With the aim of fostering sports and supporting athletes at all levels in local communities, LUMIS Marketing worked to team up the nationally renowned Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Center in Ohio with a local high school in a mutually beneficial partnership.

For Crystal Clinic, one of the largest orthopaedic clinics in Ohio, caring for sports injuries is a focus of the business. In that regard, forming a partnership with Perry High School located in Massillon, Ohio, to support their student athletes was a natural fit. The high school athletic department benefits from the clinic’s financial contributions for their boys and girls indoor and outdoor sports programs year-round.

In this way, according to Jeff Salamon, president and creative director of LUMIS Marketing in Arkon, the clinic connects with its communities and builds a reputation with the citizens it’s serving even before they need a hand getting back on their feet after an injury.

“Whether you’re hiking or playing on an over-50’s soccer team, or a baseball/softball team, you’re still an athlete,” Salamon said. “You still have a competitive draw. You need to take care of your body.”

LUMIS handles Crystal Clinic’s marketing development and has proven a close and dedicated partner over the last five years. Through working with DistrictWON, an Ohio-based marketing consultant that builds community ties by linking company brands with schools, LUMIS has promoted the clinic’s name to high school sports teams, engaged with schools, and the communities important to its physicians and therapists. 

“We’re involved from high school sports all the way up,” Salamon said. “It’s not a one and done. We look at the importance of sports in life. It teaches you how to win, how to lose gracefully. We like the whole concept at the high school level.”

At Perry High School, the athletic department faculty manager, Brad Fox, noted that the partnership with Crystal Clinic has yielded positive feedback throughout the community. He noted handouts received from Crystal Clinic are used to inform students and their families to exercise each day, and the contributions from Crystal Clinic go right back into their teams and student athletes.

“The support we get from Crystal Clinic is vital to our high school community,” Fox said. “Parents today want options when it comes to athletic injuries and injury care.” 

At this point, Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Center has 20 locations and employs more than 1,000 professionals, so local touches like this help it stand out and stay engrained in its communities. It and its Crystal Clinic Plastic Surgeons division today have offices in Canton, Cleveland, Ashtabula and Westlake, among others, sprawling its reach statewide. 

From LUMIS Marketing’s perspective, this type of partnership is special, but not necessarily new. The company has been doing fan engagement, sports engagement, and sponsorship for years. It’s a different scale of engagement than its work with organizations such as the PGA, Kent State University or the Akron RubberDucks, the Double-A Minor League Baseball Affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians, for example, but according to Salamon it’s all about making the right connections. Perry High School is the right place for LUMIS and Crystal Clinic. 

And these engagements are not meant to be one-offs.

“We have our identity there to let them know we’re there,” Salamon said. “We not only have our names in the gymnasiums, we’re out on the field. Some games we’ll toss out therapy balls for the fans at school games. We have tables set up with information, so that if they ever need us, they’ll know we’re there.”

Rocky River, Ohio-based DistrictWON creates meaningful brand connections within local communities through marketing partnerships between businesses and high schools. For more information on how to reach high school students, parents and administrators in a way that truly makes a difference in the community, visit https://www.districtwon.com, https://www.facebook.com/districtwon, or follow https://twitter.com/districtwon on Twitter