Rush University Medical Center Lets Its Doctors Do The Talking

"We hear all these ideas from them about and we'll narrow it down to a list of semi-finalists and then we bring our agency in and gather the team that took care of that patient," Allen says. "Then we'll get a group of people together and have them tell us about the story and we'll wind up with two-to-four spots. They not only tell us the story but they also help us with what was special about that and what if the patient had gone elsewhere or what if the patient hadn't ever looked into this."

The longer video clips are featured on a campaign microsite, rushstories.org, where visitors can watch in-depth patient stories featuring neurosciences, orthopedics, cardiology, obstetrics, transplant, and oncology service lines. Each story is show in three parts, which really allows the physician and other staff member's to express their personalities.

"The benefit to featuring physicians is that their character couldn't help but shine though," Storandt says. "They're compassion and their zeal showed as they talked about the stories."

Testing has proven the "Rush Stories" campaign to be the most recognizable campaign in Chicago. The campaign has also resulted in patient admission, self referrals to specialists, call center volume, and website visits to increase across the board, Storandt says.

"Our brand is completely reality—it's not at all contrived and it's very distinctive," Allen says. "Our ads look like nobody else's and we're in a really competitive marketing."