TakeawaysObstacles left and rightIt’s challenging to sell bold marketing ideas anywhere, but the nature of health systems and their power dynamics make it especially difficult.Health system leaders are predisposed to resist the unknown – the risks – because they deal with life and death every day. What makes them good at their jobs is, in many ways, the opposite of boldness.Given differences in expertise between marketers and senior health system leadership, marketers must also overcome a large understanding gap. The more you know about the marketing craft, the more difficult it becomes to explain to non-experts. In his book, To Sell Is Human, Daniel Pink calls this phenomenon “attunement.” Strategies for selling bold marketing ideasMaster your storyMarketers need to build stories that compel their leadership to take a chance on bold marketing, much of which has to do with perception.For example, in 2017, scientists found that they could increase the quantity of fruit and vegetables consumed by creating a dedicated space in shopping carts for fruits and vegetables. In response, the average consumer purchased more fruits and vegetables because they were psychologically nudged in that direction.Marketers can nudge leadership teams to take specific actions by giving them options. Like pricing tiers, you can bring the whole set upwards in boldness by offering three options knowing the middle one is most likely to be picked.However, when presenting options, never offer an option that you wouldn’t be comfortable executing because sometimes that is the option that your audience picks. Recruit influencersA way to build confidence in those you’re trying to influence is through social proof.To sell bold ideas, health system marketers need to understand which parties influence key decision makers. In many systems, physician and service-line leaders are key influencers.Chris gives the example in which one of our clients loved a bold concept presented to them but needed to sell their organization on the idea. One of the system's top neurovascular surgeons stumbled upon the campaign concept and raved about it. Since this individual generates so much revenue for the health system, his opinion drastically influenced the CEO’s decision to accept the idea. Express limitationsPhysicians are natural skeptics because their practice centers on science. Marketing doesn’t always inspire confidence because not all marketing is based on science.When presenting bold ideas, don’t be afraid to acknowledge the limitations of your research and hypotheses. By not having all the answers, health system marketers can increase their audiences' receptiveness. Selling bold ideas in practiceVCU Health is an academic system that runs on their own authority, which is unique because most are run by the state.VCU Health hired Revive to help their team fight vaccine hesitancy in Virginia. Our research showed three populations that were particularly hesitant – young, Black, and Hispanic populations. These groups didn’t feel like the vaccine was for people like them.To resonate with these hesitant groups, Revive created the campaign, This Sh*t Matters, placing a heart over the third letter of “Sh*t” to indicate a double entendre. The campaign featured members from each of the hesitant communities and why the vaccine mattered in their life.While Revive came up with the idea, VCU Health’s Chief of Marketing, Cynthia Schmidt, championed and sold the idea internally, tapping into both university, hospital, and peer influencers prior to pitching to senior leadership.These glowing endorsements gave her the credibility she needed to get approval to launch “This Sh*t Matters” out in the market.When crafting her story, Cynthia appealed to the topic that was top of mind across the system: a huge increase in the number of young people in the ICU. Cynthia crafted her story based on this priority, communicating that VCU’s mission is lived out in the moments when they step up to do something bigger and bolder. The juice is worth the squeezeWhen your ideas are bold, others start to help you out. There were so many people who wanted to take part in the campaign or lend their expertise/resources.For example, sports stadiums opened up extra media placements within their stadiums, people called into radio stations requesting to tell their story for why This Sh*t Matters.There’s a newspaper in Richmond who got a note from a complainer who said, “this isn’t worthy of a newspaper like yours.” The newspaper responded by saying that they believe in the work and its mission.Vaccination rates increased within the community after the launch of the campaign. The campaign also demonstrated a competitive business impact.

TakeawaysThe new villain in town: OmicronAs the first cases of the COVID-19 Omicron variant appear in the U.S., media and the public speculate whether or not we'll see another wave of shutdowns.Will Omicron match the severity of the Delta variant? Is the media overstating the new variant's threat? How long will new variant cycles impact society? These are the questions that sit top-of-mind for The No Normal team.While serious questions about Omicron remain, The No Normal team couldn't help but chuckle at the variant's name choice.The World Health Organization (WHO) explained that they skipped "Nu" because it sounded too much like "new" and "Xi" to avoid offense to cultures who commonly use "Xi" as a surname, which makes sense. Yet, why did they deviate from the Greek alphabet to name the variant Omicron? Great question. A review of "The Funnel Wars"In early January 2022, Revive is releasing a new book, Joe Public 2030, which makes five bold predictions about the future of consumer health engagement. This episode covers trend number three, “The Funnel Wars.”The Funnel Wars refers to competition in the acuity funnel. The top of the funnel is one of the most common funnel entry points. It includes urgent care, virtual care, minute clinics, and even primary care.Middle-of-the-funnel services like specialty care and surgeries are much more lucrative than top-of-the-funnel services, yet depend on lower acuity touchpoints to feed patient volume. Without a full top-of-the-funnel, health systems won't be able to feed volumes for more profitable services.Competition for lower-acuity, top-of-the-funnel services is heating up as giants like CVS, Walgreens, Optum, Walmart Health, Apple, and Amazon bolster their consumer health offerings.If health systems lose the top-of-the-funnel to these new entrants, they will lose control of the patient relationship and will depend on these massive organizations to feed higher-acuity volumes and to survive. Who will win the funnel wars?Will the Amazons and Apples of the world win The Funnel Wars? Or perhaps a health system or multiple health systems? The answer has yet to be determined, but with the top five Fortune 500 companies (1. Walmart 2. Amazon 3. Apple 4. CVS Health 5. UnitedHealth Group) investing billions into their health offerings, it will be a tight race.The Funnel Wars will end in a place where we have a large, nationwide offering that integrates the full consumer experience. As more entrants join healthcare’s gold rush, this integration will become more challenging.Many health systems still think this is an esoteric threat because no one player has completely figured it out. CVS seems to be the biggest threat to health systems due to proximity to consumers, close relationship with Labcorp, and intention to convert locations to “Health Hubs”.It's easy to look at stumbling efforts to "figure out" healthcare (I.e., Haven, Walmart Health) and think that the disruptors are failing. The problem with this thinking is that it discounts the learnings these giants glean from their efforts that they will apply to future attempts.In order to disrupt an existing model, you need to improve access, convenience, and cost. Health systems are committed to quality – often to the detriment of cost – while innovators come in at lower cost and build up to higher quality.  

TakeawaysThe word "turkey" is a broadway term that describes a show with a lot of previews but later underperforms based on quality. Historically this had to do with increased tourism around the holiday period, making it lucrative to have more shows at the end of the year.Our team applies the term "turkey" to marketing in this episode, reviewing this year's most significant marketing flops. We asked our agency for their opinions, and the following campaigns were submitted.Notable mentionsBalenciaga released sweatpants that had boxers sewn into the inside that made them look like sagging pants. The United States' history of police shooting black men with saggy pants brings to question the ethics of the wealthy capitalizing on this style.That's why we need to take more time to research the history of the products we develop. So much time goes into product development already; this additional step would be a drop in the bucket comparatively.From a more lighthearted perspective, the oatly SuperBowl ad polarized audiences – some loved it, and some hated it.Bud light has been chasing the seltzer craze and now has taken it a step or two too far with eggnog flavored seltzer.The not-so-fresh turkeySubway has lost popularity amongst consumers and released a new campaign to increase sales. The "Eat Fresh, Refresh" campaign boasted a refreshed menu but offered little information on the changes and availability of new products across locations.The issue is that the definition of fresh has changed over the past ten years. Their current menu – which has the same ingredients as before – no longer meets modern standards for freshness. They have, however, reported increased sales which could be attributed to the campaign or a pandemic rebound.The tweet you can't take backOn International Women's Day, Burger King UK announced a program to address gender disparities in the restaurant industry by building a scholarship program for female employees. The idea itself was great, but the execution was not thoughtful (and cringeworthy).They announced the scholarship by tweeting "women belong in the kitchen," providing context only in the tweet's thread, which obscured critical context for the tweet.Our team expressed that Burger King UK should have chosen a different platform than Twitter to offer audiences more immediate context for the jarring statement.To avoid this sort of mishap, marketers need to present campaigns to stakeholders in the same way their audience will experience the campaign. For example, a conference room audience may experience concepts differently if presented in a pitch deck. The algorithm gone wrongChris helped his dad sell his townhome this summer using Zillow's Offer tool. The tool gives an estimate for how much the house was worth pending inspection. Zillow purchased the home for the Zestimate price, but the listing price had been cut by close to $50,000 a few months later.Chris' experience is symptomatic of Zillow's inaccurate Zestimate tool. The business made a significant bet on the power of its data and the ability of an algorithm to predict which homes are worth buying and flipping to sell for profit.Zillow, after significant losses over the past few years, ended this house-buying initiative.The future is AI and algorithm-driven, but the technology isn't where it needs to be quite yet. Placing that much money on an algorithm is very risky given the lacking maturity of current technology.

