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Overview
Hudson River Health Care (HRHCare) is a 45-year old non-profit health care organization in need of a marketing lead to support the launch of our new brand. The launch date is September 15, 2020.
Background and Scope
HRHCare merged with another community health center, Brightpoint Health, in December 2018. The new joint organization serves patients in the Hudson Valley, New York City, and Long Island. The rebrand will include a new visual identity and a new name for the joint organization.
We are accepting marketing proposals until 5pm on Friday, June 5, 2020.
Media Buy
Our strong preference is to have a separate firm run the media buy, but we will consider proposals that include both areas of work. If this is your recommendation, please indicate this in your response and include your rationale. A media buy RFP will follow next month.
NYC, Hudson Valley, and Long Island–Local Knowledge
Our network of health centers spans a large geography but operates within intensely regional markets. Patients identify their care primarily with their doctor, then with their health center, and last with our corporate identity. Knowledge of the region is essential. Therefore, our very strong preference is to work with a New York-based firm that is highly conversant with our regions, and our demographic.
Demographic
Community Health Centers have provided health care for underserved populations since the beginning of the health center movement, which has its origins in the Civil Rights movement. Today, half of HRHCare/Brightpoint patients and potential patients indicate Spanish as their preferred language. Therefore, we strongly prefer that at least one leader on the creative team champion that audience. Our strong preference is to have a native Spanish speaker on the team.
Other patients and potential patients live in a wide range of towns and cities, from urban to rural (see site map, below).
Following the COVID-19 pandemic and the widespread unemployment and recession that has resulted from it, the number of people who need our services will grow. Their perception of community health, if they know of it at all, may or may not match reality. A brand launch at this moment in time, therefore, represents a unique challenge and opportunity.
Launch Objective
We need an agency that will help us with our first long term goal, which is to drive visit volume and acquire all of the Medicaid patients within our service area that are not currently receiving care–a significant number of individuals and households. (Same for Medicare patients).
Our secondary requirement is an agency that can help us reach our new demographic: patients who have recently or will soon lose commercial health care due to the economic fallout related to COVID-19.
Other goals for the campaign include transferring brand equity awareness from both existing current brands (HRHCare and Brightpoint Health) to the new brand; addressing the relatively low awareness of our entire brand category (community health); and, among Spanish-speaking audiences, associating our new name and brand with the current nomenclature for health care providers: “la clinica.”
Our ideal is an agency that is conversant in new-to-Medicaid, new-to-Medicare, non-profit, Latino, rural white, health care, special populations engagement–and is intimately familiar with the term patient acquisition.
Budget
As a non-profit health care provider, we must demonstrate the value-add of any marketing campaign as it relates to patient awareness and visit volume. While the brand launch is a significant event in the life of the organization, the COVID-19 pandemic has adversely impacted the organization’s budget. As with many health care providers, entire service lines have been reduced or shut down. Proposals that combine creative strategy with aggressive cost awareness will have more likelihood of success.
Brand Awareness
At the present, we have extensive pre-pandemic market research on our patients’ drivers of choice and the awareness of both brands, Brightpoint Health and HRHCare. More information on this will be shared with the agency selected.
However, we expect a market agency to expand and supplement this base with their own research of our work and understanding of the region and demographic.
Service Area
Instructions:
Please carefully review the below information. Email your scope of work as per the response requirements below to efetterhoff@hrhcare.org and tdorman@hrhcare.org with “RFP Submission for Marketing Services” in the subject line. Please include scope of work and complete budget.
Brand Name and Identity
Our organization’s new name is in the last stages of approval with the USPTO and will be finalized as early as the first week of July.
The visual identity for the new brand is complete. Again, the launch is scheduled for September 15, 2020.
The new brand identity may lend itself to animation.
Questions
Individual questions regarding this RFP will be responded to only as follows:
Questions regarding requirements and scope of work will be accepted up to 5:00 pm EST Tuesday, May 26, 2020, via email only, to efetterhoff@hrhcare.org and tdorman@hrhcare.org with “Question: RFP for Marketing Services” in the subject line. Answers to questions received by this deadline will be posted on this webpage below the RFP. Telephone calls and/or requests for a solicitation will not be accepted.
Review and Live Presentation
Per agency responses, we will contact 3-4 finalists to present to the HRHCare team.
Timeline
- RFP Release: May 19th
- Question Period: May 19th-May 26th
- Response to Questions Released: May 29th
- RFP Responses Due: June 5th by 5pm
- Interviews: Mid-June (June 10th to June 17th)
- Selection: End of June (Week of June 22nd)
Response Requirements (minimum requirements)
For ease and efficiency of review, HRHCare has specified the numbering protocol below for bidders. Please follow this numbering protocol exactly, and do not re-number, insert numbers, or otherwise modify the sequence. Responses that do not follow this numbering order will not be considered.
1. Company profile
Name of the business, contact person, and contact information: Provide address, telephone, mobile telephone number, e-mail address, and web address, as applicable.
List of subcontractors. If applicable, provide company name, contact person, address, and telephone number, and intended percentage of work to be performed by any subcontractor.
