1.
Mike Stephenson
(727) 422-4714 mike.stephenson.33609@gmail.com
A MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY: MOMENTS
At Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, I lead an Editorial team that plays a key role
in using brand journalism to enhance the hospital’s goodwill, reputation and brand
awareness of our pediatric academic expertise in the Tampa Bay area and beyond.
Often, that involves identifying and executing patient-centered stories about how the
hospital cares for kids and solves medical problems.
When Johns Hopkins All Children’s found itself in the news in a negative light in 2018,
we needed a quickly executed campaign to remind internal staff, patients and
families, donors, trustees and the community at large of the good things the hospital
does every day. Johns Hopkins All Children’s had served the community for more than
90 years and had built loyalty and goodwill over that time. We developed and I led the
execution of a series called “Moments” that was designed to show “tiny moments
that tell a larger story of care and compassion.”
Moments — mostly told with words and pictures and occasionally with video — was
designed with a distinctive look, feel and style to be easy to consume and encourage
readers to come back for more.
The goal
Moments sought to:
• Restore faith and trust among patients, families, donors, referring physicians and
the community.
• Restore morale among internal staff, volunteers and other stakeholders.
2. Strategy, tactics and execution
Our approach was to show care and compassion through concrete, easily consumed
examples that could appeal to a range of personas both internal and external. We
committed to reinforce our message by publishing a new Moment daily — including
weekends — for a month.
Some key elements of our approach:
• The stories are short, generally 300 words or fewer.
• We tell them in present tense, as if the scene is unfolding as you read it.
• Each story has a picture.
• On a budget of about $7,500, we aggressively distributed them through our website,
social media, email blasts and even printed signs for high-traffic areas such as the
cafeteria.
The Moments series went from conception to execution in a matter of days. At first, I
did substantial editing and rewriting as writers adjusted to the brevity and style I
sought. I trimmed unnecessary background and distilled stories down to a scene.
Soon, writers adapted and the Moments began to flow.
I edited each Moment and my Editorial team took the lead role in writing and shooting
photos. In the initial month, one Editorial Team member wrote 10 Moments and
another wrote six. But the PR and internal communications teams also fanned out to
find, report and write Moments, occasionally adding a video component.
In some cases, Moments were clinical:
• “Strength in Numbers,” our most popular Moment,
describes a perinatologist delivering quadruplets.
• “Drawing a Sigh of Relief” tells the story of a nurse in an
outpatient care center calmly and patiently working with a
frazzled mother whose baby was upset after a bad blood
draw experience at another medical center.
• “Finding His Voice” covers a speech-language
pathologist’s work with a child whose ability to speak was
hampered by a neurological disorder.
But in other cases, we demonstrated that care and compassion extend beyond the
clinical and permeates the hospital:
3. • “A Graduate with Gratitude” describes the surprise high
school graduation ceremony organized by nurses and
Child Life specialists in a patient’s hospital room. (Media
picked up on this Moment, generating $500,000 in
publicity value.)
• “With Grace Comes Joy” showcases a staff member’s
outstanding rendition of “Amazing Grace” as she holds
hands with her daughter in the Child Life Auditorium.
• “Anniebell’s Angels” tells how a hospital unit
coordinator provides comfort, pep talks and a memorable
trinket to mothers in need.
Johns Hopkins All Children’s never had attempted to
publish seven days a week. Meeting that goal brought
some challenges. For instance, in any case where we referenced a patient in any
identifiable way — even if we didn’t name him or her — we needed a consent form
signed by the parent or guardian because of the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rules. In some cases, we scrapped a proposed
Moment because we couldn’t obtain a consent form. The team met the challenge while
also publishing about three non-Moments stories a week through our normal brand
journalism efforts.
The final daily Moments series installment—“Little Things Make a Big Difference”—
paints a picture of several moments happening simultaneously as the evening wanes.
It ends with a new day — and a new set of moments — beginning.
The results
The Moments series proved a smashing success.
People throughout the hospital campus and the community responded
enthusiastically. One nurse was inspired to submit a first-person Moment of his
interaction with a patient. Total page views of Moments on the website for four weeks
were 12,807, which doesn’t include people who read Moments through our emails and
Facebook where we published the Moments in full given their brevity. People often
read a Moment and then clicked through to read one or two more. The average page
views for each visitor ranged from 1.87 to 2.48 over the four weeks.
On Facebook, impressions from stories in the Moments series were 55 percent higher
than average with posts receiving more than 740,000 impressions and more than
16,000 clicks over four weeks. Average view time ranged per week from 32.8 to 44.3
4. seconds, indicating users were reading the Moments in full on Facebook. Instagram
impressions also ran 41 percent higher than average.
As we wrapped up our month of daily Moments, the vice
president of marketing, communications and culture
wrote: “I have tears of pride, sadness and inspiration at
this MOMENT. Pride in all of you for your collective
contributions to an excellent showcase of what you and our
colleagues do every day. Sadness that the daily
inspirations are concluding ... inspiration from each of you,
our mission and the opportunities that are ahead to help
our boys, girls, parents, friends, and colleagues.”
The Moments series received honorable mention in the PR
Daily Content Marketing Awards. It was a team effort with
the Editorial and PR Teams playing pivotal roles. It proved so popular that it continues
as a once-a-week series, building faith, trust and morale, just as intended. We have
published more than 100 Moments and celebrated two years of Moments on May 17,
2020.
