SIMPLE GIFT OF TIME

TitleSIMPLE GIFT OF TIME
BrandPHILIPS
Product / ServiceHOSPITAL SMS ALERT SYSTEM
CategoryB05. Public Service, Charity & Fund Raising
EntrantCARAT CHINA Shanghai, CHINA
Entrant Company:CARAT CHINA Shanghai, CHINA
Media Agency:CARAT CHINA Shanghai, CHINA

Credits

Credits

Name Company Position
Seth Grossman Carat China MD - Eastern China
Edna Aw Carat China VP Planning

Results and Effectiveness

Each terminal is used by 125 consumers per day on average, creating time for them and reducing congestion for other patients. Our simple, common sense system saves each patient around 3 hours, which they can use in any way they choose. They can spend the time that Philips has saved them productively, rather than waiting in hospital. Patients in Shanghai are collectively saving 156 years and 3 months of time every year thanks to Philips. By creating time for patients, we have made the Philips’ Sense and Simplicity concept relevant, meaningful and rewarding in China.

Creative Execution

We devised a system to let patients use their mobile phones to track their place in their hospital queue. This freed them up to leave the hospital for hours and get on with their lives without missing their appointment. We networked our terminal into the hospital's administration system. Once patients were allocated a place in the queue they registered on the Philips terminal. They received a text alert to ensure that they could get back to the hospital on time. The whole text journey was Philips branded and they could even insert brand messages into the text responses. The system was installed in 5 major hospitals in Shanghai. We also aired a supporting TV campaign that showed the time saving of using community clinics, rather than major hospitals. We secured a 65% airtime cost reduction by classifying the commercial as an official public health message.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Our objective for Philips Healthcare in China was to bring their ‘Sense and Simplicity’ proposition to life for patients within the Chinese healthcare system in a way that made the Philips brand relevant, meaningful and rewarding. Time is one of the scarcest resources in modern China and stress levels reach stratospheric proportions when people have to deal with government bureaucracies. It can seem like dealing with these organizations is designed to waste the maximum possible amount of their time. The average waiting time in major hospitals in Shanghai is more than 3 hours per visit. Patients hang around in cramped lobbies and corridors waiting for their queuing number to be called before they can see a doctor. We realized that finding a way to give this unproductive, wasted time back to patients would allow Philips to live up to their ‘Sense and Simplicity’ brand promise.