All the small things
True care, truth brings
I’ll take one lift
Your ride, best trip….
She left me roses by the stairs
Surprises let me know she cares — “All the Small Things,” Blink-182,
1999
A 27-year old official music video for Blink-182 ‘s “All the Small Things” has 426 million views, but we much
prefer the song’s month-old music video, with just 14,000 views as of this morning.
Actually a commercial for a Midwest
healthcare system, the new video’s visuals — in contrast to the crude ‘90s parodies of the original — bring a highly empathetic meaning to the song’s lyrics. The images range from
a physician whose scrubs read “Small thing. Sitting to chat” to “warm blankets” and “French braiding” a patient’s hair.
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The agency behind this ad is
Chicago’s Highdive, in its first work for Parkview Health, a 148-year-old nonprofit healthcare system currently concentrated in northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio.
“The song is
all about the small gestures that happen in a relationship, not big dramatic moments,” Parkview Vice President of Marketing Sangeetha Ragavan explained to Pharma & Health
Insider: “the moments that matter most, and that’s what healthcare is built on.”
Ragavan also pointed to the song’s appeal across generations, saying that the
nostalgia element helps consumers “connect emotionally.”
Titled “A Human View” and sporting the tagline “Every small thing means everything,” the campaign
is the first from Parkview to be spearheaded byRagavan, who came on board 15 months ago after spending over a decade marketing snack foods and candy
for the likes of PepsiCo, Haribo and Mars.
Ragavan said “A Human View” grew out of research she initiated to discover Parkview’s “enduring superpower over the last 150 years.”
One key answer,
derived not only “from a patient standpoint, but also prospective patients and co-workers,” turned out to be a strong desire for “human connections.”
Ragavan provided
examples of “real stories we heard from our co-workers (“we don’t call them ‘employees’”) and patients.
One co-worker, she noted, “saw a patient
opening a can. Without being asked, they went and grabbed a glass of ice for them.”
Another example: “a nurse sat with a patient and held their hand throughout the night so that
they felt less scared.”
“These small things make big unexpected outcomes,” Ragavan elaborated.
The resulting campaign, she said, “made us a little bit
uncomfortable because it’s not a category norm. But Highdive said, ‘Let’s break the category norms.’”
She continued: “While much healthcare advertising
tends to feel clinical, a little bit restrained,” this campaign “breaks from the pattern” not only “by pairing genuine human moments that we actually hear from patients and
co-workers,” but also through “unexpected energy by using a music-video-style kind of editing.”
The aim, she said, is to “clearly tell the experience of Parkview to the
outside world,” which is now growing as Parkview expands into Central Indiana and further.
The campaign, expected to run for close to a year, is targeting both consumers and healthcare
professionals.
The TV spot is running on stations across all of Indiana, plus several counties in Ohio.
Other content is running on billboards, radio and social, and includes a
recruitment campaign. Vision is the media buying agency.
In addition to the :60 hero music video, the spot is also being used in :30, :15 and :06 versions, all of which can be found here.
While Blink-182’s “All the Small Things” has previously been used in such ad
campaigns as background in a 2020 BMW commercial and foreground in a 2022 holiday spot for U.K. retailer John Lewis, Parkview says this marks the tune’s first appearance in healthcare marketing.
