CHALLENGE

“We are losing too many promising fellows to the other Ivy League schools, and we actually have a better program.”

The faculty at Brown University's Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine are impressive clinical and academic leaders. Many have served as the elected presidents of major professional organizations, including the American Thoracic Society, American College of Chest Physicians, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine, and the division's environment is one of genuine camaraderie and world-class collaboration.

Nevertheless the division president, Dr. Mitchell Levy, noticed that promising fellowship candidates were choosing less dynamic programs in larger cities, again and again. Dr. Levy needed a way to create an affordable, engaging, evergreen pitch package that would showcase his colleagues, the strength of their research, and the appeal of Providence to potential fellows.

SOLUTION

In our discovery conversations Ahoy! learned that the division's website was getting a lot of traffic from prospective fellows as they evaluated the program. But the Medical School's overall website was in need of an overhaul, and the division saw no easy way to independently refresh their section of the site. But they could embed video into the existing site wherever they wanted. We suggested a streamlined video shoot of focused, on-camera interviews for all of the faculty and some of the current fellows, using our proprietary pop-up video studio method: StoryBox.

StoryBox is a marketing video solution motivated to move a conversation from "Who are you?" to "How can we work together?" Offering mobile marketing video shoots, StoryBox trades complex production strategies for a minimalist setting, the highest possible production values, and an accessible price point, in order to simply introduce a person to their target audience.

The StoryBox method was an ideal solution for Brown. Already comfortable speaking about their academic backgrounds and medical research, the busy physicians were only required to spend 30-45 minutes in front of the camera. Ahoy! worked with Dr. Levy and his team to develop customized interview questions, which we shared with the doctors in advance. Our producers also supplied the doctors with on-camera tips covering attire and performance, and answered specific questions about the shoot in advance of the production. Using stationary cameras and a camera mounted on an automated slider, our three-person crew interviewed 10 subjects in a single, well-scheduled day and delivered over thirty distinct videos, with runtimes between one to four minutes.

RESULTS

27 videos are featured on the division's YouTube channel, and the same videos are interspersed on the division's Fellowship and Research pages, within the pre-existing Medical School website. The view counts seem low, but in fact represent a robust amount of activity for this niche corner of the web. Most importantly, the videos worked. The quality of the applicants soared and the division reported back that in 2017 and 2018 they brought on their strongest academic cohort in years.

Dr. Levy wrote: