, Chanelle Shibata and Zoe Efron.

Far too many communication efforts assess their effectiveness by measuring outputs. Not Trelleborg’s marine systems operation, which ties “The Barometer Report,” its annual state-of-the-industry report, to genuine sales leads, a metric that is sure to maintain the communication function’s seat at the management table. It’s achieved another goal, too, taking first place in the “E-newsletter/Publication” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

“The Barometer Report” is based on an annual survey of the marine industry, delivering in-depth insights from the market, forecast areas for growth, an analysis of changes in regulations and a review of regional trends. With its fifth report in 2016, Trelleborg applied its focus to the challenges facing the marine industry, along with a look back at changes during the five years since its first publish report. 

The report itself employs best practices for design of an online publication, including big, bold charts and graphs, compelling imagery, key information reinforced with callouts, and terse, readable narrative copy. But the results are what matters: Trelleborg can track every dollar of its marketing spend, and the figures are impressive. Trelleborg can add to the output metrics of a 17.2 percent open rate for email notifications of the report’s availability and a 44 percent conversion rate. 

“Meet the Press” is a weekly blog series from CNW that profiles Canadian journalists. It’s part of an effort to draw more viewers to CNW’s blog, and it’s worked—while also taking first place in the “Best Series” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

The journalists selected for profiling meet specific criteria based on social influence, beat coverage, and current events. CNW used social media to draw more attention to its posts, which have featured journalists from Canada’s key media outlets, including The Toronto Star, Canadian Press, The Globe and Mail, Huffington Post Canada and VICE Canada. 

Getting to know reporters is, of course, an important part of media relations, and analytics from the blog suggest the series did exactly what it was designed to do: It drove a 300+ percent increase in web traffic—far above the original goal of 50 percent. “Meet the Press” accounted for 15 percent of all CNW’s web traffic and 70 percent of post views that were part of any series. 

CNW didn’t let it go at blog views, though. It kept the sales team updated about posts they could use in pitching new business. Further, CNW has entered into a syndication agreement, with “Meet the Press” posts appearing monthly on a French-language journalism site. 

The consistency of the profiles still gave the blog’s writers room to personalize the posts based on individual journalists’ traits and characteristics. 

Congratulations to Laurie Smith, Nadine Tousignant, Melissa Meyer, Amanda Laird and Amy-Louise Tracey. 

The World Wide Web has changed the nature of articles, and Porter Novelli Radar demonstrated that with its proprietary report on both traditional and social media coverage of a system outage that grounded Delta Air Lines flights on August 8, 2016. The coverage has earned Porter Novelli Radar first place for best article in PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards.

Porter Novelli Radar is a reputation management and issues monitoring service, part of the Porter Novelli PR organization. While Delta Air Lines was not a client, the team saw an opportunity to show off its media monitoring and analysis capabilities by producing a report on the incident. 

Producing the report began with reviewing more than 13,000 articles, 30,000 broadcast segments and nearly 150,000 tweets in order to identify the key trends emerging from the coverage and conversation. The report—available to Porter Novelli Radar clients—was presented in a modern web design and featured collections of broadcast reports presented in video format. 

The narrative addressed the long-term impact on Delta’s reputation as well as the context of a larger, industry-wide problem. The social media analysis focused on passenger criticism of the airline, rumors circulating about the cause of the outage and the tendency of some passengers to remain positive during their ordeal. Samples of tweets in each category were presented carousel-style. 

For an outstanding report, congratulations to Kaylea Notarthomas, Chrystine Fox, and Emily Watson.

How TurboTax’s blog engaged people to the extent that they opted to do business with the organization is a case study in content marketing. It’s also the winner in the “Best Blog” category of PR Daily’s 2016 Content Marketing Awards

The content isn’t the dry material readers might expect from a tax preparation organization. Instead, posts dealt with the taxes celebrities pay for their Oscar swag bags, whether you can claim a girlfriend or boyfriend as a deduction, tax benefits for military families and other equally compelling topics. 

The content wasn’t produced solely by the TurboTax social media staff. Instead, the organization recruited tax experts, financial writers and influencers to craft content. The blog also employed great visual content.tur

The team used an editorial calendar to ensure content was consistently covering the right topics at the right time. Content was optimized for search, ensuring more people would discover it. 

