by admin | Jun 3, 2021 | News
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—June 3, 2021 – Amendola Communications today announced it has won a Bulldog PR Award in the Best Healthcare Campaign category, further enhancing the company’s reputation as a top, innovative public relations (PR) and marketing communications agency for healthcare and health IT.
Bulldog Awards, the only PR awards program judged exclusively by journalists, honored Amendola with a 2021 PR Silver Award for a media campaign designed to raise the profile of Appriss Health through coverage of OpenBeds, an Appriss subsidiary that offers a comprehensive behavioral health capacity management and referral technology solution to help create trusted treatment networks that improve support and care delivery to patients in need.
“We are elated to be recognized for the creativity and energy our team put into this campaign, especially in a year with a record number of entries,” said agency CEO, Jodi Amendola. “Given how COVID-19 dominated healthcare news in 2020, raising the profile of a client focused on substance abuse solutions was a challenge. But our team did a superb job of telling the inspiring story of OpenBeds and, in the process, building awareness of Appriss Health as a public health partner for states to address substance abuse and behavioral health needs.”
Amendola’s strategy leveraged Appriss Health Senior Vice President and OpenBeds Co-founder Nishi Rawat, MD, whose experience as a critical care physician unable to connect patients with needed behavioral healthcare inspired her to start OpenBeds in 2015 with her father, a systems engineer. Dr. Rawat’s compelling story and the work done by OpenBeds would fill a growing need among healthcare journalists for compelling COVID stories.
The plan called for outreach to local media as well as to national health and trade media, with a focus on reporters and publications covering issues related to the opioid crisis and mental health. In addition to more traditional article coverage, the campaign aimed to tell a broader story of growing state efforts and proposing data-based story ideas.
Amendola also pursued a thought leadership strategy, creating bylined content for Appriss Health leadership. These included an op-ed on the need for action to address the opioid crisis amid the COVID-19 pandemic for its president that ran in Appriss Health’s hometown newspaper, the Louisville Courier-Journal, a commentary by Dr. Rawat on the need for increased access to medication-assisted treatment published on KevinMD, and a piece calling for expanded naloxone availability by Appriss Health’s pharmacy leader.
The Amendola campaign for Appriss Health generated overwhelmingly positive media exposure. Sentiment analysis by Meltwater shows that 87.1% of media coverage of the company was positive (with 0% negative coverage), while OpenBeds garnered 91.49% positive coverage and no negative coverage.
Amendola secured 27 media placements for Appriss Health in 2020, along with 18 for OpenBeds and 10 for Appriss. Total media coverage of Appriss Health last year reached a potential 8.52 million readers. The vast majority of those potential readers (6.03 million) were earned in the fourth quarter as the campaign began to show results.
The Bulldog Awards are run by Bulldog Reporter, the publishing arm of Agility PR Solutions, a provider of media database, monitoring, and PR measurement solutions designed to simplify the communications lifecycle. These annual awards celebrate excellence in public relations and communications. Any professionals involved in public relations, communications, marketing, social media, branding, product management, sales and investor relations are eligible.
About Amendola
Amendola is an award-winning, insights-driven public relations and marketing firm that integrates media relations, social media, content and lead-gen programs to move healthcare, life sciences/pharma and healthcare IT decision-makers to action. The agency represents some of the industry’s best-known brands, as well as groundbreaking startups that are disrupting the status quo. Nearly 90% of its client base represents multi-year clients and/or repeat client executives. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros understand the ongoing complexities of the healthcare ecosystem and provide strategic guidance and creative direction to drive positive ROI, boost reputation and increase market share. Making an impact since 2003, Amendola combines traditional and digital media to fuel meaningful and measurable growth. For more information about the industry’s “A-Team,” visit www.acmarketingpr.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Media Contact:
Marcia G. Rhodes, Amendola Communications, 480.664.8412 ext. 15, mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com
by admin | May 18, 2021 | News
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.—May 18, 2021 – Amendola Communications today announced it has won a Hermes Creative Award, further enhancing the company’s reputation as a leading innovative public relations (PR) and marketing communications agency for healthcare and health IT.
