Shriners Launches Massive DR Campaign

Shriners Hospitals for Children has launched a nearly $20 million direct response campaign to raise awareness and promote its medical services. The three-year effort will begin with DRTV and online ads and continue with direct mail later this year, says Michael Severe¸ chairman of the Shriners board.

The organization is an operation of Shriners International, a fraternal organization with approximately 325,000 members in 194 chapters in the U.S., Canada, Germany, Mexico, the Philippines and Puerto Rico.

Shriners operates a network of 22 hospitals that specialize in spinal and orthopedic medicine and offer burn care, particularly for children and young adults.

“The Shriners is not as well known as some other health organizations and we want to raise our visibility,” he says.

The campaign will begin with 15- and 30-second direct response TV spots on such networks as Cable News Network, Fox News, HLN, and on local television markets throughout the U.S. and Canada. They are starting in Charlotte, NC where the group is having a convention, says Severe.

The first of three DRTV spots shows a football player catching a ball and flashes back to how he was injured in a lawnmower accident as a child. It explains how the Shriners Hospital helped him rehabilitate and regain the use of his legs. The spot uses both a toll free phone number and a URL as response devices.

Web banners on such sites as Yahoo.com, Google.com, WebMD.com, IVillage.com and CBSnews.com also support the campaign.

Later this year, the Tampa, FL- based organization will launch a direct mail program of more than 100,000 pieces. The organization has a donor base of more than 1 million names. These tend to be retirees between 50 and 80 years old who have donated for several years.

Overall, the Shriners send out about 300,000 pieces of direct mail per year, mostly to existing donors. Their donations typically range from as little as $25 to $100 or more, says Severe. Unlike many other nonprofits, the Shriners tend to receive these donations via checks rather than online, says Severe.

The group has an equally sized email database. “Email more of an informational thing to let people know what we are involved in and research, medical care and that sort of thing,” says Severe.

For the past several years, the Shriners has had a presence on Facebook where it has attracted 100,000 friends and on Twitter where it has lined up 80,000 followers. Here, the organization seeks more to promote its activities than solicit donations, says Severe.