This episode features Desirée Duncan, Revive's Vice President of Health Equity and Inclusion. Desirée advises clients and internal teams on addressing health inequities in the communities our clients serve. Desirée is passionate about sharing the stories of those who have been silenced and lifting the authentic voices that deserve to be heard. What is inclusive marketing? Inclusive and multicultural marketing is not new, but George Floyd's death, coupled with the health inequities revealed by COVID-19, spotlighted diversity and inclusion.When you think of words like "misrepresented," "underserved," or "marginalized" to describe your audiences, it's unclear which populations you're talking about, leaving more room for error of interpretation.Be clear about the groups you're referring to and who you're trying to reach. For example, if you're looking to reach a specific audience, identify the audience explicitly. Identifying homeless populations, Black populations, or LatinX populations, for example, offers more specificity and clarity.According to the 2020 census, the American population is becoming increasingly diverse. As our population diversifies, it becomes increasingly important to make consumers feel understood through inclusive marketing efforts.Marketers and health systems can feel like they have conflicting obligations: mission vs. business. In reality, inclusive marketing has a positive impact on business.Brands leading the way in inclusive marketingOur first interaction with advertisements is through creative, making creative a crucial first interaction with the consumer. Fenti, for example, creates advertisements that represent diverse populations, making their audiences' experience of the Fenti brand more authentic to their lived experience.In 2020, Peloton pledged to invest 100 million to fight racial injustice and inequity in the next four years. The money went to increasing wages, supporting non-profit partners, growing learning opportunities.For example, Peloton partnered with Beyonce and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) to improve access to fitness through their platform. The takeaway here is that it's not just about advertising or reputation; it's about the entire package. How do we make DEI part of our products, business strategies, and beyond?It's also not just about race. It's also about creating content for specific languages. Not just translating content but "transcreating" content in a way meant to resonate with a particular audience. Gary Vaynerchuk, for example, speaks to the power of language in inclusive content. Opportunities to improve marketing inclusivity Inclusion goes beyond ads and should be embedded in every touchpoint within the consumer journey. For example, an advertisement will lose authenticity with diverse audiences if its landing page doesn't communicate in the same way.Health system marketers have an opportunity to improve inclusion and impact business outcomes by auditing each step of the patient experience.Expand your circle of influence to avoid groupthink and to expand cultural intelligence and community understanding.The documentary, Who gets to be an influencer, talks about black creators' challenges when growing audiences. These challenges have implications for brands' partnership choices. If we evaluate influencers by their following size alone, we miss a large population who can speak authentically with our audiences.

TakeawaysJK Lloyd, President and founder of Eruptr, estimated that 20% of hospitals in 2011 had used search engine marketing at all. Relative to other industries, hospitals have been slower to jump into digital advertising.Digital advertising grew 12.2% in 2020 and continues to grow, with ad spending projected to surpass the 200 billion mark in the upcoming year.Healthcare and pharma still only represent a small portion of the media mix across industries. In 2021, these segments represented just 7.2% of the display advertising pie and 6.4 % in 2021. While this statistic only accounts for display (as opposed to search and programmatic — still a relatively small piece of the pie.Digital advertising may not be as effective as marketers think. Almost half of all internet traffic is generated by bots, with one-third of advertising dollars wasted on ad click fraud. Global businesses are expected to lose $44 billion to ad fraud by 2022.Apple is making updates that limit marketers targeting capabilities by giving users more control over their preferences.Several large advertisers have made deep cuts in their digital ad budget — including Procter & Gamble (cut $200M), JPMorgan Chase (slashed ad reach by 99%) — and seen little or no measurable impact on their business. The multi-billion-dollar questionWith bot traffic and fraudulent activity inflating our metrics, marketers must ask themselves what they can do to reduce digital advertising waste.We need to recognize technology's limitations and adjust our strategies accordingly. For example, it's easy to overestimate a platform's targeting capabilities.Keep in mind where digital advertising should fit into your program's overall media mix, and get specific about the channel you use. For example, if the goal is awareness, video will probably deliver better results than display.If you are running an awareness campaign, however, question why you're running an awareness campaign in the first place. There are way too many campaigns where awareness is the goal and impressions are the KPI.Even Peloton started with product marketing advertising and then moved into brand advertising, video, and CTV. Evaluate your metricsImpressions and reach are not adequate measurements for campaign success because users often do not choose whether or not they see an ad. Similarly, impressions do not indicate any targeting accuracy. You could have a high number of impressions amongst a completely wrong audience.To effectively drive behavior change, our metrics need to reflect behavior change. Site visit rate, the ratio of page visits to ad impressions, can be a quality measure for consumer behavior change. Although this number may be lower than the engagement rate, it gives you a better view of consumer action resulting from your campaign.Ad platform monetization models are based on clicks, which includes accidental clicks. Accidental clicks may inflate metrics to make the campaign appear more successful than it was, ultimately driving more revenue for the ad platform.Retargeting can motivate consumer action, but it doesn't necessarily help marketers attribute consumer action to a campaign.For example, you may be served an ad for soft pretzels based on your interest in soft pretzels. After seeing the ad, if you buy a soft pretzel, the sale may be attributed to the campaign rather than your unrelated love for pretzels.This HBR article calls out the issue of correlation vs. causation and where marketers need to sharpen their skill sets.Driving consumer action requires marketers to understand consumer psychology, behavioral science, analytics, statistics, and more.By hiring experts in each of these domains and documenting learning objectives for your team, marketing leaders can bolster their team's capacity to deliver results.

