Health clinic network plans to double footprint

February 1, 2010 by Dave Haynes

I’ve known Ryan Cruise for a few years and seen him run into a speed bump here and there in his plans to aggressively build out a health media network in Canada and internationally. But he now has the backing, plans, partners and agreements in place to double the footprint of his medical waiting room DOOH footprint in Canada this year.

Anyone who follows the DOOH industry has cause for skepticism when operators announce big expansions, but Cruise was pretty careful about putting this out there. I know because <insert disclaimer here> I wrote the release and it was held up until the felt comfy to put it out there. Lord knows we’ve all seen and heard stuff from people who were going to do 1,000s of sites and still haven’t got into double figures.

The release’s details:  

The Mommentum Health Network (MHN), owned and operated by Toronto-based Cruise Media Group, plans to have patient education and information systems in place in some 400 physician office waiting areas by the end of 2010, covering Canada’s largest markets and connecting with more than 2,000,000 health conscious consumers every month.

MHN’s digital out of home network installed base is now heavily focused on Montreal and the Greater Toronto Area, but expansion will open up and grow new markets in Vancouver, Calgary and Winnipeg, creating a national footprint attractive to key advertising accounts. 

MHN flat-panel video information systems are provided free of charge to qualified medical clinic operators, offering credible health and wellness programming – such as nutrition tips, disease awareness and prevention, and women’s health issues – that entertains, educates and engages waiting room audiences. Clinic operators also get tools that let them run location-specific messages, such as office hours and special clinic notices. The MHN system offers the combined benefits of improving patient communications and education efforts, reducing perceived waiting times, and enhancing the overall patient experience.

MHN’s program is supported by advertisers, attracted by the opportunity to communicate directly with Canadians when they are focused on personal and family health. MHN’s smart media distribution technology allows for granular targeting of advertising and promotion campaigns – from network-wide national programs to local and hyper-local ad clusters that enable health services companies, such as physiotherapists, to market only to patients visiting clinics in the same general geographic area.

“We’ve been operating for three years now, and we’ve learned so much about the needs of both our clinic partners, and the brands and service companies who really get the media opportunity that we can offer, ” says Ryan Cruise, President and CEO of Cruise Media Group. “Getting national coverage is really important to our plans, and the pieces are now in place to do that.” 

Getting to 400 and multiple markets makes the network more interesting to media planners, but Cruise says where there is really encouraging activity is in hyper-local sales and tapping into non-traditional advertisers like medical services. Medical is also an area that has its own challenges, but on balance, is one of the best DOOH environments because of the venue dynamics and the ad budgets available.

Good to read of a network that is growing and appears to be thriving.