2. Qualifications
- Provide a brief description of your firm, including its founding and history; number of employees; service areas; and, awards or other forms of recognition.
- Describe your creative and work process.
- Special consideration: Describe the experience with and knowledge of the nonprofit/nonprofit health care space among your firm’s personnel, in the context of their careers.
- Special consideration: Describe the experience with and knowledge of the Latino community among your firm’s personnel, in the context of their careers.
- Special consideration: Describe why and how your firm is uniquely positioned to serve as HRHCare’s lead marketing strategist to launch the organization’s new brand, given the current pandemic.
3. Experience and ability to perform this work
- Describe the approach your firm would undertake to successfully complete the tasks described in the Scope of Work
- Provide examples of relevant work and / or case studies.
- Provide a minimum of three (3) client references (name, email address, phone, website).
Provide a list of personnel who would be dedicated to the HRHCare project, along with their experience.
4. Cost
- Provide a schedule of fees for all relevant services described in the Scope of Work including full production costs and the work of any partner agency costs (i.e. animators)
5. Additional Questions
- Please address how the pandemic has changed your approach to marketing campaigns during this time. How have your recommendations changed given the various implications to lifestyle, the economy, health care, and beyond?
- Please address the difficulty of photoshoots/live filming right now, given the pandemic. How will you develop the creative given these circumstances?
Please follow exactly the requirements for the responses noted above. It is the responsibility of the bidders to provide all required materials in the required form and format. Responses that are not in the required form and format will not be considered.
Thanks for your interest!
Scope of Work Guidelines and Deliverables
Market Research
In addition to current brand research, conduct necessary market research to effectively get to know our organization, patients, and potential patients to develop a successful campaign, especially given the current pandemic.
Media
While no one knows exactly where the NYS region or the world will be mid-September, our expectation is that digital will still be a strong component in our launch plan and that outdoor may still be a less important component than it was pre-pandemic.
- Media will need to be created in partnership with the media buy agency
- We expect a combination of digital and non-digital strategies
- Given this, the below is our best guess on what will be needed for launch; we are open to ideas and especially those based on prior success with our demographic
Creative
// Tagline //
Develop a tagline for the brand to be used at launch. Considerations include the following:
- The brand category, “community health,” is not well known or understood, though due to press coverage, it is better known both nationally and in many of our regions than prior to COVID-19
- Many Spanish-speaking patients and potential patients think and refer to health care providers with the term ‘la clinica’
// TV //
- One 30-second broadcast television commercial (English)
- One 30-second broadcast television commercial (Spanish)
- Three 15-second broadcast television commercials (English)
- Three 15-second broadcast television commercials (Spanish)
// Out of Home //
- Three OOH billboard designs (3 sizes with photography and art direction)
// Social/Digital //
- Three 15-second digital/social media videos (English and Spanish, repurposed from above)
- Two <2-minute website videos (English and Spanish)
- Website landing page to house and highlight new video content
// Print //
- Three print (full-page and 3 resizes of each with photography and art direction)
- Still photography assets suitable for brochure and Social Media use
// Metrics/ROI //
The campaign’s success will be measured in 3 areas:
- New patients gained, against data from the period the campaign runs from the previous year
- Patient visit volume, above current visit projections
- Increase in brand recognition, against brand awareness survey
Response to Questions
Creative
1. Are you open to consider a different set of creative assets?
Our end goal is a campaign that gives us the greatest impact for the brand launch and for visit volume. We are open to alternatives.
2. Can you please provide more detail about the website videos? What do you have in mind?
These are not separate videos; we envision that some of the media ads will also run on the website or be available there in some sections.
3. Are there any brands whose creative approach during COVID-19 you’ve admired? Both within the Healthcare category and outside of the category.
We did like many campaigns during COVID-19, but here are a few that stood out:
• Alicia Keys
• Vodafone Italy
• All COVID-19 ads are the same
4. Will there be a creative round included in the selection process?
No
Budget
5. Can you share your approximate budget?
We are looking to spend what we have spent recently on a creative campaign, which is $125,000 for full creative that included a similar scope–without radio. Since this campaign will include radio, our preferred budget is $150,000. However, we will entertain bids up to $300,000. Obviously each dollar we spend on creative is a dollar less we’re able to spend on the media buy.
6. The RFP asks that we provide full production costs, however, we don’t yet know what we’re producing or what the possibilities will be in 2-3 months’ time for production shoots. Those two combined make it difficult to give you any accurate pricing for production. Do you have a general production budget range allocated that we could work from to give a sense of how things may break out?
See above.
Brand/Brand Awareness
7. Since announcing the merger, what primary communication messages have been communicated to patients of both organizations? Via which channels/methods?
The merger has not been announced to HRHCare patients but the brand launch should improve messaging to Hudson Valley and Suffolk County patients that our network now includes NYC; Brightpoint patients have received messaging that Brightpoint is a member of HRHCare, also a community health system, via letter, as well as email messaging, website messaging, and site-level signage.
More information on this can be shared at a later time.
8. Can you share with us the new brand name and identity?
Not at this time.
