Highlights: Highmark Health

The two biggest components of Highmark Health's integrated delivery and finance system, the Health Plan and Allegheny Health Network (AHN), each faced unique challenges in the marketplace. For AHN, the challenge was to increase awareness and perceptions of the high-quality care it provides across numerous critical service lines. For the Health Plan, it was to help people understand the many things it does to improve health care beyond paying medical claims. But they each had one thing in common — the desire to tell their stories through proof; not promises.

So, in late August, the Highmark Health organization launched Living Proof marketing campaigns, which brought to life the progress Highmark Health is making in its efforts to "get health care right." An ambitious undertaking, the campaign featured thirty AHN TV commercials with a new one airing every day over the course of a full month — plus another six authentic Health Plan TV spots. The commercials captured real-life experiences and outcomes of patients and members — "living proof" of the high-quality care AHN delivers and the access to high-quality coverage that the Health Plan provides and reinforcing how the Highmark Health enterprise is purposefully designing the right care and coverage to meet the real-life needs of people in the communities they serve.

Richard, Laura and Lindsey, Katelyn, Brittney, Ryan, Carlton, and an adorable baby Drew — all of these people allowed the Highmark Health organization to capture their living proof stories in the moment, proving how AHN is making a difference in their lives through a variety of common and complex specialty services, including islet cell transplant, cochlear implant, deep brain stimulation, home infusion therapy, and the region's only postpartum depression program.

"These campaigns bring to life our patient-centered, physician-led strategy for AHN," explained Cindy Donohoe, senior vice president of marketing, Highmark Health. "We used a fresh approach to document life as it unfolds. No actors. No scripts. No studios. No sound track. Just real, living proof. Because to Highmark Health, the true measure of quality is a patient's or member’s joy, relief, and courage as we help them triumph over their health struggles."

The AHN campaign launched with a three-fold plan that included large-scale activation events, social media engagement, and multimedia ads. The larger-than-life activation events visually portrayed the significant volume of successful treatments across key AHN services lines, including orthopaedics, labor and delivery, pediatric asthma, and surgical expertise. They included the world's largest-known cast outside of PNC Park before a Pittsburgh Pirates home game, promoting the more than 26,000 bones mended across AHN’s facilities last year; the world's largest Game of Operation to call attention to the over 102,000 successful surgeries performed at its facilities over the last year; and a flock of thousands of pop-up storks placed at the finish line of Pittsburgh's Great Race and outside of the Pittsburgh Zoo during their Fall Zoo Boo weekends, promoting the more than 7,365 healthy babies delivered at AHN hospitals last year alone.

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