Philips brand proposition is 'Sense and Simplicity'. It is
relatively easy to communicate within their traditional consumer
products divisions, but harder for Philips' Healthcare division to
become meaningful and rewarding to consumers in Chinese
hospitals.
The Philips target audience in China is an affluent, working,
white collar audience. They have busy work and social lives. Time
in busy cities like Shanghai is scarce and can be wasted when
dealing with government bureaucracies like hospitals which have
long waiting times and a ticketed queue system.
Philips developed the communication platform called 'Create
Time', to bring Sense and Simplicity to life in the most meaningful
way possible by giving consumers back that most precious commodity,
their own time. The brand developed a tool that let patients track
their place in the hospital queue. This freed them up to leave the
hospital for 3 or 4 hours without missing their appointment. Once
given their place in the queue, patients registered their mobile on
a Philips terminal and received a text message giving them time to
get back to hospital. Philips inserted brand messages into the text
response mechanisms. 5 major hospitals installed the system, which
reduced over-crowding in public areas and increased the efficiency
of their patient flow. At the same time Philips rolled out a TV
campaign that demonstrated the benefits to consumers in using the
newly refurbished, less crowded community clinics, rather than the
major hospitals. It showed consumers that they could save time by
visiting the community clinic. By working with the Public Health
Bureau to classify the Philips commercial as an official public
health message we secured a 65% reduction in Shanghai TV airtime
costs.
The system has already been rolled out to 10 hospital departments
in Shanghai. Each terminal is used by 125 consumers per day on
average, creating time for them and reducing congestion for
remaining patients. Our simple, common sense system saves each
patient 3 hours on average.