The Hermes Creative Awards, one of the oldest and largest competitions in the world, honored Amendola with a 2021 Platinum Winner statuette for a Media Response campaign on behalf of Kaufman Hall, which provides business strategy, operational, and financial consulting services to healthcare organizations. Amendola’s award came in the Media Relations section of the Public Relations/Communications category. Platinum is the highest award given in the competition.
“We are thrilled to be recognized for the hard work and creativity our team put into this campaign,” said Jodi Amendola, CEO of Amendola. “During the pandemic, it was critical for hospitals and health systems to have public support and for policymakers to understand the immense challenges these frontline organizations were facing. Our campaign enabled Kaufman Hall to achieve its goal of advocating for hospitals and health systems during COVID-19 and raising its profile.”
As the pandemic spread around the globe, Kaufman Hall management experts began advising financial executives in various sectors on the coronavirus’ impact and what they could do to respond. For healthcare executives, Kaufman Hall focused on the pandemic’s effect on treasury markets and liquidity and how hospitals and health systems should react. For higher education leaders, Kaufman Hall offered advice on tuition planning, international students and e-learning, while consulting financial institutions on reforecasting, scenario planning analysis, and credit and liquidity risk evaluations.
The company needed a way to increase awareness of COVID-related financial and operational consulting services in those industries. Amendola launched an aggressive campaign in April 2020 to position Kaufman Hall as experts on the financial impact of the pandemic and highlight its consulting work for clients. While Amendola had extensive relationships with healthcare publications and writers, the agency also had to implement strategies to attain placements in consumer, financial, and regional publications.
Amendola’s PR and media relations campaign, which ran through December 2020, was a huge success. Among the prominent consumer and trade publication placements earned by the campaign were:
Other media outlets successfully targeted by Amendola for Kaufman Hall included Managed Healthcare Executive, MedCity News, Kaiser Health News, Consumer Affairs, The Bond Buyer, and Bank Business News. The total number of unique monthly visitors to the news sites where Amendola earned placements for its client was nearly 43 million.
Now in its 15th year, Hermes Creative Awards is sponsored by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals, which engages senior-level experienced professionals to serve as competition judges who evaluate the creative industry’s best publications, branding collateral, websites, videos, and advertising, marketing, and communication programs.
About Amendola
Amendola is an award-winning, insights-driven public relations and marketing firm that integrates media relations, social media, content and lead-gen programs to move healthcare, life sciences/pharma and healthcare IT decision-makers to action. The agency represents some of the industry’s best-known brands, as well as groundbreaking startups that are disrupting the status quo. Nearly 90% of its client base represents multi-year clients and/or repeat client executives. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros understand the ongoing complexities of the healthcare ecosystem and provide strategic guidance and creative direction to drive positive ROI, boost reputation and increase market share. Making an impact since 2003, Amendola combines traditional and digital media to fuel meaningful and measurable growth. For more information about the industry’s “A-Team,” visit www.acmarketingpr.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Media Contact:
Marcia G. Rhodes | Amendola Communications | mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com
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by admin | Oct 22, 2020 | News
Agency honored for its work on Air Methods’ No Membership Required program
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., Oct. 22, 2020—Amendola Communications, a nationally recognized, award-winning healthcare and technology public relations and marketing agency, announced today that it has been named a finalist in PR News’ 2020 Platinum PR Awards for its strategic integrated PR, social media and digital campaign with Air Methods, a leading national air medical services company. This distinction is one of several awards the agency has earned in recent years for its ability to develop high-value content for healthcare organizations that speaks to market needs.
Amendola focused on establishing Air Methods as a leader in reforming the air medical services industry with its No Membership Required (NMR) program, created to eliminate unnecessary air medical memberships for patients and shift the focus to going in-network with health insurance companies throughout the U.S. The primary goal was to educate the public about Air Methods’ efforts and demonstrate the company’s thought leadership in industry best practices, billing reform and clinical innovation.
“Collaborating with Air Methods on this important NMR campaign is vital to paving the way for necessary changes to eliminate unnecessary memberships for patients/consumers,” said agency CEO Jodi Amendola. “We’re honored that our hard work and impressive outcomes have been recognized by PR News. The results of this campaign really speak for themselves: our aggressive outreach and content development generated 209 organic media placements and our digital campaign earned more than 21 million video plays, 25 million impressions, and more than 21 million post engagements. Most importantly, this campaign and our overall partnership with Air Methods, has led to increased awareness of the company as a visionary leader and industry trendsetter in the air medical services industry.”
