Headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, a region heavily populated with hospitals and medical schools, UMSOM sought to differentiate their brand and establish a stronger connection with the community. UMSOM’s legacy of innovative “firsts” in discovery-based medicine and clinical care afforded a great opportunity to accomplish both of these goals.

Ultimately, the campaign needed to help cultivate patient engagement, promote recruitment and talent retention efforts, and initiate research funding opportunities and related contributions.

As part of our discovery process to learn more about UMSOM and their target audiences, we conducted stakeholder interviews and market research, reviewed all UMSOM-provided documentation, and completed a technical assessment to inform landing page development. We used this information to produce strategy documentation, create personas, and develop and implement a marketing campaign.

Leveraging the “First, Best, Most” campaign approach, we created impactful anchor statements that encompassed what our target audiences would see as being “on brand” for UMSOM. The campaign highlighted UMSOM’s numerous achievements, including that they:

• Invented the field of Shock Trauma and are global leaders in trauma treatment
• Were the first medical school to discover the relationship between insects and disease
• Co-discovered HIV as the cause of AIDS and have treated more than a million HIV patients around the world
• Are world-class innovators in surgery and organ transplantation

As part of the Mindgrub design team, I paired eye-catching design work with an interesting fact about UMSOM for each digital advertisement. The ad units were designed as both static images and HTML5 rich media banner ads, used for both prospecting and retargeting efforts. When clicked, the ads took users to the UMSOM-branded landing page where they could learn more about the organization and how to take action in support of UMSOM’s efforts.

Overall, the display campaign reached more than 2 million people and yielded an above-average clickthrough rate, 3 times the industry benchmark. This is a clear indication that people were highly motivated to learn more about UMSOM.

Further analysis showed that while banner and Facebook ads helped drive engagement to the landing page, the banner ads were better able to reach individuals who were most likely to engage with content in the ads and on the landing page. Post-survey data results also revealed a 5% increase in measurable brand awareness among local audiences.