TakeawaysChris Bevolo initiated our Halloween episode of The No Normal with a tribute to SNL superstar, David S. Pumpkins.In the spirit of Halloween, this episode centers on three scary trends facing marketers today, including climate change, political polarization, and you guessed it – Facebook. Climate change as a public health crisisUntil only recently, climate change hasn't been recognized as a public health crisis. With the rise of severe weather and natural disasters, brands are increasingly focusing on their role in addressing climate change.Climate change will drive more significant public health issues that health systems will have to figure out how to manage. For example, the winter storm in Texas last year made it difficult for patients to receive care and providers to deliver care.How to avoid a climate disaster by Bill Gates compares climate change deadliness to COVID-19 deadliness. By 2060, climate change could be as deadly as COVID-19 and, by the end of the century, five times as fatal as COVID-19.Hospitals and health systems are significant contributors to global warming because they produce massive amounts of carbon and will need to find ways to address their contribution to global warming.The politicization of healthThe politicization of health isn't a new concept. During the 1918 Spanish Influenza outbreak, masks were a hot topic of political and social debate.COVID-19 accelerated the politicization of health. While health has always been a public issue, platforms like social media have increased the rate at which we share, consume, and react to information.Society calls for brands to become more actively involved in public health issues, which puts providers between a rock and a hard place.Health systems must stand up for medical truths, but doing so can alienate large parts of a community. As community-based organizations, hospitals and health systems cannot afford to alienate those who disagree with their principles and values.As the staffing crisis continues, health systems need to also think from an employee perspective so that they can retain talent. Perceived alignment with a political party could impact staffers' willingness to work for their current health system.Facebook, enough said. Chris deleted his Facebook account in 2018 because he didn't like how the company manages data. This process took "the better half of a day," demonstrating the depth of Facebook's information on its users.Facebook is how many marketers built their careers. What used to be seen as the "cute" side of marketing is now a significant driver in marketing strategy across industries.Recent news highlights the potential harm of social media on our society, including its adverse effects on mental health and inflammatory content. Reports show that Facebook has knowingly chosen to ignore these problems because solving them would negatively impact revenue.Our team's biggest concern about Facebook's recent scandals is that they chose not to take action. By not taking action, Facebook demonstrates value for the bottom line over the public good.Stephanie acknowledges that those in the social media space have known for a while that emotional content goes viral much more quickly than non-emotional content. With this in mind, it makes sense that inflammatory content goes viral more quickly and more frequently.Around 25% of digital marketing dollars are spent with Facebook today, which speaks to Facebook's monopoly on digital advertising. With Facebook baked into the digital advertising ecosystem, brands must ask themselves if they want to diversify their advertising channels.Chase identified whitelisting as the most shocking Facebook practice exposed by the Wall Street Journal, stating that this is hazardous because it lowers the standards for people with more influence, increasing the likelihood of spreading harm and misinformation.A few years ago, Facebook changed its algorithm to prioritize content that gets more engagement rather than content individual users express interest in. Since inflammatory content receives more engagement, the algorithm prioritizes it in users' feeds, quickly leading to "us" vs. "them" dynamics.Facebook renamed its holding company "Meta," reflecting its goals to build a metaverse beyond the Facebook platform.Stephanie follows a 70-20-10 model for financial investments in digital advertising, with 70% of your budget dedicated to what is proven to work, 20% for platforms that work fine, and 10% for experimentation.Experimentation is health systems' opportunity to diversify their media mix and to take ownership over their audiences by investing in building out their CRM and bolstering their email marketing efforts.

TakeawaysGetting a feel for HLTH 2021Revive's Gale Pryor and Brennan Mason joined our team on The No Normal Show to share their takeaways from this year's HLTH conference in Boston, Massachusetts.The purpose of the event is to bring everyone in the health ecosystem to reimagine healthcare delivery. Brennan and Gale found that the ecosystem has more players than ever.A good mix of organizations attended, including Amazon, AARP, Fidelity, AHA, IBM Watson, Maven, Philips, ResMed, Teladoc, Verizon, Vertex, CVS, Walmart, Zoom, Optum, Oak, Cigna, Aetna, Humana, and the Blues+.HLTH orchestrated an indoor event of 6000+ attendees while ensuring that everyone in attendance was vaccinated or had tested negative within the last 72 hours of the conference. They made COVID-19 testing accessible in the lobby. The reinvention of primary care Primary care is attracting heated discussions because many of the core themes in healthcare transformation are coming together in primary care.Amazon Care is expanding its virtual and hybrid primary care service beyond its employees, offering other employers a covered benefit in selected cities.UnitedHealth is rolling out a virtual-first primary care product, NavigateNow, to select employers with self-funded plans in nine markets, expanding to 25 markets by the end of 2022.Primary care is a strangely heated space. This year, Rushika Fernadopulle of Iora Health clashed with serial entrepreneur Adrian Aoun of Forward about tech-based primary care. Adrian equated the entrance of pharmacy retailers to "wanting an iPhone and being sold a Motorola."Our hosts found that Adrian came across as disconnected from the reality of primary care and that retailers like Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart have advantages like a massive physical presence, logistical network, longitudinal understanding of consumers, and high net promoter scores. Digital health, of course Digital health has always been the focus of HLTH, but this year was less about an incoming digital revolution and more about the ways different players collaborate and integrate solutions.Walmart Health put it well: It's not just about going digital; it's about having different mechanisms for different consumer preferences.Hybrid care was widely recognized as a critical element in appealing to consumer preferences and building trust.Much of the conversation was focused on chronic care management and wellness, with Noom, Thirty Madison, Big Health, and Everly Health all present. The goal of digital tools in this space is to become a reimbursed benefit.If healthcare delivery wants to transform healthcare delivery, organizations need to take the lead. To lead healthcare delivery, organizations need to change their business model from a pipeline to a platform where all players can connect to your health system.Plans + employers + digital health As employers take a more proactive role in workforce health, plans seem to be reinventing care delivery using digital health and the workplace to do it. As Divya Paliwal, Chief Clinical Transformation Officer of Horizon BCBS said, "How can we use these dollars better than shelling out to a hospital ED or ICU?"The drivers of the growth in digital health are plans and employers. And employers are moving away from PPO, and high deductible plans to incent healthy behaviors – the key focus of digital health tools.In a world of remote work, benefit offerings become even more important. When features of physical workspace become irrelevant, benefits are essential in recruiting and retention.Employers are certainly stepping up to improve access to health solutions through employee benefits, but this only intensifies the division between the "haves" and "have nots" by excluding small businesses and the unemployed.

TakeawaysNeither here nor there Last week our team talked about minimalism, which resulted in a tangential (a stretch, we'll admit) conversation about Wes Anderson movies. Stephanie was to watch Moonrise Kingdom, and Chase was assigned to watch The Grand Budapest Hotel.Both reported on this episode offering positive remarks for the cinematography, yet a skeptical outlook on the quirky style.A little inspiration from industries outside of healthcareThe Effie Awards are notable marketing awards that focus on effectiveness. While many awards get a bad rap for celebrating cool ideas alone, The Effies celebrate engaging campaigns that produce quantifiable results.What better way to inspire bold marketing initiatives in the health industry than to look at what's working in other sectors? Each member of our podcast team selected one Effie Award-winning campaign to talk about.Live from the LibraryStephanie selected the Chicago Public Library's campaign, "Live from the library." The campaign, born in the middle of COVID-19 shutdowns, sought to increase access to books.Live from the Library was a daily storytelling series where celebrities, Chicago residents, and others read stories to audiences on Facebook Live. The campaign featured everyone from the Obamas to Dolly Parton.In Stephanie's opinion, one of the primary drivers of success was the campaign's simplicity and the naturalness of the content for the platform. Another was that the celebrities donated their time and produced the video from home. So, overall, the campaign cost was extremely low.High-profile influencers may be willing to do similar 'pro-Bono work for health systems, provided health system marketers produce simple concepts that support the common good."Escape Mountain," Ski-Doo. Chase's favorite campaign was "Escape Mountain" by snowmobile brand Ski-Doo. To engage with a new generation of snowmobilers, the brand launched the three-part reality TV series.In the series, participants were dropped in the middle of nowhere on a mountain with GPS coordinates. They then navigated their way back to civilization through a series of clues and Ski-Doo products.Together, the three 15-minute videos collected 5 million views. The case study did not indicate whether or not the views were organic or paid.Our team discussed the merit of paid media impressions and views and agreed that this metric is insufficient to gauge paid media performance. "The beauty of no artificial preservatives," Burger King (aka Moldy Whopper) Chris took a different approach, bringing his favorite campaign to dispute. His pick: the Moldy Whopper Burger King campaign.The campaign sought to debunk the myth that all fast food is low quality and uses artificial preservatives by creating a time-lapse of a Burger King Whopper aging over 34 days.The case study published by Burger King and the agency that produced the work cites a 26% increase in quality ingredient perception, a 22% increase in visitation consideration, and a 14% increase in whopper sales.For many (including Chris), these results don't line up. Chris referenced a case study published to Marketing Dive demonstrating much different, less impactful results.Chris expressed that audiences who care about artificial preservatives likely were not considering the Burger King Whopper to begin with. Inversely, he predicted that the people eating at Burger King probably cared less about artificial preservatives.This campaign could be jolting enough to get people to test it out against competing products. Even if the individual doesn't become a frequent customer, they will have had heightened the consumer's brand awareness. A question from our listenersLast week we received the following question from a listener of the show.“I’ve observed a twist in the very competitive marketing among the four major systems in my city. There are vaccination billboards signed by all four major health systems in the area rather than the typical competitive differentiation.Would all four health systems benefit from a combined effort focused on prevention? Would their brand image improve if they collectively addressed health and well-being rather than “I’m better than you” traditional marketing?” Our response:Yes, there are many cases, like COVID-19 vaccine promotion, in which an individual system would benefit from joining a collective. In this sort of situation, you're not losing much margin or receiving a big brand lift from administering a vaccine.COVID-19 prevention is where the water gets murky on collectives between health systems. While it would be beneficial for public health, it could potentially undermine a system's ability to differentiate itself as consumers' partner in health.A good line to draw when considering collectives with other health entities is whether or not the initiative would impact patients' decisions to return to care at your system versus a competitor's system.

