RediClinic turns to cable for marketing needs

HOUSTON —Great experience. That’s the tagline for a new line of television commercials being tested by RediClinic in several markets with three 30-second spots—two targeting consumers and one targeting employers—that highlight the convenience and value inherent at RediClinic.

The spots debuted in the Richmond, Va., market Aug. 26.

It’s a new marketing platform for RediClinic, noted Web Golinkin, RediClinic chief executive officer, in an interview with Drug Store News, that’s expected to drive home the clinic’s message—convenient, professional, efficient and accessible health care—a lot harder than the newspaper advertising and radio commercials the clinic has employed in the past.

“We’ve been doing retail screening programs for 10 years,” Golinkin said, referencing RediClinic’s parent company InterFit Health, an independent provider of health-screening services. RediClinic branched out into the retail clinic business almost three years ago. “Over that period, we’ve tried a lot of different marketing channels and vehicles, but we’ve never really tried cable TV advertising. We decided to give it a shot. One of the things that you can do in television that you can’t do as easily in other media is give them a sense of what a RediClinic really looks and feels like—how our nurse practitioners [interact] and the customers they typically interact with.”

That shot translates into a six-figure marketing budget that’s expected to attract not only moms with sick children, but also employers watching healthcare costs escalate on a quarterly basis. “As far as the employer spot is concerned, the message is that we can help employers control their healthcare costs both directly and indirectly,” Golinkin said. On its Web site, RediClinic promises to reduce overall healthcare costs for employers by 5 percent or more.

The attraction to cable TV advertising is in the capability for cable to zone the messages—delivering RediClinic advertising to those homes with a RediClinic nearby.

“When you’re in big markets, like Atlanta for example, we don’t have clinics everywhere,” Golinkin said, noting that Atlanta hosts 16 RediClinics currently. “With cable TV you can zone the advertising and that makes it potentially more efficient.”