Kim Deppe is vice president of marketing and communications for St. Vincent’s Medical Center. She also holds an APR designation and is president of the Florida Public Relations Association.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN
TO BE AN APR?
The Accredited Public Relations {APR] designation is one you acquire after five years in the field and passing a day-long written and oral exam. It measures your knowledge of the history of the profession, ethics, communication skills and case studies. The APR is comparable to the CPA designation.”
WHAT IS HER ROLE?
“I’m over marketing and public relations, so I help people in Northeast Florida understand what St. Vincent’s is and what we do. What makes this place tick is the fact that the mission to care for the sick and poor is alive.”
WHAT’S ON THE HORIZON?
“St. Vincent’s is on an expansion path. We’re going to double the size of the DePaul parking garage for the cancer center. Across Riverside Boulevard at King Street, we’re building a new family medical center. That’s where we have the residency program for doctors. We just broke ground on that. On the emergency room side, we’re going to build the new heart center. Of course, we’re also acquiring St. Luke’s from Mayo. Sometime in the next three years, we will be operating there.”
IS BAPTIST SOUTH BAD NEWS FOR ST. VINCENT’S?
“Our projections are that it
will not have a major impact. Heart and cancer care is where most of our focus is, so we’re less dependent on our geographic area than other local hospitals.”
HOMETOWN
“I’m originally from New Jersey, outside of Atlantic City. I moved here the day before Hurricane Andrew struck from Louisiana, where I thought they had a lot of hurricanes until I came here.”
HOW LONG WITH THE ORGANIZATION?
“I’ve been with St. Vincent’s through the whole merge with Baptist and then un-merge process.” She relocated here to take a job as marketing manager in 1992, and, a few months later, she was promoted to director of marketing.
EDUCATION
English, with a minor in journalism, was Deppe’s major at Flagler College.
WHAT DID YOU DO WITH YOUR DEGREE?
“I went back to New Jersey to be a reporter for a weekly newspaper. I briefly worked for a casino hotel in their communications division. In Louisiana, I was a reporter and freelance writer there. Then I worked for two different daily newspapers there. Later, I worked for public television in New Orleans as a public relations person.” This career shift led her into hospital marketing, where she has stayed for the past 17 years.
WHY QUIT JOURNALISM?
“I had an experience that so thoroughly distressed me I felt I couldn’t do this anymore. I was a general assignment reporter covering the police and fire department beat. I was covering a story about a man who drowned, and the body had been in the water behind these apartments for a while. The photographer asked me not to go out there because of how bad the body’s condition was. I was watching these people who lived in the condos bring out their little Instamatics and take pictures of him. I was appalled by that.”
HOW DID THAT INCIDENT CHANGE HER MIND?
“I didn’t want to spend my life encouraging people’s morbidity. People complain about what’s in the newspaper, but they get the coverage they want. This is the stuff that sells. I became very disillusioned with journalism. It was not at all what I wanted to do with my life. I got tired of walking into a room and everybody looking at me like I’m carrying the plague. And when you walk for a small newspaper, they don’t pay you enough.”
WHAT IS BETTER
ABOUT P.R.?
“I get to be a writer, and they pay me for it. Writing was all I ever wanted to do since I was a little kid. I walk into work, and people appreciate that. I get to be creative and do fun things. It’s a lot of hard work, too. Public relations has all sorts of images — spin doctor, salesman, marketing rep, media relations — but it’s really about building relationships. That’s time consuming. It requires a lot of strategic thinking, planning and researching. People think P.R. is very event-driven, but we need to understand what motivates.”
WHAT’S NEW FOR
THE FPRA?
“The decision to reinstate the lifetime achievement award was made when I was president-elect [of the Florida Public Relations Association] and is due to the chapter’s 65th anniversary. In the past, the Jacksonville chapter had been much larger but shrunk down in the last years. Now the chapter has grown back again and is almost at 70 members, so it was a good time to recognize some people. Also this year, we will establish a community service arm.”
TO WHAT OTHER GROUPS DO YOU BELONG?
Deppe is a member of the Public Relations Society of America, the Jacksonville Marketing & Advertising Club and the Florida Society for Hospital Public Relations & Marketing.
FAMILY
Deppe and her husband, Lou, live on Fleming Island with her two sons, Alex and Andrew. Spending time with them or tending to her rose garden is what she enjoys the most. To relax, she likes to read classic science fiction novels.
— by Monica Tsai