Kim and Kanye: A hospital communicator’s dream?
Instead of getting baby gifts, the celebrity couple asked that donations be made to Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Oh, and they specified traditional media to publicize the gesture.
It’s not often that TMZ reports on hospital news.
But that’s what happened when Kim Kardashian and Kanye West said that instead of baby gifts, they wanted friends, family, and fans to make donations to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Fund at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.
Julie Pesch, director of public affairs and communications at the hospital, read the TMZ Google alert on her phone as she was riding the bus to work.
She remembers thinking: “Wow! This is better than any advertising—this is Kim Kardashian!”
Pesch says got into the “newsroom mentality” as soon as she got to her desk. With the help of two staffers, they contacted the couple’s publicist. In less than five minutes, the hospital wrote a news statement and asked for the publicist’s approval. It read:
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