ResourcesConsumer behavior changes following COVID-19TakeawaysFacebook in hot water Last week the Wall Street Journal released a powerful and damning series on Facebook's negative impact on society and repeated decisions to turn a blind eye. Former Facebook employee, Francis Haugen, identified herself as the whistleblower and soon after shared a congressional testimony.Following this debacle, the entire Facebook ecosystem, including Facebook, Instagram, Oculus, WhatsApp, and Messenger, went down for six hours with limited response from the company.Facebook, following these events, announced that it would be postponing the development of the app 'Instagram for Kids."The outage highlighted how powerful a marketing tool Facebook is and how reliant marketers and businesses are on the platform. The outage may be the catalyst marketers need to diversify their marketing mix and experiment with new channels outside the Facebook ecosystem.Life spheres … but smaller Last year we did a joint study with The Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) to reveal the long-term consumer behavior changes resulting from COVID-19. One of the changes listed in that was "smaller life spheres."COVID-19 abruptly forced the world to operate from home. From entertainment to education to work to social gatherings – we, as a society, operated from home. Even with fewer restrictions, consumers are now used to traveling shorter distances for goods and services.We call this the shrinking of life spheres — a phenomenon in which people have become accustomed to the convenience of at-home or nearby goods and services and continue to seek that convenience. The question has become: How far are you willing to travel for certain activities?Our team resurfaced this finding and shared new research that demonstrated the trend of smaller life spheres has continued into the present.Stats that support this finding: When it comes to driving, the number of miles the average American has traveled is down to 2007 levels. Air travel is still down 26% from pre-pandemic levels.People will think and act differently about how far they are willing to go. This trend is risky for health systems as retailers like Walgreens and CVS live within miles of every American consumer. Because these options are closer and more convenient, consumers may be more inclined to use them as an alternative.Not to mention CVS's recent announcement to transform hundreds of its retail stores into primary care outlets.Home healthcare is growing rapidly and is predicted to grow almost 8% more by 2028. From a business standpoint, many believe the home is the solution to high healthcare costs.The wheel of fortune Our team came prepared with three different topics to discuss and spun a wheel to select the topic they would talk about randomly. The three trends on the table included the great resignation, nostalgia marketing, and the rise of minimalism. For this episode, the rise of minimalism was selected.The standard definition of minimalism: The movement toward a sustainable self-aware lifestyle where people learn to spend less, save more, and have a less negative impact on earth and resources.While this definition applies to many cases, our team expressed that the motivator behind minimalism may vary. For example, millennials are known to rent items rather than purchase them (think Rent the Runway, Spotify, etc.). In many cases, this trend stems from a desire to reduce clutter.The team noted that they see this trend represented through brands like Apple through packaging Chick-fil-A through billboard design.

ResourcesAmy Webb's 14th annual tech trends reportTakeawaysA little bit of everythingLast week, we launched a new podcast format and outlined our changes and why we made them. Missed the episode? You can catch up here.The podcast team shared a good laugh over the latest marketing spoof to go viral featuring Emily Zugay, a graphic designer who laughably redesigns logos for big brands like McDonald's, Doritos, and the NFL.That little health brand we like to call AppleDespite several roadblocks in Apple's initial entrance into the health industry, the tech giant continues to expand its presence with investments in health features and devices.Apple is reported to have cognitive decline and depression detection, insulin level detection, and walking steadiness detection features in development currently.Human bodies are becoming containers for data points monitored by devices. With these devices come enhanced insights and the ability for providers to treat more effectively. With so many health data points available, comes a new question of privacy – how comfortable will consumers be sharing this sort of data directly with providers?On the other hand, it's possible that these continual monitoring devices will remove the need for physician interaction altogether.Since the launch of its first health app seven years ago, Apple has a wealth of consumer health data already and will continue to build this database as it develops new health data-collection devices.If Apple is an immovable force in the health industry, where does it fit into the business plans of other health entities such as health systems? As a strategic question, systems must carefully consider where they compete, partner, and invest.While Apple's technology could make health systems' digital front door more accessible, a partnership would add a new level of dependency on Apple, giving Apple more control in the industry.Step into the metaverseMetaverse is the concept of a future iteration of the internet, made up of persistent, shared, 3D virtual spaces linked into a perceived virtual universe.Facebook is investing heavily in "responsibly" building the metaverse. For those who know Facebook's reputation for living up to civic duty, you'll understand why this gave our team a chuckle.In 2003, the first promise of a metaverse came out with the platform, Second Life. Initially, the concept created plenty of buzz in the healthcare industry, showing promise of enhanced patient engagement. But the buzz was just that – hype that quickly faded.Now, the big name in the metaverse is Roblox, a gaming creation community with 43 million active users. Brands like Vans, Nike, and Gucci have pioneered experiences in Roblox, setting the standard for brand usage of the platform.But where does Roblox and the Metaverse fit into the world of health? That remains the burning question. With no clear pathway yet defined, health brands may have an opportunity but should experiment with caution.I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on TVThis segment is our question of the day segment for the show. Today's question: how do you gain approval from legal and compliance teams to engage influencers in your marketing initiatives?By nature, good legal and compliance officers will lead you to the safest path. But as we all know, the safest path isn't what will drive results amidst heightened competition.Since influencer marketing is relatively new to healthcare, health brand marketers may need to answer questions that may sound intuitive, such as: Are we paying people to be patients? Are we disclosing that we have influencers? Can we rely on influencers to protect our brand and speak to our brand as agreed upon?

ResourcesMedia Platform Personality ArchetypesAmazon and Houston Methodist's partnershipTikTok AdvertisingTakeawaysWe introduced the new format for The No Normal Show this week. The show changes include: ReviveHealth is now Revive, and to that end, the show will no longer focus solely on hospital and health system marketers and communicators, but marketers, branders, and communicators who are engaging consumers around health.The show will no longer be grounded in COVID-19 discussion but will explore new avenues of conversation, focusing on trends shaping the future.We will start to talk about marketing beyond healthcare and how to transfer that knowledge to the business of health.We are transitioning from a guest interview format to a consistent group of hosts including, Chris Bevolo, Stephanie Wierwille, and Chase Cleckner.The podcast will no longer be recorded live on Thursdays. However, we will still post the recording by 11 a.m. (CST) on our site and your favorite podcast listening platforms every Friday.TikTok may be worth the hype TikTok user activity overtook that of long-standing leader YouTube, with the average user spending 25 hours on the app in June 2021.Why is TikTok growing so rapidly? Carefully considered UX factors such as the endless scroll and full-screen experience increase engagement.Endless scroll, a common feature across social media platforms, appeals to the human desire for closure. With no concrete end, the user is never fully satisfied, increasing the likelihood of long sessions on the platform.Full-screen engagement, which TikTok pioneered, takes up the entirety of the screen, minimizing distractions that could lead the user away from the platform. A recent study showed that this full-screen experience resulted in 280 times more engagement than non-full-screen content.Marketers in the health space are slowly dipping their toes in the water to see if TikTok could be a valuable advertising and content marketing platform for their organization.The time and place for health brands on TikTok Several brands like Cleveland Clinic and Mucinex are already on TikTok and experiencing success. Other brands work through clinicians and other influencers.If your team has the resources and capacity to create custom content for TikTok, then yes, TikTok can be a great place to build your brand presence.Suppose you don’t have resources at your disposal specifically for TikTok. In that case, influencer content may serve you better because content that is made for other platforms will likely not resonate with TikTok's audiences.To be successful on TikTok, brands must be willing to experiment with non-serious tonality, integrating humor and surprise into their content.As health brands, we need to use potentially addictive platforms like TikTok in a way that encourages health rather than detracting from it. For example, marketers channel the addictive power of social media platforms by creating content that improves health – like Headspace, Pelaton, or Noom.Is Amazon flying under the radar in the healthcare industry? While Haven, Amazon’s joint venture with J.P. Morgan and Berkshire Hathaway, disbanded, Amazon’s success in the health space is progressing quickly.Houston Methodist and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have been working together for the last year to create a listening platform that is used in the exam rooms and operating rooms. The touchless technology voices steps for clinicians to complete, which can be marked as completed verbally. The technology inputs information directly into the EHR.Our upcoming book, Joe Public 2030, will take a deeper look into the next decade in our industry and where Amazon fits into the mix.