With extensive media outreach, the NMR campaign outlined Air Methods’ commitment to continued high-quality air medical services as well as its focus on eliminating potential financial burdens for its patients. Amendola skillfully communicated this message to show what Air Methods has done to revolutionize medical care in the air and serve as patient advocates.
“The Amendola/Air Methods partnership has shown results from the beginning,” said Dallan Huff, Air Methods senior vice president of Marketing and Communications. “As the first air medical company to eliminate air medical memberships, we knew we would be plowing new ground and Amendola was critical in ensuring our success. They were able to help us create a strong narrative on why memberships were the past and how Air Methods was leading the industry into the future.”
In addition to sharing article placements with a wide audience, a nonstop stream of social media posts delivered positive, consistent and constructive messaging that promoted the NMR program itself along with the underlying principles behind it. Amendola curated content from a wide variety of sources, even some that had been critical of prior industry practices, to further the message that Air Methods was at the tip of the spear for reforming the way the business side of emergency air transport is delivered.
PR News’ Platinum PR Awards celebrate the ingenuity and leadership behind the year’s most outstanding communications initiatives. Platinum PR Award winners set industry benchmarks for excellence across all areas of PR.
About Amendola Communications
Amendola is an award-winning, insights-driven public relations and marketing firm that integrates media relations, social media, content and lead gen programs to move healthcare, life sciences/pharma and healthcare IT decision-makers to action. The agency represents some of the industry’s best-known brands as well as groundbreaking startups that are disrupting the status quo. Nearly 90% of its client base represents multi-year clients and/or repeat client executives. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros understand the ongoing complexities of the healthcare ecosystem and provide strategic guidance and creative direction to drive positive ROI, boost reputation and increase market share. Making an impact since 2003, Amendola combines traditional and digital media to fuel meaningful and measurable growth. For more information about the industry’s “A-Team,” visit www.acmarketingpr.com, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Media Contact: Marcia G. Rhodes; mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com
by admin | Jun 4, 2020 | News
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. June 4, 2020 Amendola Communications announced today that it has won two 2020 Bulldog PR Awards, solidifying the company’s reputation as a top public relations (PR) and marketing communications agency for healthcare and health IT. The Bulldog PR Awards, which celebrate the best and brightest corporate communications and PR efforts, honored Amendola with a Gold award for a Crisis Communication campaign for its client Air Methods and a Silver award for a Business-to-Business (B2B) Product Launch campaign for long-time client Vocera Communications.
“We are proud to be recognized for the hard work that our team put into executing both metrics-driven campaigns,” said Jodi Amendola, CEO
of Amendola. “From September 1, 2018 to July 30, 2019, Air Methods saw their positive PR coverage double from 28% to 45%. The success of the Vocera campaign in generating both traditional and new media hits will serve as a blueprint for future product introductions.”
AIR METHODS
“Amendola Helps Air Methods’ Reputation Take Flight” campaign took Gold in the Best Crisis Management category. Emergency air medical transport service Air Methods called upon Amendola after facing ongoing negative coverage about their pricing model which had been misrepresented by former patients in the media. Amendola took innovative steps through social media outreach, proactive storytelling, localized base engagements, and digital media to change the public perception of Air Methods and the quality of media coverage about the company.
Amendola created an all-encompassing, 40-page, multi-pronged crisis communications playbook to anticipate and help address a myriad of potential challenges. Additionally, the agency crafted a proactive storytelling pipeline that included information about Air Methods’ business goals to curb balance bills, showcased positive patient stories and highlighted the innovative clinical processes that Air Methods created that were impacting the industry. With the proactive storytelling, a large element of the strategy was to implement Air Methods’ first-ever integrated marketing campaign to leverage more channels than ever before to ensure all stakeholders received the message.
By placing a human face on the company Air Methods has been able to use their visibility as an industry leader to encourage other changes to industry practices. For example, it eliminated “memberships” that offered little value if patients were transported by a different company and is now pushing the industry as a whole to do the same.
