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Providence St. Vincent Medical Center in Portland, Oregon, has been named a Top 100 hospital 10 times and achieved Magnet designation for nursing excellence in 2005. Few hospitals in the country have achieved this amount of recognition for clinical excellence. Still, until this week, chances are few people outside of Oregon had ever heard of St. Vincent Medical Center.
With the help of some pink latex gloves, St. Vincent Medical Center created the best hospital-produced viral video ever. One week after its launch, nearly 350,000 people have watched the video and it’s being embedded in sites across the nation.
So Simple, Yet So Powerful.
From the cooks to the pharmacists, the entire hospital staff is involved. Everyone in the video is having fun and enjoying their jobs, and nothing looks forced. Why wouldn’t you want to work for or receive treatment from a hospital like this?
Would a call-to-action ruin this effort?
YouTube now allows organizations to place a transparent ad at the bottom of the viewing panel. This video clearly supports a great cause, but would viewers be put off if it included a simple message asking for donations? We’d love to hear your feedback.
About: Blayne Fielder
Blayne works with Geonetric’s clients to ensure their Web content appeals to their target audience and engages the reader to take action.
He has more than seven years of experience in healthcare marketing and is a certified Google Adwords professional.
Prior to Geonetric, he served as senior marketing consultant for St. Luke’s Hospital in Cedar Rapids, where his duties included content development for the hospital’s Web site.
7 Comments
Hi Blayne:
I would not like to see a donation message, it would make the video seem too self-serving and not as authentic and genuine as it currently does. However, I would see nothing wrong with a creatively placed logo & url or 800# on the last screen shot as a call to action.
Thank you for sharing this! I shared your post with all of my marketing colleagues in my healthcare company in Minnesota today, as well as posted the video on my blog. This really shows the personality of the hospital, and frankly, every other hospital in America should be jealous that they didn’t think of something like that first!
I love this video – what a great idea and everyone looks like they are having a blast making the video. Makes a GREAT recruitment video!
Very well done! I think more facitlities should promote themselves in creative ways that leverage social media avenues.
Way to lead the way!
Fantastic. I would choose that hospital over another (all other things being equal). Who wouldn’t want to be around happy people who seem so much like you…?
No, I don’t think anything should be added.
Thanks for the feedback.
With over 1.6 million views today, the Pink Glove Dance will easily surpass the 2 million mark this week.
I do think adding a creative call-to-action overlay would be great if it’s done right. Rather than simply asking for donations, they could tie a specific donation amount to a relevant fact or statistic. Maybe something like this:
“One in 13 women will be diagnosed with Breast Cancer – By donating just $13, you can help us lower this devastating statistic.”
If just 2% of the people watching felt compelled to give $13, the video could generate over $500,000 in the fight against breast cancer.
Boy, did it go viral. If one more well meaning person sends it to me I am going to wear out my delete button. Blayne, you and Theresa are right…it did end too abruptly and needed a web address or a phone number. Had we done it we would placed the url for our local Komen of the Quad Cities.
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