Resources  For-profit hospitals saw volumes rebound in Q2, but delta variant poses a threat  Kaufman report shows hospital volume recovery is shakey  Jefferies lowers medtech outlooks as hospitals project delta pressure into Q4  Alabama man dies after being turned away from 43 hospitals amid COVID-19 surgeTakeaways  The last COVID-19 show  Even though we are still navigating COVID-19 and The No Normal, we’re moving away from COVID-19 being the sole focus of the show and transitioning into new, forward-thinking discussion topics.  This episode is our final COVID-19 focused show, so we recap the past 18 months, it’s unexpected changes, and projections for the future.  Lasting changes for health systems  With a shortage of physicians, increasing responsibility to help with vaccine communications, and widespread burnout, health systems continue to face staffing shortages.   In combination with the emerging competition for skilled workers, these shortages are putting workers in the place of power. We could see this power impact wages, health systems’ competitive standings, and even the ability to stay open.   The unknown has extended much longer than many expected, begging the question: are annual marketing strategies irrelevant? While there still may be a time and place for long-term strategies, what they look like may change in the future to be more responsive to change.   Our life spheres are becoming smaller as new technologies make it easier to receive personalized products and services without leaving home. To maintain engagement, brands – inside and outside of healthcare – need to invest in personalized marketing.   How the COVID-19 era surprised us  The pandemic gave our industry a wake-up call that many industries don’t receive. While we were caught flat-footed, these deficits have surfaced as an opportunity to regain footing and thrive in the future.  Ownership over the patient relationship has changed as organizations from outside of healthcare compete for top-of-funnel services.  Because these outside players have the first interaction, they get to define what comes next – including the partners they want to send business to for higher-value services. This change restricts health systems’ ability to control service line volumes.   The pandemic became politicized much faster than expected. Events like WWII and 9/11 unified our country for a long time before becoming divisive, so it was surprising that the pandemic had different results. The proximity of the election to the pandemic could be part of this politicization.  This polarized environment emphasizes that humans are not always rational. We have to understand how to motivate people beyond logic to become the healthiest they can be.    

TakeawaysTechnological Innovation Meets Reality Patient volume has increased exponentially since the 80s, making time the most significant commodity for health systems and physicians.With narrow margins, health systems cannot sacrifice patient volume and therefore must find ways to operate more efficiently.Technology is often developed independently from the clinical user experience, resulting in inefficiencies that defeat the purpose of the technology.Electronic medical records (EMRs) can add value to health systems. However, if developed without the patient and clinician experience in mind, EMRs can become too cumbersome for patient and clinician needs.Tales from the "dark side" Examples of what goes wrong when innovators don't understand clinical needs:  Carolyn gave the example of EMR prescription entries. With a pen and paper, it would typically take 30 seconds. But with numerous fields and seemingly infinite options, writing scripts has become time-consuming.More input options are not necessarily better, as too many choices can become overwhelming. A clinical perspective could help developers prioritize EMR fields.The patient's user experience is often missed in technology development because their convenience isn't always factored into development decisions.For example, Chris worked with a health system that was implementing a new EMR. The marketing team was brought into the project after the developers had created multiple logins for patients across different units (hospital, urgent care, primary care clinics). Had the patient experience been considered, only one login would be necessary.Technology done right Before EMRs, patients communicated with providers via fax and received responses through the mail. This process didn't allow clinicians to confirm that patients had received their messages.New EMR technology allowed Carolyn to close the communication loop by notifying her when the patient had received her communications.Machine learning for prescriptions is another example of a positive technology-to-clinical experience in which the technology made recommendations based on past prescriptions.Improving the patient experienceClinicians know that listening is crucial, but listening becomes challenging with limited time due to significant data entry requirements.Facilitating clinician workflows results in more time with patients to listen and understand their problems. More time with the patient leads to better connections, better diagnoses, and more referrals.Historically health systems have focused on the "Triple Aim" – population health, patient experience, and resource stewardship. Now, Carolyn believes it should be the "Quadruple Aim," adding clinician experience as a pillar of focus.

One heck of a 20 months UCHealth has always tried to show diligence in learning about patients and empathizing with their experiences, but COVID-19 accelerated that understanding as public health conversations became more frequent and urgent. When COVID-19 struck in March 2020, they had to reset priorities overnight because people were now looking to health systems for information.  UCHealth’s marketing team essentially turned into a communications team, with 70% of their marketing staff focused on supporting COVID-19-related communications.  UCHealth started to gain deeper insights into public stressors and pain points because patients were having more conversations about health. From listening comes understanding  COVID-19 highlighted health inequities because these disparities showed up in ICU admission and ventilator usage volumes.UCHealth started to realize they’d never mapped out the entire patient experience from a cultural perspective. So, rather than looking at disparities exclusively from a care interaction perspective, the team started to look at disparities as a continuum.  The impact on certain populations is much higher than it is on others. Take, for example, downward trends in life expectancy. White Americans’ life expectancy average dropped a little over one year since COVID-19, but Black Americans’ average dropped almost three years.  Social media becomes a crucial learning channelSocial media has always been part of UCHealth’s marketing strategy, but since COVID-19, it’s been the dominant channel of focus for the team. UCHealth makes concentrated efforts to make sure the patients’ perspective is represented before the system’s perspective. This focus on the patient has dramatically increased engagement, offering UCHealth more direct patient communications to learn from.  Shifts in public expectations and local legislation Provider reputations have been a rollercoaster over the past few years. First, price transparency laws put providers in the hot seat. Then, when COVID-19 struck, providers became celebrated heroes. Now, providers are back to scrutiny from the public, media, and legislators. Colorado is in the process of passing legislation that would rely heavily on health systems to bring healthcare costs down.The public is missing the “whole picture” when it comes to care delivery value. Health systems need to communicate their value to the community wholistically – beyond the itemized bills.  For example, health systems shouldn’t be faulted or penalized for seeking commercially insured patients to make up for the millions in losses resulting from unpaid medical bills.  

Vaccine mandates in the newsStates like Illinois and California have started to require schools and health systems to adopt vaccine mandates.Pfizer received official FDA approval this week for its COVID-19 vaccine, adding more credibility to vaccine mandates.Staffing, already a challenge faced by health systems, is becoming even more challenging with employee vaccine mandate resistance. Nebraska state officials are under fire for recruiting nurses by waiving vaccine requirements, as this messaging undercuts healthcare professionals' responsibility to protect community health.Understanding your reputational risk starts with understanding your contextHow your organization communicates about COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine mandates has everything to do with context – your market, the political climate, and the organization type.While some states require health systems to impose mandates, others forbid health systems to impose vaccine mandates, making it challenging to align system COVID-19 efforts and mission.Most of the healthcare community is on board with COVID-19 vaccines, yet the relatively small number of people who resist vaccines are incredibly vocal and socially active.If your organization's mission is to improve and protect community health, you may have to take a small reputation hit in the short term to protect your reputation in the long term.Measure those short-term "hits" to your reputation through internal and external efforts such as town halls, conversations with policymakers, and community surveys.The conversation goes beyond reputation alone. Health systems have a duty to uphold the health of their community, publish accurate information, and counter misinformation.Challenges of state-imposed vaccine mandatesAccording to Alan Shoebridge, California's state-imposed vaccine mandates for health systems helped maintain alignment between health systems.One of the biggest challenges of meeting state vaccine requirements was creating a procedure for exemptions, communicating that procedure, and following through.Religious exemptions, for example, can be a challenge because it requires health systems to understand and recognize value systems across religions and set clear definitions for a very personal topic.