In addition to a 32 percent increase in page views, the blog drove real business, recording a 4 percent increase in customers clicking through from the blog to register to file taxes through the TurboTax system.

Kudos to Angie Robert and Lisa Greene-Lewis for their great work.

Twenty years ago, Geonetric got its start with two employees creating the prototype of a content management system for a large health care system. Now it’s won first place in the “Agency of the Year” category of Ragan’s 2018 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

Realizing other health care organizations could use the same system, the two partners built out the software as VitalSite, leading the company to shift its focus from multiple industries to health care only. Over time the agency’s activities grew beyond updating and marketing a CMS. Today, the digital agency works with national health systems to create content focused on service lines that engage consumers via mobile-optimized experiences. 

Geonetric is now involved in more than 500 websites—impressive growth from its first single Iowa-based customer (who continues to use the agency’s services 20 years later). Geonetric works with 72 health care clients around the United States. The agency’s clients are awarded every year for online excellence powered by Geonetric’s software (though they can also work with other CMS platforms, including WordPress and Drupal) and content. 

The patient comes first, according to Geonetric. “We help ensure the patient has a seat at the decision table; from usability testing to mobile user research to accessibility reviews, we help clients put the site visitor first in every aspect of their site including navigation, design and content.” 

So well-known has the team become that its staff speaks routinely at conferences like the Healthcare Marketing and Physician Strategies Summit and the Healthcare Internet Conference. Its in-house subject matter experts routinely byline articles in key industry publications. As if its work for clients isn’t enough, the agency is also regularly awarded “best place to work” honors, among other forms of recognition. 

Congratulations to the team at Geonetric.

The Cura Foundation’s biannual Unite to Cure conference has managed to stand out alongside the World Economic Forum and SXSW based in part on its venue—the Vatican (in collaboration with the Pontifical Council for Culture)—and in part on its 70-plus speakers and panel participants, a who’s who of thought leaders from the new medical field of cell therapies and regenerative medicine. The conference is the first-place winner in the “Campaign of the Year” category of Ragan’s 2018 Health Care Marketing and PR Awards.

Working with Allison+Partners, the Foundation added a new element to its 2018 conference to draw more attention to the topic: An interview room was established where speakers exiting the main state would sit for an interview with Meredith Veira from PBS or Dr. Max Gomez from WCBS. 

The interviews were edited on the spot and pushed out through various social platforms within minutes, letting A+P tell compelling stories within minutes of the conclusion of the speaker’s presentation or roundtable. All this was achieved without running afoul of the Vatican Press Office’s stringent production protocols. 

A+P also staged a “consumer contest” in social media, crowdsourcing a family to travel to the Vatican and participate in the conference while building awareness and interest in the event. 

The conference resulted in more than 3,000 stories, reaching more than 2.5 billion people. Appearances by such celebrities as singer Katy Perry and actor Orlando Bloom helped spike views, along with a streaming service announcement from singer Peter Gabriel, and golfer Jack Nicklaus explaining his own stem cell therapy. Media coverage was strong, and guest VIP social media generated nearly 500 million engagements; the videos were viewed more than 1 million times. 

Congratulations to the team of Harry Ronaldson, Stephanie Libous, Emma Poleszuk, Calvin Luu, Micah Baro, Jeremy Rosenberg, Linda Burns, Lucy Arnold, Margaret Familetti, Mark DeRutte and Todd Aydelotte.

NewYork-Presbyterian launched HEALTH MATTERS, a brand journalism/content marketing hub, in March 2017 to showcase stories dealing with science, care and wellness that occur daily. It’s now the winner in the “Website Launch or Relaunch” category of Ragan’s 2018 Health Care Marketing and PR Awards

The site’s goal was simple: Improve brand recognition and national reputation. Other goals were more challenging. Editorial objectives included attracting a broad patient and influencer community, developing a loyal employee following and establishing a solid mix of articles, infographics, animations and videos. 

Specific goals were established for design as well, including an accessible look and feel, along with built-in flexibility to accommodate new kinds of content that were likely to emerge in the future. 

NYP partnered with PACE Communications to help kick the effort into high gear. The site launch adhered to an activation plan that ensured news coverage would attract members of the multiple audiences listed for the site, including consumers, thought leaders, physicians, journalists and government. 

Categories make it easy to find content that interests you, including “Amazing Things, “It Happened Here,” “Inside NYP” and “Under the Microscope.” 