VOCERA COMMUNICATIONS
“Vocera Calls on Amendola to Introduce Smartbadge Wearable Communications Device” campaign took Silver in the Best B2B Product Launch category. Vocera Communications, whose mission is to simplify and improve the lives of healthcare professionals and patients, while enabling hospitals to enhance quality of care and operation efficiency, launched a voice-activated communications badge, the Smartbadge. A new category of wearable communication devices, the “Smartbadge” enables clinicians to communicate using all the options available in the expanded Vocera Platform voice calling, messaging, clinical alerts/alarms and more.
With intentions of making a splash from the start, Vocera turned to Amendola to develop an integrated PR/marketing strategy that encompassed generating quick visibility during the introductory period (January-February) while also being sustainable throughout 2019. To seed early coverage, Amendola pre-pitched a press release to healthcare and national media journalists, including broadcast media and podcasts. Furthermore, the
plan called for the creation of various writing pieces as it relates to communication in healthcare, aggressive content marketing efforts for infographics, and the submission of Vocera executives for a broad range of speaking opportunities.
The initiative resulted in 29 high value, single-focus features or interviews, four byline placements, three confirmed speaker opportunities, and a prestigious MedTech Breakthrough Award. Additionally, the campaign significantly impacted its Twitter presence resulting in 173% rise in @mentions received, 145% rise in new followers, 312% increase in retweets, 429% increase in click-throughs, and nearly 50% rise in impressions to 12,200.
About Amendola
Amendola is an award-winning national public relations, marketing communications, digital and content marketing firm. Named one of the best information technology (IT) PR firms in the nation four times by PRSourceCode, Amendola represents some of the best-known brands and groundbreaking startups in the healthcare and HIT industries. Amendola’s seasoned team of PR and marketing pros delivers strategic guidance and effective solutions to help organizations boost their reputation and drive market share. For more information about the PR industry’s “A Team,” visit”http://acmarketingpr.adesignfoundation.com, and follow Amendola on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Media Contact:
Marcia Rhodes, Amendola Communications, 480.664.8412 ext. 15 / mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com
by admin | Dec 13, 2017 | News
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. December 13, 2017 Amendola Communications CEO and co-founder Jodi Amendola has been named to PR News list of the Top Women in PR for 2017. The prestigious award recognizes women executives who have made bold advances in managing crises, developing brand messages, protecting and building brand reputations, and creating content for digital platforms.
Other honorees include PR executives from the world’s biggest public relations agencies, as well as communications leaders at some of the world’s best-known companies, including Microsoft, T-Mobile, FedEx, Nissan, General Motors, GE, Southwest Airlines, Bayer and Samsung.
Jodi is an accomplished leader with 25 years of experience in developing, implementing and executing high-impact, integrated business-to-business public relations and marketing campaigns. Beginning in 2003, she pioneered an agency focused squarely on the burgeoning healthcare information technology sector. Over the next decade, Jodi transformed a boutique agency with a handful of small clients into the healthcare IT industry’s recognized PR leader a national, full-service public relations and marketing agency serving dozens of technology innovators ranging from early-stage startups to large public companies.
A hands-on leader, Jodi provides strategic direction and ongoing involvement in all phases of client public relations and marketing programs. She embodies the “client-first” dedication and “get-it-done” attitude that makes Amendola Communications both a fun workplace and a collaborative learning environment. Thanks to Jodi’s inspirational leadership and values, clients find that Amendola Communications is more than just an agency, as demonstrated by the partnership mentality and commitment to excellence shared by every member of her team.
“I’m honored to join this remarkable group of accomplished women,” said Jodi Amendola. “It’s been an amazing PR journey. I am so thankful for the many mentors, clients, business associates, employees and family members who have supported me along the way. I look forward to achieving more milestones and to continuing to help healthcare and healthcare IT companies expand their market dominance and industry thought leadership.”
Jodi and the Amendola Communications team are available to discuss your public relations and marketing needs, including media relations, content marketing, branding, digital marketing, search engine marketing, website design and development, and social media. For more information, please visit www.acmarketingpr.com or email jamendola@acmarketingpr.com.
Media Contact: Marcia Rhodes | Amendola Communications | mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com |602-793-1561