TakeawaysWhat is personalized marketing? Personalized marketing often takes different definitions. To align expectations internally and with clients, Revive developed a formal definition.Revive definition: Personalized marketing is a data-driven strategy that delivers increasingly relevant value to consumers through tailored solutions, content, and experiences. It is enabled through continuous and automated data collection, analysis, testing, and optimization.The spectrum of personalized marketing With different definitions come different levels of execution. These include static brand awareness, contextual marketing, enhanced insights with combined first and third-party data, funnel segmentation, creating a single view of the customer, and predictive optimization.If you don't have a CRM and want to enhance your personalized marketing capabilities, consider implementing one as your first step.Partner with internal stakeholders like your IT department to evaluate the data you have on hand and the infrastructure you need to get the information you need.Planning a successful personalized marketing program Health systems' planning for personalized marketing should consider the following three phases.Phase 1 - Who: The process of using first, second, and third-party data to analyze information about target segments and individual consumers that provides insights into their traits, preferences, and behaviors Phase 2 - What: Based on a rich, data-driven understanding of target segments, develop tailored solutions, content, and experiences to engage individual consumers and move them to take specific actions  Phase 3 - How: Identify channels to reach and engage target segments and individual consumers and then, based on data from resulting interactions, test, measure, and refine personalized content to optimize engagement, resulting actions, and value  As you make these decisions consider your consumers' living, thinking, and solving moments and how your system can stay top of mind in each moment.Living moments are when consumers aren't thinking about their health, solving moments are moments when consumers start to evaluate their health, and solving moments are when consumers seek to remedy a condition.Data signals like search traffic volume and web content engagement can indicate consumer needs in their living, thinking, and solving moments.Rebooting service lines With already thin margins and a 90% economy, health systems need to maintain or increase patient volume in key service lines to remain profitable.Screenings are down across service lines, indicating that patients are delaying or skipping care.Health system marketers can restore volume by looking to first-party data to identify those who haven't been screened for a condition. Once identified, marketers can tailor content to address these consumers and invest in creating a frictionless transition back to patient care.New mover campaigns are another quick way to drive volume back into your service lines. Look to see who is moving into your area and consider outreach to those to create brand awareness.  

A quick COVID-19 pulse checkHealth systems are seeing an uptick in admissions — many of which can be attributed to the Delta variant, with higher concentration in the southern states.We live in a strange world where fact is not always fact, and perspectives on health reflect political orientation, not proper understanding.For example, Associated Press published an article that said 100 vaccinated people in Massachusetts died of COVID-19. That's only 0.002% of the population, but AP is a known news authority. We have a responsibility to represent facts accurately without sensational language.Decisions, they get easier when you get buy-in up front It's common for health system marketers to launch a campaign or initiative — only to receive negative internal feedback after the fact. This delayed pushback can derail campaigns and waste marketing resources.  A marketing governance program can help reduce this strain on health system marketing departments by getting buy-in from clearly defined decision-making roles. Penn State Health has a marketing governance charter outlining the decisions the Council needs to help manage, including a cohesive brand strategy, annual priorities amongst service lines and geographies, change management, budgets, organizational alignment on marketing priorities, and ROI measurement. Health system marketing governance in practiceIndividual hospitals leaders were being held accountable for disparate PNLs, resulting in unnecessary competition between system units. Penn State is unifying marketing system-wide through Tuckman's Stages of Group Development.  Marketers should ask, "Where do we really need to grow the organization's volume and support brand?" For example, opening a new facility requires marketing support. That had to be a priority. Penn State Health acquired Holy Spirit Medical Center, which means acquiring all the practices that previously competed. Penn State Health had to figure out a way to distribute marketing resources so that practices weren't competing while also communicating why certain practices received more help. It's not just about who's loudest.  Penn State Health had a change of neurosurgery leadership who wanted to make changes to the strategic plan. The Marketing Governance Council procedure required this leader to request a change through the hospital president, who then would choose whether or not to open the discussion with the Council.

What is behavioral design, and why is it important for health brands?If you want to optimize your brand efforts, you need to understand what motivates people. Behavioral design is a science that examines what motivates people. There's a tremendous opportunity to apply behavioral design in healthcare. If health system marketers can understand consumer motivations, they can deliver better patient experiences that remove opportunities for biases and illogical thinking to impact decisions. When emotions take control, rationality checks outWhen the government started requiring cigarette companies to put warning labels on packaging, severe messaging and visuals didn't deter consumers from smoking. The warnings evoked an emotional response in which consumers interpreted smoking as another thing they couldn't do but would continue to do anyway. Pepsi consistently wins blind taste tests over Coke, but Coke is the indisputable taste test winner when consumers know what they are drinking. This variability results from consumers' emotional response Coke brand.Variability even happens in "objective" situations like insurance underwriting. Insurance CEOs estimated 10% variability in underwriting, but in reality, it was 55%.Mastering the mindNoise includes the external factors that get in the way of rational decisions. For example, a patient may need a hip replacement, but unrelated factors like the time of day, the weather, and mood will impact the patient's decision to take action. Machine learning can help us counter this variability by identifying patterns we wouldn't otherwise see. Mind Genomics is the science of understanding which ideas, messaging, concepts, and visuals resonate with audiences. According to Selling Blue Elephants author Howard Moskowitz, Rule developing experimentation (RDE) is the systematized process of designing, testing, and modifying alternative ideas and concepts to increase appeal to the consumer. In ad testing, for example, you can ask a group which ads resonate most with them and find commonalities between the ads that resonate. You don't want to ask consumers if the red resonates with them directly because it could prime them to deliver a skewed response. Behavioral design applied to health system marketingAs health system marketers, we can Nudge consumers to make decisions by thinking through default options. For example, in the U.S., organ donation is opt-in. Australia has an opt-out system which results in a larger population of organ donors. When referring patients to specialists, health systems can use nudging tactics by making it easier for consumers to connect with the right specialist, ultimately removing opportunities for consumer biases and irrational thought to impact decision-making. 

A case for boldness Health system marketing comes with many stakeholders, opinions, and expectations, making it challenging to deliver imaginative and bold campaigns. Despite these challenges, marketers must continue to push on ideas that don't just "check the boxes" but truly influence behavior in a way that improves public health. The campaign that pushed the envelope During the pandemic, health systems and hospitals across the country promoted COVID-19 vaccination within their communities. A literal life or death situation, VCU health knew they would need something more than a safe, traditional campaign. To increase vaccine uptake in Virginia, VCU Health honed in on Virginian pride and the unique stories that make the people of Virginia. Younger populations in Virginia were vaccinating at lower rates than other populations, so VCU Health's messaging needed to address these people directly rather than using broad messaging. From this direction, a provocative direction was born: This Sh*t Matters. Clearing the "buy-in" hurdleTo bring this bold idea to life, the VCU Health marketing team needed to build a strong case for the campaign and why the provocative approach was necessary to drive impact. The team bolstered their argument by testing the work in-market, collecting feedback from legislators, and collaborating with clinical experts. Cynthia credits VCU Hea position as a challenger brand and the system's forward-thinking leadership for getting this game-changing idea across the finish line. Bolder campaign, bolder results The campaign plan originally included three to four stories from Virginians. After a short stint in the market, however, more and more people came to VCU health to share their stories. The result: 15+ stories told by community members who knew their audience's context. The campaign also received coverage from several local news stations.  

