University of Chicago Hospitals selects CCFC as its new ad agency and marketing partner

University of Chicago Hospitals selects CCFC as its new ad agency and marketing partner

July 28, 2003

After an extensive review, the University of Chicago Hospitals has selected Coil Counts Ford & Cheney of Chicago as its advertising agency. CCFC will be responsible for all of the Hospitals' advertising, creative and production.

"Coil Counts Ford & Cheney has consistently demonstrated expertise in brand-building, knows the Chicago local and regional markets and already has a great deal of experience in health care," said Ivy Bennett, vice president for marketing at the Hospitals.

"We look forward to working with them," she added, "to let more people know all the remarkable things the University of Chicago Hospitals is doing to provide the best possible care by enabling its patients from the Midwest and from around the world to access the latest medical advances and breakthroughs, many of which are being originated and developed by UCH."

"The University of Chicago Hospitals represent the pinnacle of Chicago's healthcare institutions," said Michael Cheney, a creative director/art director at CCFC. "It's a privilege and honor to help get their message out to people in Chicagoland and beyond."

CCFC is a medium-sized Chicago-based agency formed in 1987 by five colleagues who had extensive backgrounds with national brands in the big advertising agencies but wanted the creative freedom and personal involvement available only in a smaller, more focused company. The new agency has grown by gaining several clients in health care, financial and other services. CCFC successfully launched the Advocate Health Care brand, for example, when that network formed in 1996 by Lutheran General Hospital and the EHS Health System coming together. Within just five years, CCFC had helped make Advocate perhaps the best-known hospital network in the region.

Since opening in 1927, the University of Chicago Hospitals have played a dominant role in medical innovation, basic and clinical research, patient care and community service. Eleven researchers associated with the University have won the Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology. The University receives more annual research funding from the National Institutes of Health than any other institution in Illinois.

In addition to its national reputation as a leader in health care, clinical research and medical education, the University of Chicago Hospitals was among the first in Chicago to work with an advertising agency. Many hospitals and health systems throughout the region have copied their 1987 campaign, coordinated by the Storandt-Pann agency.

"Being selected as the marketing partners of the only U.S.News & World Report Honor Roll hospital in the state of Illinois is a high honor indeed," said Kirk Borland, president of CCFC

"We have always admired the University of Chicago Hospitals for both their clinical excellence and their total dedication to their patients," added Ben Counts, creative director and copywriter at CCFC. "This awesome institution gives us an embarrassment of marketing riches to work with."