Cardinal Health & CareFusion

Ex Award for Best Multi-venue Event (B2B)

Challenge

The Exordium Group was retained by Cardinal Health, a global health care services company ranked 21st in the Fortune 500, to assist in the spin-off of its medical technology brands into a free standing, publicly traded company.

Working hand in hand with the C-suite and marketing team, CareFusion was launched on the New York Stock Exchange as a $4.5 billion global company with 15,000 employees doing business in 120 countries.

Solution

The Exordium Group undertook a full international strategic review for Cardinal Health across all business units impacted by the spin-off. Our work included interviews across business units, product penetration analysis and cross-sell mapping, defining the target buying audience demographics and psychographics with a particular emphasis on lifestyle interests, and a complete competitive positioning analysis prior to the brand creation and launch.  In stage two we moved to creative ideation for an integrated experiential campaign and strategic digital execution options in partnership with The 1st Movement.

We discovered that jazz and medicine are a natural fit. Support for and interest in the arts, particularly jazz, is important to many of CareFusion’s target decision-makers.

We created the CareFusion Jazz Festival Series and negotiated CareFusion’s sponsorship of a series of independent jazz festivals internationally. These included the iconic Newport Jazz Festival, New York Jazz Festival, Chicago Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Manly (Sydney) Jazz Festival and the Paris Jazz Festival.

The campaign integrated jazz artists, music, and metaphors into all CareFusion marketing including: an international public relations campaign, a trade show jazz lounge, a traveling semi-truck, a website and interactive campaign, social media, CareFusion’s national sales conferences, in-hospital posters, direct to hospital broadcasts of live festival performances, email and direct mail outreach, on down to their corporate hold music. On-site festival activation included VIP hospitality, artist meet & greets, a public tent with interactive displays on CareFusion and the Rhythm of Care cause initiative, festival branding and full measured media campaigns by each festival promoting the CareFusion sponsorship.

Results

The Exordium Group won the prestigious Ex Award for “Best Multi-venue Event (B2B)” for the CareFusion Jazz Festival Series, besting  global brands Shell and Pepsi in the finals. 

The campaign exceeded all measured objectives, achieved in excess of a 10:1 return on investment (ROI), generated international brand awareness amongst its target customers, and drove 4+ billion impressions in measured media worldwide for the CareFusion brand. CareFusion Jazz Festival Paris alone delivered over $10 million in measured media value to CareFusion.

The television broadcasts touched  1,500+ hospitals and 1,200+ Veterans Affairs locations. CareFusion’s sales executives acknowledged the program as a powerful means to create new relationships, open doors previously closed and generate significant revenue.