Coaching the Docs

To publicize its many service lines, our Client, a top-ranked Illinois hospital, developed a relationship with one of Chicago's largest radio stations where, weekly, physician experts were interviewed live by one of the station's on-air hosts. Prior to their interviews and using The Message Track process, we worked with the doctors on how to tell their stories about their specialties in lay terms.

• We began with individual one-hour sessions to help them focus on the four or five key points we wanted to make in what would probably be a three-minute interview. Once we established these messages, we worked to get the doctors comfortable with saying their points aloud.
• In a second one-hour session, we worked with the doctors on how to incorporate saying their key messages in an interview. We practiced the bridge, the flag and the hook techniques. They learned to be personable but professional; to show enthusiasm; to be engaged. They were taught to remember to say the name of the hospital and to plug upcoming, relevant events. And to reference the hospital's website and call center phone number for more information.

Among those who went through The Message Track process were the director of neurointerventional surgery (about strokes), the director of gastroenterology (about heartburn), the director of the center for pancreatic and hepatobiliary diseases (about pancreatic cancer), and an emergency pediatric physician (about pediatric emergency care).

Immediately following each interview, the hospital's call-center and website traffic increased significantly — which was the single overriding communications objective of The Message Track process. And, as one radio host said to one of the doctors live on-air, "Say, you're pretty good at this."