Behavioral health needs are outpacing the healthcare industry's ability to deliver behavioral health services. COVID-19 spotlighted this trend, though it existed well before COVID-19.Now, groups outside and within the healthcare industry are coming to the table with solutions for addressing behavioral health needs.How different healthcare groups are addressing behavioral health needs The government The government is properly incentivized to address behavioral health needs since Medicaid is the largest payor for mental health services in the U.S.This backing makes sense considering those eligible for Medicaid are more likely to have mental health conditions that lead to chronic co-morbidities.Local governments are also taking action. For example, the Reno Nevada City Counsel allocates its CARES Act funding on contract with Talkspace, available to Reno residents 13+ years of age.Private payors Private health insurance typically covers acute services but rarely long-term or proactive behavioral health services.Data shows people are 5x more likely to go out of network for behavioral healthcare than for physical healthcare. Even so, reimbursement rates for covered behavioral health services are significantly less than physical healthcare reimbursements.Payors are verticalizing through partnerships and consolidation to accommodate mental health needs. For example, Ginger, Talkspace, and other high-profile behavioral health management apps are covered by payor giants like Cigna and Humana.Digital health leaning into B2B and B2C models Digital health companies are adopting various models to "crack the code" for improving public mental health.In 2020, many tech vendors leaned into behavioral health, many of whom expanded their B2B lines, selling to employers and payors. Ginger eliminated its direct-to-consumer line altogether.Hospitals – Clinician support, patient support The Biden Administration's crackdown on health system and hospital consolidation limits health systems' ability to offer integrated behavioral health services.Despite this obstacle, health systems must find different ways to address behavioral health to remain a trusted "whole health" partner. This is imperative because payors are repositioning themselves to own the whole health of the consumer.Systems are not only addressing patient mental health but also staff and clinician mental health.Mission is a massive driver for health systems to offer expanded behavioral health services. Many health systems have community care embedded in their DNA – behavioral healthcare is an extension of that mission.If hospitals want to be the go-to partner for health, they must integrate behavioral health into every aspect of what they do.How and where providers are leading the way Kaiser Permanente addressed teen behavioral health needs by meeting them where they spend time teens where they spend time – online gaming and esports. They teamed up with Cloud9 to normalize conversations around mental health using influencers who talk about their struggles.Cincinnati Children's Hospital is building a new behavioral health in-patient facility for expanded behavioral health treatment options. They also were recently awarded a grant to pivot suicide prevention efforts with a focus on telehealth.Last year partnered Hoag partnered with BehaVR to deploy therapies to workers during COVID-19. Now, they're expanding to patient care for populations like expectant mothers to help address conditions like post-partum depression.

Evaluating operational effectivenessMarketing teams are increasingly playing a more prominent role in the operational success of organizations – including health systems.It’s common to start operational improvement by refining your org chart, but this approach commonly fails to recognize how teams and individuals work together. What’s missing is the connective tissue.It’s really easy to say “let’s cut costs” and do less, but it’s hard to look at how you can do more by streamlining the way you’re doing things – what you do, how you do it, who you do it with, how long it takes, and what it costs.According to Philip Guiliano, operational success starts with clearly defined roles and responsibilities which can be challenging for health systems because marketing is commonly decentralized across service lines, hospitals, etc.Making your technology work for you – not against youDecentralization across large organizations can result in duplicate contracts with technology vendors when these organizations only need one instance with custom environments for different needs.Centralizing technology management reduces waste and helps teams utilize their technology to its full potential.Widen the scope of who can use the technology and how the technology is used. For example, a brand asset management tool or CMS could be helpful organization-wide.Business requirements and functional requirements should drive technology adoption. With this baseline, your team can build on what you have with new modules.Committing to vendors and partnerships that deliver business value Marketing can reclaim budget from operations centralizing vendor management. For example, your org may have 300 different kinds of signs created for various purposes across numerous independent stakeholders, but in reality, only need 15.When working with agencies, ask yourself: What are they doing for us, what could they do for us, how do they work together, who’s performing and who’s not. Build matrix to reassign responsibilities according to strength while also consolidating.Help agencies understand how they should work together and which business goals they are working toward as a unit. This will remove the “juggling” and make for more efficient agency partnerships.Marketing is often introduced to partnership and consolidation conversations once a deal has been finalized, neglecting the weight of brand, messaging, and budgetary needs.Embedding marketing in consolidation deals and growth conversations sooner also allows for a proper evaluation of business unit interaction – how they interact in both current and desired state. This precaution can prevent unnecessary competition between business units. 

TakeawaysThe viewpoint of someone new to healthcare  Heather transitioned from her role as SVP of Global Brands at Hyatt Hotels Corp to Chief Marketing, Communications, and Experience officer at Henry Ford at the beginning of 2020.  While differences were apparent between industries – particularly regulation – she found that the value of experience is similar between healthcare and hospitality.   Healthcare has a huge opportunity to think more broadly about experience beyond in-patient care.   Could healthcare be more similar to hospitality than we think?  Loyalty is about driving increased engagement, preference, and choice to maximize lifetime value. We can increase loyalty by catering to the consumer’s experience of our brand.   In healthcare, lifetime value could encompass a 50-60-year relationship with a patient and everyone they influence. Considering the power of word-of-mouth referrals in healthcare, that’s a tremendous lifetime value opportunity.    We don’t need a tiered approach like hospitality, but what we do need is a way to retain consumers by recognizing their loyalty with value. In our space, rewards can include things like remembering preferences or proactive scheduling.    Your brand is your greatest asset  To build our brand, we have to ask ourselves how we can create an experience that differentiates us, matches what people are looking for in their experience, and ensures that we’re delivering on that experience from an operations perspective.  Henry Ford is a 105-year-old brand with an international presence. That comes with great opportunity and responsibility because its team must maintain brand equity earned over time while also building its brand to be relevant in the future.   A brand promise that is understood and executed organization-wide is the key to staying relevant in the present and future.   How control fits into the healthcare consumer experience  We all have an inherent need to control the things we can’t control. When we feel out of control, it creates stressors and anxieties which negatively impact the experience.   The way our health system is structured now doesn’t give patients much control, offering health system marketers the opportunity to differentiate their brands by placing control back in the hands of the patients.   For example, we can help patients navigate decisions by anticipating their next actions and understanding their stressors and feelings. This understanding ultimately allows physicians to focus on what they do best – healing people.   

Resources CEO of UPS in NY times Lego makes strides in sustainability TakeawaysTwo sides of the same coin: Purpose & brand experience Health systems need to approach branding differently than they have in the past to compete with powerful consumer brands establishing footholds in healthcare. One of the ways systems can embark on a new path is by rethinking "purpose.'Most health systems and hospitals assume they have purpose down pat – after all, they save lives every day. But there can be more to purpose.FutureBrand looks at the balance of purpose and brand experience. To them, purpose means nothing if it is not substantiated through a brand experience – regardless of audience.Redefining brand purpose What brand purpose is: A promise lived in every action or engagement – it has many hands, many stories, and is felt by all of your customers and employees. It is the tangible and enduring mark a brand leaves on the world, how it lives in the world, and makes it better than it found it.What brand purpose isn't: A compulsory mission statement on your website, a promise you make 1-2 times a year in a campaign or activation, or the words that are referred to now and again in company town halls and stakeholder presentations.What it means to be a sustainable brand COVID-19 and climate concerns have up-leveled what sustainability means today.Sustainability is no longer taking siloed actions for the good of the planet; instead, it's a full-court press to improve the well-being of the planet, the lives of people who live on it.Brand purpose goes beyond consumer experienceThe difference between a high-performing brand and a low-performing brand depends on the brand's ability to balance purpose and experience.The P&G brand does this well by actively living up to its corporate promise of "Touching lives, improving lives."A brand-led approach lessens the need to react to heightened public expectations. 

