2006 UNIVATOR Award Winner

Best Marketing Techniques
Cintas
Cincinnati, OH

As one of the fasting growing segments of the economy, the healthcare industry has been a source of steady and flourishing business opportunities for uniform manufacturers and distributors. But it can be a challenging market to penetrate. That is why we applaud the efforts of Cintas, a UNIVATOR recipient last year and winner of this year’s best marketing techniques award. The company is being honored for its comprehensive promotional work in the healthcare field and for its continued innovations in marketing to other business segments. Below are examples of both.

Research conducted by Cintas forced a change in the way the company markets its products to this industry. “Healthcare professionals are focusing on the importance of patient satisfaction,” said Jennifer Logan, marketing associate, Cintas. “Knowing this, we now emphasize patient satisfaction in sales materials. This is different from how our competition is approaching selling uniforms to healthcare. We are stressing how the importance of a unified apparel program in large hospitals directly relates to patient satisfaction.”

In their presentations, Cintas representatives point out that a unified apparel program creates a professional first impression, instantly conveys trust and credibility, increases security for patients and employees, builds a consistent image and brand identity and gives the hospital a competitive advantage

To re info rce the approach, Cintas also created a video called ‘The Value of Image Apparel for Healthcare.’ It was sent out as a direct mail campaign to 2,500 top healthcare professionals, driving them to the Cintas website to watch the new video.

UniformMarket was also impressed by the Cintas promotional vehicle, “C, The Uniform Magazine.” Cintas is well known in the for producing “The Uniform Book” (formerly known as The Big Book). While The Uniform Book is a great tool for showing new products within an entire product line, it is only produced every two years. “Customers were telling us that they’d like to see new products sooner, and thus C The Uniform Magazine was born,” said Logan .

Produced every six months, C (as the company calls it) works harder than most catalogs. C builds on itself, so that new products shown in the spring edition are shown again side by side with the new products in the fall edition. C is also smaller that most catalogs -- a mere 9” high by 7” wide. “This was done on purpose so that it would stand out in the sea of catalogs that people receive everyday,” notes Logan.