9. If not, can you tell us if it retains any of the HRHCare or Brightpoint Health branding?
The new visual identity contains elements of both current brands.
10. You mention that an increase in Brand Recognition, against Brand Awareness Survey, is a key metric, but given this is a new brand and new brand identity, presumably awareness will be at or near zero. Do you have aided and unaided awareness goals that the campaign needs to reach?
Awareness of both brands is about equal and both brands currently measure quite low. Following the launch campaign, we hope for awareness of the new brand to exceed current awareness. Further reasoning and methodology on this will be shared with agencies selected to present.
11. What are the key differences (strengths and weaknesses) between the perception of HRHCare and Brightpoint?
We can share this data at a later stage. Again the brands are similarly perceived. There is lower brand awareness (and lower patient volume) for Spanish speaking patients in NYC against neighborhood data than in the rest of the network.
12. What is the new brand value proposition from a patient perspective? What are the benefits of the merger as positioned to-date to patients/consumers?
More information in these areas will be shared at a later time.
13. Are the pre- and post- awareness studies part of this SOW?
No, pre-awareness studies have already been completed. For post-awareness, we will utilize the same firm that established baseline brand awareness and use the same methodology. This study is not part of the scope.
Media
14. You mentioned that your strong preference is for a separate firm to run the media buy. Can you further explain why this is?
We are aware that some agencies would like to do this work internally or to engage a known quantity in this regard. As noted we will review submissions that include a single firm performing both functions.
15. We have media capabilities, but if we decided to not pitch the media out of Rauxa, would you be open to us bringing in a separate Publicis Groupe sister agency to handle the media?
Yes; this agency should complete the media buy RFP.
16. How long is this campaign for?
Our previous network campaign ran for 9 months. We would greatly prefer a campaign to run for at least 6 months in order to establish brand presence and drive visit volume.
17. I know you are planning to issue a separate RFP for the media buy. However, we’d like to ask if you have a specific budget range in mind for the media buy. The answer to this question would allow us to better fine-tune our thinking and approach for creative assets necessary to support the campaign.
We recognize that a media buy that includes NYC, the Hudson Valley, and Suffolk County is an investment. We will discuss this at a later point in the RFP process. Please see above for additional context.
18. What is the traditional media/outreach mix? Within the RFP, it references media buys but is there an established estimate of print vs. digital vs. broadcast?
We will rely on the media buy firm to help determine this mix.
Demographics
19. Can you provide a more detailed split of the demographics of your patients and potential patients?
Current Patients:
245,000+ patients served at 45 health centers
Patient makeup by insurance type: 46% Medicaid, 27% uninsured, 15% private insurance, 8% Medicare, 4% Public Insurance
Patient makeup by indicated language: 58% English, 40% Spanish, 1% Haitian Creole, 1% Other
Special populations served: 9,300+ agriculture workers, 20,700+ homeless individuals, 28,800+ public housing residents, 800+ veterans, 6,700+ patients with substance use disorder
These numbers reflect the joint organization. The Hudson Valley and Long Island have higher percentages of Spanish-speaking patients. A high number of potential patients in New York City are Spanish-speaking. Additional information will be shared with the selected agency.
20. Given that Brightpoint Health is NYC-based and HRHCare is more suburban/rural, how does the total number of patients break out between the two organizations?
200,000 patients in the Hudson Valley and Long Island. 45,000 patients in New York City.
21. You say that 50% of your demographic is Spanish-speaking. Do you know what percentage of that group also speaks English?
While many of our Spanish speaking patients and potential patients also speak English, care in their preferred language is an important part of all external messaging
22. Medicare vs Medicaid – does one take a higher priority over the other for visits or both of equal importance?
This is a complex question. Yes, our most significant payor is Medicaid, but Medicare is a critical part of our payor mix. It is vital to the organization to capture patients in the pre-65 age range so that we can remain their provider as they transition to Medicaid. This is not merely a financial consideration, but one of mission because consistent care throughout this transition is vital to health outcomes. For the brand launch, this should be a question not of inclusion but of accent.
Scope
23. Would there be an opportunity to engage with you on scope in additional areas, such as CRM/email, digital content optimization, social platform community management, etc.?
We either work in these areas already, are building forward, or have partners we are happy with in these areas at this time.
Metrics
24. Why have you chosen not to include website visits and call center volume as KPIs?
This was an oversight: We will add applicable web page metrics (pages around visits, find a health center, find a doctor, or patient portal) to metrics, with appropriate pixel placement. We will also add incoming calls and appointments made through the call center.
Current State
25. How have you been approaching communicating and marketing to varied generations represented in your communities?
Through analysis of patient visit data and messaging that represent different patient needs relative to time of life; please review the HRHCare website for some examples.
26. COVID fear will play a big role. How have you currently been incorporating virtual care? Mental health?
Please review the website; a large percentage of our care during COVID-19 has been via telemedicine.
Evaluation
27. Will you provide any additional evaluation points to companies that use small business partners with a diversity classification (e.g. Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned, Woman-Owned, HUBZone, etc.)?
Yes, when possible we would like to work with such agencies.
