The University Health Network (UHN) is unabashedly calling itself “Canada’s #1 hospital” for its first brand campaign.
The “UHNITED” campaign, by Zulu Alpha Kilo, focuses on how the UHN reached its top-level status: by showing how teams work together to challenge health care’s status quo, and featuring stories of innovation, groundbreaking discoveries and how it has transformed peoples’ lives.
“The idea behind the UHNITED concept is that when UHN comes together believing anything is possible, it is,” says Lynn Fletcher, SVP of marketing, communications and community giving for UHN Foundation. “We are telling stories to celebrate the spirit of UHN – the power of great minds coming together, challenging the old thinking and not just delivering the best care for our patients, but tackling some of the most wicked medical challenges today.”
The campaign uses real patients, real donors and real “Team UHNers” in its communications, which Fletcher describes as “authentic stories told in a documentary style.”
Brian Murray, chief creative officer with Zulu Alpha Kilo, adds: “The idea of UHNITED inherently focuses on the interconnectedness within UHN, and what they are capable of achieving collectively. The creative platform was conceived to live on for years and support many campaigns and initiatives.”
The biggest challenge, Fletcher says, is that while the public may have heard of UHN, many don’t know which hospitals and institutes are part of it and don’t know the scope of UHN’s impact, both locally and globally. The network consists of Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital, Toronto Rehab, the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and the Michener Institute of Education.
“The hospital has some ambitious goals that require donor support, and so we need to grow our donor base, ” she says. “People aren’t going to give to an organization they don’t feel familiar with. And with typical Canadian humility we’ve never shared the world-changing work done at UHN. We are doing that now. We want to support the hard work of TeamUHN and let Canadians know they can make a positive impact on the world of healthcare. We can all be proud that we have such a hidden jewel in our backyard.”
UHN claims its top spot among hospitals due to a number of external rankings and internal achievements. Among them: UHN’s Toronto General Hospital was ranked one of the top five hospitals in the world four years in a row by Newsweek/Statista, UHN serves as a referral centre for the entire country, it’s the first hospital in Canada to use deep brain stimulation technology to treat Parkinson’s disease, it is the most successful transplant centre in North America, and it has Canada’s largest robotic surgery training ground.
Fletcher says donations help UHN acquire the latest equipment and technology, recruit top expertise from around the world and provide the seed funding that helps accelerate research from the lab to patients.
The campaign, Fletcher says, began with the in-hospital marketing program that feature roles at UHN that many people may never have heard of, from an organ perfusion specialist to medical ethicist.
“Staff feel seen, and after what healthcare folks have been through throughout COVID and the backlog that they are still working so hard to clear, there is no more important audience for us,” she says.
The UHNITED campaign features paid advertising that is running across digital, print and OOH channels, along with digital content.
Along with the creative, Zulu Alpha Kilo developed and executed the media strategy in partnership with The Aber Group.
