Carestream Health won the 2014 Pinnacle Award for print advertising from the Rochester Chapter of the American Marketing Association.

Carestream is dedicated to making customer engagement a priority, leading the marketing team to develop channels that reach radiology professionals around the world. In 2014, Carestream responded to a number of requests to develop a company calendar that would be provided to radiology customers in global markets.

Regulatory standards in the United States prevent the distribution of such materials to U.S. customers. These standards encouraged us to explore providing a memorable corporate calendar to our international markets. As a marketing team, we wanted to craft a calendar that was unique, high quality and would be successful in raising awareness. We sought to produce a communications piece that our regional public relations teams would be willing to print, as the printing expenses would come out of each region’s individual marketing budget. The corporate calendars exceeded our expectations—as they were distributed in 50% more of our target global markets than we had anticipated, covering 16 countries.

The primary goal of the calendar was to raise awareness of the Carestream brand rather than to promote specific products. In order to develop a calendar that would successfully convey the brand to customers without an overkill of company products, we found it necessary to develop a simple, yet appealing calendar that could be easily seen. Therefore, we took a simple approach when designing the nature-themed calendars. The design was to be visually engaging, while subtly featuring Carestream brand messages.

Collective positive feedback from hundreds customers and regional public relations teams was an indication that the calendar generated favor and raised awareness of the Carestream brand. This type of engagement is what has driven Carestream to be successful in such a niche market. Quantitative success was seen by the accomplishment of specific goals. We were able to exceed our distribution goal by circulating 20% more calendars than expected while remaining under the maximum budget by a considerable amount.

This practice demonstrates the value that can be gained through simplistic branding. We did not rely on marketing clutter or demonstration of products in order to gain recognition. Rather, we produced a practical corporate calendar that was aesthetic and effective in communicating the brand.

Robert Salmon, APR, is Director of Corporate Communications at Carestream. Salmon’s extensive experience with brand management and public relations has been an important part to the growth of Carestream.