Sinai Health was created in 2015, consisting of Mount Sinai Hospital, Bridgepoint Active Healthcare, the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and its system partner Circle of Care.

But over the last five years, it hasn’t spoken about its mission or work in the market, so it has launched its first public campaign to create more awareness for what its integrated health system does.

It’s looking to generate awareness through two broadcast spots and four mini documentaries that emphasize the power of care and research. The first spot focuses on the front lines, showing doctors, nurses and even loved ones providing treatment to patients like a newborn in an incubator and an aquatic therapist helping a woman regain strength. The second spot puts the focus on research, showing medical experts looking for answers to the most challenging question faced today. Both spots were created by Huge.

According to Louis de Melo, CEO of Sinai Health Foundation, the network was planning to launch this “Champions of Care” campaign in April, but paused, as the timing didn’t feel right due to the onset of the pandemic. But with the thousands of COVID-19 cases its “champions of care” have treated in recent months, Sinai Health felt like now was the right time to go to market to not only honour those workers, but show the intimate and caring relationships between clinicians and patients.

The campaign goal is to establish what Sinai Health is all about and what it offers. When it did public awareness surveys in the past, de Melo says people didn’t know what Sinai Health was, more often pointing to the nearly century-old Mount Sinai Hospital. A lack of recognition poses a big challenge for a philanthropic entity like Sinai Health, as prospective donors are unlikely to give to an organization they don’t fully understand.

“Priority number one of our five-year strategic plan was to go to market with a branding campaign to clarify what the Sinai Health System is, what our value proposition is and how we differentiate,'” de Melo says.

The campaign also shows personal stories combining care and medical triumph. For example, Sinai Health Dr. Savtaj Bar and his team prepared for a difficult gastrectomy to treat a women who had a gene that predisposed her to a rare form of stomach cancer. Dr. Bar created a storyboard for the operation and before the surgery, his team comforted the patient, at times embracing her and rubbing her arms.

De Melo says that, based on the focus groups Sinai Health conducted for the campaign, personal stories like Dr. Bar’s seem to be working effectively as a marketing strategy.

“It is actually inspiring people,” he says. “It is putting the human dimension on the delivery of care. It’s not a clinical sort of exercise – it’s a very human exercise. At Sinai, that’s what we believe.”

The campaign will roll out to TV, online video and digital on Sept. 21, with UM handling the media buy.