A Story Too Big for a Short Cut: A Case for Long-Form Video
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center’s “Connected for Life” video puts long-form video at the center of a broader marketing communications strategy.
// By Susan Dubuque //
Twenty patients. Two days. One chance to get it right.
At The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, a complex living donor kidney transplant chain was coming together. Ten healthy people donated kidneys to 10 recipients they had never met, setting off a cascade of 20 surgeries over two days.
It was the largest single-hospital transplant chain in the organization’s history and one of the largest of its kind in the United States.
Nothing about it was simple or certain. Plans shifted. Patients changed. The timeline compressed. Even as the team prepared, there was no guarantee the chain would hold.
An event that had been on the marketing team’s radar for months was suddenly real, and the team had to move fast.
Lisa Green, director, marketing strategy and management, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
For Lisa Green, director of marketing strategy and management for the transplant program at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, the significance was immediate. This was more than a clinical milestone. It was a rare opportunity to show the scale, coordination, and human impact behind living donor transplants.
“We knew it had the potential to be something special,” Green says.
The question was not whether to tell the story. It was how to tell it in a way that honored the patients, explained the complexity, and gave the audience enough time to understand why the moment mattered.
Continue reading to see how a five-minute, award-winning video transformed a clinical milestone into a story with lasting impact for patients, donors, and the organ transplant program.