The site has attracted 610,000+ visits from more than 249,000 unique users, along with almost 4,800 click-thrus to NYP.org. 

Congratulations to Karen Sodomick, Sharon Cotliar-Zweifach, Dan Weiman, Jordan Reed, Takla Boujaoude, Jessica Mikulski, Jacki Murray, Dominique Grignetti, Maxine Mitchell, Mahlori Isaacs, Lauren Browdy, Carene John, Connor Hadley, Laura Swalm, Emily Driscoll, Anna Plesset, Teresa Baez, Eve Heyn, Courtney Allison, Alexandra Simpson, Levi Fishman, Emily Berkowitz and Meghan Moog.

“Amazing Things: Jenna Skeete,” NewYork-Presbyterian’s tale of a little girl born with half a heart whose life was saved by a heart transplant when she was four years old, is the first-place winner in the “Video” category of Ragan’s 2018 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

A production crew of three people followed Jenna and her mother as they went through their annual ritual to honor the donor whose heart gave Jenna a new chance at life. Although the video recounts the numerous surgeries that Jenna endured before her transplant—educating viewers about the challenges of organ transplants—it is the intimate and personal approach to the story that elevates the video. 

It captures the sweetness of the moments between Jenna and her mother at the hospital, and also as they go through what are clearly sincere and heartfelt steps to remember the anonymous, unknown child whose tragic death—and the selfless decision by the child’s parents to donate organs—made the transplant possible. 

The video has been viewed 106,000 times, producing 190,000 impressions and 1,000 engagements. 

Congratulations to the team of Emily Driscoll, Laura Swalm, Jordan Reed and Sharon Cotilar. 

HAP, a Michigan-based nonprofit health plan, publishes a print magazine and also distributes content through a blog and multiple other channels. All these platforms were ideal for an infographic designed to heighten awareness of the connection between high blood pressure and strokes. The resulting infographic has earned HAP first place in the “Design” category of Ragan’s 2018 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

To draw readers in, MXM—a part of Accenture Interactive, delivering content to clients for integrated marketing—used U.S. stroke statistics, including new guidelines that lower the definition of high blood pressure and place many more people in the high blood pressure category than before, along with the variety of risk factors for strokes (including information on face drooping, arm weakness, speech difficulty, and “Time to Call 911 (FAST)” guidelines. 

The small, distinct sections of the infographic made the subject matter—which could be daunting and off-putting—more approachable; it delivers a lot of information and data in easily consumable nuggets. The design took advantage of the HAP Balanced Living blog’s color palette to be consistent with other assets published through the same channels. 

Each segment of the infographic could conceivably be extracted for use in other presentation formats. Too many infographics are merely jumbles of images, numbers and text; too few are as well conceived and executed as this one. 

Congratulations to the teams at HAP and MXM – a part of Accenture Interactive: DeAndre Lipscomb, Erika Thrubis, David Bross, Lori Bajrovic, Katie Groves, Kelsey Allan, Rebecca Burdick, Daniel Kauten, Morgan Mendieta, Mark Heggen, Missy Bergwall, Michelle Rubin, Emily Shay, Julie Somberg and Kristen Campbell.

See the infographic at hap.org/stroke.

When you think of the type of magazine you would pick up and read, one dedicated to a genetic disorder probably doesn’t leap to mind. But Down Syndrome World™, a magazine published with the Global Down Syndrome Foundation (Global), hits all the right notes. It’s the winner in the “Print Publication” category of Ragan’s 2018 Health Care and PR Marketing Awards.

Delivered quarterly to members of Global, the magazine features information about research and medical advancements, along with educational details about the organization’s advocacy and outreach. However, it’s the features that showcase the lives of advocates, leaders, families, and people with Down syndrome that grab your attention when thumbing through the publication. 

Global was established in 2009, and the award-winning magazine started in 2014. The current issues have looked at Iceland’s prenatal testing practices, a topic about eugenics that most people remain unaware of. The article focuses on the inaccurate and biased medical information available about people with Down syndrome in Iceland, a country with one of the smallest populations of people with Down syndrome in the world. 

At times, Down Syndrome WorldTM will remind you of People magazine ¬– with its bright photo montages of celebrities who are advocating for people with Down syndrome.  At other times, it will make you think of a high-end, long-form content publication (think Wired or Atlantic). Other parts of the publication are more in line with news magazines. 

