Effectively Engaging Marketing Partners (Part-3): A CEOs Guide2Basics

In the last two articles, we covered many marketing partners. This article places major emphasis on Event Partner/Agency and the ecosystem we need to be invested into because without a consistently good quality Event Partner you will be left deprived of your resources without the much-needed impact. 

I consider hospitals as large living organisms; like our human body, it evolves over time in a progressive but incremental manner. Soon after the launch and first three years – the hospital arrives at the right mix of people – clinical and non-clinical and engaging them truly matters. Also important for every hospital is to engage with its neighborhood purposefully and consistently is of utmost importance for repute building and furthering business interests.

This essentially means your innate capability to conceive smart events that are socially relevant and also engaging and exciting is important. Execution of such social-impact events needs us to have a very sound Events Partner. The Hospital CEO's ability to invest in the right social-impact campaigns, scale it up every outing in terms of reach and participation will infuse incredible energy internally in the hospital.

Hospitals are too busy celebrating world health days, nothing wrong in it – but what’s disgusting is the repeat of screenings and health-checks. The new fad is a marathon or cyclothon as a simple format of an event to mobilize and awaken people. Again nothing wrong in it. However, is this all that can be done to make a social impact. Have you done the major spend on the event leading to a more engaged community or just a photo-ops event?

Let me try to share light on the right approach to this very important action that could have a very positive impact on business and repute. I will also try to define the role of the Event Partner and the merit to have one Event Partner as an extended professional arm and not work with umpteen event teams for every outing.

1.      IDEATION / PLANNING STAGE

2.      CONCEPT EDUCATION STAGE

3.      PARTNERSHIP SIGNUP STAGE

4.      PRE-EVENT CAMPAIGN PHASE

5.      FINALE EVENT

6.      POST-EVENT CAMPAIGN PHASE

“To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions.”

Steve Jobs

Let us detail each phase and understand why it is important to take your teams through this phase and not rush through the actions for photo-ops.

1.      IDEATION / PLANNING STAGE

Objective: The overarching thought during this phase is to think innovatively to inspire a large mass of people to bring change in their lives to social health malice or issue.

I would recommend the Hospital CEO to chair this important meeting to define the two topics that will differentiate and create brand-love when taken to market. The campaign topics need not be directly linked to top specialties and business directly. Once you select the topic – define the target audience (a segment of the population) that needs to be educated the right way. Think of what is the best way to inspire them to make the change. Here come the Event Partner and your Marketing Team who can take this functional need to a beautiful creative expression. Most important to note is that these campaigns must be – simple to communicate and execute. Defining all possible partnerships critical to achieving for each of the campaigns is also important – community partner, education partner, key media partner, event finale-venue partner, etc. Partners will either help you increase reach and /or increase the spread and /or reduce spends.

2.      CONCEPT EDUCATION STAGE

Objective: Identify important stakeholders and get them to commit to the campaign as if it’s their own and their contribution is most essential to make the campaign a grand success.

For effective drill-down of the campaign, essential to plan this phase as an extension of the Planning stage. In this phase, you must personally do two very important meetings. The first meeting will be to get onboard 10-15 important cross-functional team leads and department HODs from the hospital on key reasons for doing this campaign and how each one of them can possibly contribute to the campaign using resources and contacts at their disposal. The second meeting would be with the consultants in the hospital and making them aware of the decision and asking for their help and support. If on-boarded rightly they could be a very important source for gaining external partners. The third meeting must be with as many community leaders and explaining the real reason to decide on these campaigns and how it helps overall social good. Explaining their role and seeking support for their contribution to making the campaign socially relevant and impactful.

3.      PARTNERSHIP SIGNUP STAGE

Get a simple presentation that lets each partner know the social-impact the campaign will achieve, they know their role in the campaign during each stage and benefits they will achieve on participation. Do these meetings with the right intent and you will be surprised to see so many helping hands coming forward to help the cause.

4.      PRE-EVENT CAMPAIGN PHASE

Objective: This it’s the key execution phase that truly touches the lives of thousands and brings about that much needed social change the campaign plans to achieve.

Most hospitals, jump into the finale day and are good at photo-ops. But, according to me the best of social-impact campaigns have a 45-60-day ground activation phase where small groups of the target audiences are innovatively engaged such that they sign-up for change. This needs deep thinking and a very good Education Partner and Events Partner. It needs clear buy-in from Community leaders and social workers in the neighborhood. This is the real space the investment of effort must go into. Hospitals after hospital – just give this phase a miss – at best they do it cosmetically for 7-10 days and half-heartedly. Involving your hospital consultants, employees into the campaign in large numbers really sends the message to the communities that the hospitals truly has a heart.

5.      FINALE EVENT

Objective: The Finale Event is the key binder that gets everyone excited and involved to do all the actions in the pre-event phase with great passion and determination.

This is the space best left to the Event Partner to innovate and present options. A good Event Agency will come up with an innovative concept that if executed can thrill audiences and make them remember this coming together for years together of maybe their entire lifetime.

6.      POST-EVENT CAMPAIGN PHASE

Objective: Self-assessment and thanks-giving to all the key stakeholders who worked hard to make the campaign a success.

Plan a small get together and make sure that all the key stakeholders join the session. Have it planned such that all of them openly share their experience, their observations and their advice to do the campaign better next time around. Make sure that you reward as many of them as possible with some trophies, certificates, mementos, etc. This is a singular session that will be highly emotional and if done nicely will help bond the neighborhood community leaders to the hospital for life.

Please respect the Events Partner whom you decide to work with. Arriving at the right event partner takes time, but once you find the right team, they deserve respect for the special skills they bring onboard. I have seen marketing colleagues being so insensitive towards them and that hurts. They are not the lowest in the value chain – consider them our extended team.

Next Week: We continue with the fifth topic, and continue the series discussing ‘Effectively Engaging Marketing Partners – Part 4’. Online Health Aggregators are a new and fast-evolving ecosystem. Achieving the right partners in this space is essential to stay relevant in the marketing space of the future.