Middlesex Hospital - MDSX Campaign
Middlesex Hospital’s Cancer Center is truly unique. Commitment to patient wellbeing is paramount. Anyone walking through the door receives the very best in personalized medical care harnessed to the very latest in medical technology.
So, it only follows that this integrated content campaign of broadcast, digital, print and outdoor media, match that aspiration with inspired visuals and dazzling, forward thinking graphics.
This multi-award winning, much lauded campaign, comprises three specific, individual concepts designed to work in concert to illustrate the essence of patient care at Middlesex.
Common Thread. Tradition embraces modern technology and infuses both with humanity. That’s the simple truth of the kick-off spot for Middlesex, a hospital group so confident of their mandate they can step outside the expected, both in services and design.
Hand drawn, tinted illustrations on aged textured paper are the foundation of Medicine. In centuries gone by and still today they are used with great success to explain new and breakthrough technologies in the Medical Sciences. These illustrations evoke a feeling of tradition, one that also speaks to the very best of doctor-patient relationships. And it’s these traditions that are symbolic of the human touch we all crave when being cared for at a time when we feel at our most vulnerable.
In the modern world we also rely on the latest technology, placing our trust in the hands of state of the art equipment and expertly trained physicians, to eradicate illness and to restore us to health. This is the mission of a successful hospital group.
Here Little Fluffy Clouds sought to embody the very idea of tradition and humanity and to weave it into the design. Adding the new to the tried and true and echo the message, creating the dynamic, appealing, all encompassing story of Middlesex Hospital showing how it can be the common thread between you and a healthy long life.
This breakout campaign took the Judges Award, plus three more Gold awards at the 2013 Connecticut Art and won or placed in every award show it was entered.
Here, judge, Jason Carreiro, explains its success and central appeal:
Hospital and healthcare advertising tends to be fairly predictable — smiling patients and doctors in pristine hospital rooms with a reassuring voice-over and a tasteful piano soundtrack. The Middlesex Hospital TV spot surprised me with its bold execution. The beautiful, high-contrast animation and swirling, vibrant colors have an immediate wow-factor that forces the viewer to sit up and take notice. The campaign narrative, The Smarter Choice for Care, speaks to the fact that Middlesex Hospital does things differently — embracing new technologies and ways of thinking about medicine and patient care. The design execution supports that claim perfectly. The spot is a wonderful example of how a creative execution can really make a concept sing.
Missing Person, the second concept of the campaign, is the story of survival against all odds. Every year almost 10 million people die from cancer worldwide. For each of those people there are countless meaningful moments missed.
The talented doctors and leading-edge technology at Middlesex Hospital changed that for three incredible people, Kirk, Christina and Cemmy, whose care combined with their individual tenacious courage, put them back into the life they otherwise could have missed out on.
Composed of just three still images, this spot is a true tour de force of creative thinking coupled with incredibly skillful animation and effects. Creatively we opted for an ultra slow motion, weightless feel, to emphasize the sensitivity surrounding the subject and to capture the triumph of survival. Juxtapose this with fast moving, beautiful and innovative VFX we also illustrate the amazing power of the medical technology used to bring about this result.
Missing Person took top honors at the 2014 Advertising Club of Connecticut. The campaign swept no fewer than 8 gold awards. Later that month the Connecticut Art Directors Club gave it their order of excellence - a nice moment of recognition. Created and animated in Adobe After Effects. VFX extras use Real Viz, Trap Code and Sapphire plug-ins.
Innovation lives at the intersection of talent and technology a concept that is at the heart of this latest campaign, produced and directed by Little Fluffy Clouds, for Primacy and Middlesex Hospital. The idea of innovation is the lingua franca describing the constant push for advancement and excellence in all fields of medicine by the talented and collaborative teams at work in this groundbreaking facility.
LFC directed the beautifully filmed live-action. Once again striking animation and inspired visual effects ingeniously transform the visuals, echoing the advances in medical technology by providing a specific unique graphical link that integrates the live action with animation and special effects.
Here Little Fluffy Clouds’ creative director, Jerry van de Beek, describes the thought process:
Our design challenge was to come up with elegant motion graphics that felt high tech but that were integrated with the live action to such a degree that they supported the action of our talent. An intrusive technical overlay on top of a human in action can easily look scary. We wanted to ensure that the image looked and felt organic and that the motion was driven by the action of the actor.
Innovation was the final part of what became an exceptionally successful campaign of commercials, print, outdoor media and digital content by LFC for this client. Statistically the campaign achieved all of the initial goals and more. Middlesex Hospital is now recognized as fulfilling the campaign tagline: The Smarter Choice for Care, marketplace perceptions were changed and the goal of increased visibility was achieved. The statistics speak for themselves:
- 24% increase in overall web traffic
- 107% increase in visits to the cancer center page
- 38% increase in service line share of visit
- 30% increase in top of mind awareness
- 271% increase in ad recall
The sweet icing on the cake for us is that the Middlesex Hospital campaign was honored by more than a dozen awards collecting recognition by the industry each time it was entered. Among those awards are: Tellys, Pixies, MITX Awards, Connecticut Art Directors Club Awards and Connecticut Advertising Club Awards.
Now those are statistics we can get behind!