The combined effect, though, uplifts the reader and produces true appreciation for the entire Down syndrome community through inspiration and enlightenment.  If more people got this beautiful print publication, it would undoubtedly find its way onto coffee tables where even more readers could benefit from its heartening messages and moving stories. Topped off with solid writing and poignant photography, Down Syndrome WorldTM is a first-rate example of the continued power of print.

Congratulations to President & CEO Michelle Sie Whitten and her staff at Global, and the wonderful team at True North – Emily Main, Stephanie Wheeler and Allison Bryan on this award.

It’s easy for organizations to talk about the importance of the customer. It’s another to actually put the customer at the center of the conversation. To walk that talk, HealthSparq—which partners with health plans to offer their members intuitive provider search and cost-estimating tools—convenes an annual conference and hosts a content hub that stand out from all the others in the health care industry. Dubbed “What’s The Fix,” the conference has won first place in the “Patient-Focused Content” category of Ragan’s 2018 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards. 

The conference is designed “to have regular people with amazing stories teach the health care industry, rather than highlighting the health care executives and industry insiders that dominate most health care events,” according to HealthSparq. This year’s free event, held in partnership with the Design Institute for Health at Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin, brought 17 speaker stories to the industry, viewed by both in-person attendees and those participating online.

Media outreach resulted in amplifying those stories through coverage in multiple outlets. The carefully cultivated social community also spread the word. The 2018 conference brought the total number of stories on the conference blog to more than 50. 

Other statistics from the conference are equally impressive: Nearly 1,000 participants online or in person from 15 countries and almost every U.S. state, 77.3 million impressions on the hashtag #WTFix (up 223 percent from 2017) and 773 Twitter users who tweeted continuously throughout the conference. A post-event survey produced equally impressive results, with every respondent indicating they would participate again.

Congratulations for a successful conference to Anna Greene, Burt Rosen, Heather Burton, Erin Sellnow, Alison Julander and Wen Chiu.

It’s telling that Compass Professional Health Services calls its mobile app a “concierge.” It is there whenever an employee needs simplified and personalized information and resources related to his or her employer’s health care coverage. Its success has earned Compass first place in the “App” category of Ragan’s 2018 Healthcare PR and Marketing Awards.

Compass is a health care IT services company; the Health Pro Cloud app is available to employers who want to deliver a better health care experience to their employees. Most organizations these days still want employees to use a responsive website or an insurer’s mediocre app, but employees undoubtedly would be more engaged with (and appreciative of) their benefits if they had access to a personalized resource like this, designed from scratch to deliver a mobile experience. 

The app has brains, too; it delivers answers users may not have known they were looking for. An employee searching for an orthopedic surgeon, for example, will also learn the average cost for arthroscopic knee surgery in his or her area. 

The app’s interface was developed based on more than 1 million health care interactions and more than 10,000 hours of user experience testing and design. In its first year, the app was registered more than 15,000 times, earning the No. 341 spot in the App Store’s medical category.

Congratulations to Preston Williams, Cliff Sentell, Peter Hegi and Derrick Anene.

Digital annual reports are nothing new, nor are digital-only annual reports. For Access Community Health Network, though, going all-digital for its annual report was a first. The result has earned it first place in the “Digital Publication” category of Ragan’s 2018 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards

Serving underserved communities, Access didn’t have the resources some organizations can pump into online media. What they lacked in funds, though, the team of communicators made up in passion and expertise. The report uses popular and effective web scrolling techniques to draw readers to well-written articles, useful infographics, colorful images and supporting videos that—along with the data one expects to find in an annual report—come together to paint a compelling picture of Access and its operations during the last year.

The photography is a special element of the report, much of it shot in the neighborhood where Access’ patients live. Marketing the annual report—which was nine months in the making—took advantage of a hybrid of channels that targeted key stakeholders over a defined time period. 

The effort included a printed “calling card” featuring the signature opening video from the online report, driving a number of funders and community partners, government officials and other key civic leaders to review the report. In addition to all the winning characteristics of the report, it’s seamless and clean, and effectively draws readers to each section.

Congratulations to the team of Cristina Sotelino, Sheila Biggs, Elaine Hegwood Bowen, Evy Lui, Steve Rigby and Paul Audia.