TakeawaysThroughout his career, Matt has taken on the mindset of a disruptor. He was an early adopter of the title, Chief Consumer Officer, technologies like chatbots, and star rating systems.Matt now works for Summit Health, the byproduct of a private equity-backed merger between CityMD and Summit Medical Group.Advantages of working in a non-hospital system Because Summit Health operates largely in the urgent care setting and doesn't own hospitals, they're not bogged down by fixed costs or financial dependence on high acuity admissions.Instead, Summit Health can focus on delivering the best possible care and experience outside of a hospital setting. Summit Health, however, does partner with hospitals and physicians to accommodate high acuity cases.The transition from fee-for-service to value-based care forces hospitals to replace lost revenue from the top of the funnel with revenue from high acuity settings.Summit Health has low acuity access points with retail-like infrastructure in denser urban settings to provide easy access to high-quality care. This network infrastructure works because care and financial incentives are aligned. How to leverage consumer data and understand the consumer  For the first 5-10 years of his healthcare career, Matt listened to doctors, administrators, surveys, and focus groups, to understand consumers rather than listening to the data.He found that this produces a skewed understanding of our audiences because the patient may see – or report – preferences different than they are in reality. For example, patients may weight quality higher than their behaviors suggest.   A little healthy discord on the importance of brand According to Matt, in healthcare, brand don't impact patient decisions and needs. Instead, he recommends direct response advertising meant to drive people into your funnel and downward.Matt concedes that healthcare brand advertising can be effective when introducing a new brand or if your system has a large, easily accessible, low acuity service line such as urgent care centers.Brand advertising, in Matt's opinion, may serve internal purposes, however. For instance, some physicians and staff members may derive value from advertising because it recognizes their accomplishments.Chris agrees that brand advertising for clout is not productive but believes that brand is about driving people to take action to engage with you.Focus on physician relations Doctors play a huge role in keeping patients in a system because they're making the referrals. To improve, we need to understand what drives physician referral behavior.This is a "ground war" approach that is extremely difficult but yields a high return.Marketers should consider operational blockers to simplify referral documentation for doctors.

TakeawaysUsing data to better understand our audiences Last week we discussed the use of ethnographies to better understand our audiences by experiencing their lifestyles. In this episode, we expand on that topic sharing how data can supplement ethnographic research.When working with Community Health Innovations (CHI), we used data to scale the findings from our ethnographic research to encompass the community rather than the select households interviewed.We pooled the data from the full county to identify who might be susceptible to diabetes by comparing it to SDoH characteristics defined by the National Institute of Health. The ethnographies were applied to this data to make channel and messaging decisions.Using data to identify and understand opportunities for growth One of our health system clients wanted to know the viability of expanding into a new market in Manhattan by acquiring a physician practice.To understand the viability of this acquisition, they needed visibility into ROI potential, the practice’s current patients, where the patients come from, and how willing they are to travel to a new location.To clarify these unknowns and define market potential, we analyzed survey results, patient data, claims data, and consumer demographic data.Using data to better target our marketing efforts Another health system client is continuing its path towards aggressive growth and expansion, emphasizing the need to understand the nuances of consumers across markets.ReviveHealth provided detailed market research focused on analyzing demographics, health behaviors, media preferences, and competitive insights for each new location.We were able to answer questions such as “where is the concentration of growing families?” “How can we best reach them?” “Which competition is close by?”Armed with data, the marketing team was able to position itself as a proactive strategic partner to the organization and provide marketing strategies to support growth.

TakeawaysWhat is ethnography, and why is it valuable? Surveys and focus groups can result in a “contaminated” interpretation of the truth in which the context of the survey or focus group influences participants’ responses.One of the best ways to learn about your audiences is to observe their words, emotions, and actions in the context of their daily lives – this is called ethnography.Living and following your audience’s lifestyle offers a more accurate picture of what they’re thinking and doing, as it reveals unconscious actions and interpretations.For example, if you are evaluating product placement in grocery stores, observing someone shop in the context of their daily lives – every item they look at, reach for, or put back – may reveal more than the participant is aware of.When to use, when not to use Ethnography should be performed at the onset of a project because it allows us to understand human motivations and behavior that can then guide analytics and strategy.Ethnographic research offers rich opportunities for health system marketers to understand their patient populations because so much of health happens every day.For instance, a chronic condition can affect a patient’s everyday life – what they can and can’t do and the decisions they make. Understanding these lifestyle challenges allows health system marketers to cater to them.Ethnography is not a good approach for tactical tasks such as A/B testing creative or messaging because it can overcomplicate more minor decisions, making them more cumbersome.If you like people watching, you’re halfway there Don’t talk too much, and let the action unfold in front of you. Try to make your footprint in the research as minimal as possible.Much of the time, ethnographic research means going into someone’s house, which is very personal. This is a privilege, so marketers need to do everything they can to make subjects feel comfortable.Interviewing populations without conditions can be as powerful as interviewing those with conditions because it offers a more holistic community perspective.For example, ReviveHealth and Community Health Innovations (CHI) partnered to perform ethnographic research on diabetes in Monterey County, CA. We spoke to 10 families around the county with similar education levels without screening for diabetes.Interviewing independent of diagnosis revealed patients suffering from diabetes without a diagnosis. It also gave us an understanding of the community dynamics diabetics live in.

Setting the stage  Healthcare is way behind in the consumer space. Fortunately, we have other industries to learn from when merging online and in-person experiences.Chris DuFresne, Vice President of Experience and Marketing Operations, draws from his experience at e-commerce giants Target and Macy's for inspiration at Allina Health.Dufresne acknowledges that health systems aren't just businesses but states that they need to bolster their businesses to support our missions. To do so, we must redefine patients as "consumers" because patients represent just the person receiving care when other stakeholders – consumers – are involved.Transferring retail knowledge to healthcare Our industry was built for the provider, forcing patients to navigate a complex ecosystem. How do we deconstruct this physician-centric model in a way that puts the consumer first?Chris DuFresne challenged health systems to use consumer-centric industries as benchmarks. For example, health systems can ask themselves, "How do we make patient scheduling as simple as OpenTable?"Part of becoming consumer-centric in healthcare is honoring various consumer preferences and needs without overwhelming consumers with options. For example, some people may want to call in to schedule an appointment, while others may like to schedule online. The art is making each option convenient and personable even if utilizing call centers.When does a connected experience matter most? The consumer is ok with asynchronous virtual care for minor ailments like sinus infections that are somewhat isolated.Patients requiring both digital and onsite experiences offer opportunities for health systems to prove their value to patients through connected experiences.For instance, a digital encounter may require labs. How can a health system get these labs without leaving and redoing the whole visit again? How should that visit be billed, and which services are covered by insurance? How does the consumer know that the price of a virtual visit matches the value they receive?  

TakeawaysDecoding alphabet soup With so many applications, and numerous models to be built upon, it can be challenging to understand Artificial Intelligence (AI) and where it fits within the care delivery landscape.AI is a broad umbrella describing technology’s ability to execute human behavior.Machine learning is a type of AI in which technology that learns from data sets without the need for continual programming. Machine learning identifies trends and correlations in data, using these as benchmarks to set its course of learning.It’s common for AI to get compared to sophisticated excel sheet algorithms. The difference however, is that the excel sheet doesn’t learn from the data, but instead executes the exact functions its instructed to do. AI, on the other hand, takes data and executes functions based on trends in the data.Today's opportunities to improve care delivery with AI As humans, we’re inherently biased. We filter the world through a lens that reflects our unique experiences. AI helps to remove biases from data analytics by making decisions based purely on data rather than human assumptions.When it comes to diagnostics and preventative outreach, this objective analysis is crucial because it expands our understanding of who is at risk for which diseases.In cardiology, for example, we commonly assume that those over the age of 55 have an increased risk of heart attack. AI could disprove or build upon this assumption, to include other at-risk populations.Chatbots also present an opportunity for health systems to improve care delivery because they offer an accessible way for patients to interact with their health system. With the right authentication layers and connectivity to other data sources, AI could address the user’s intent and channel it in the right way without burdening staff.AI advancements to keep an eye on While Elon Musk may have predicted 2025 as the “year of singularity,” Chris Hemphill, VP Applied AI & Growth at SymphonyRM says it’s too soon to tell because unknowns will undoubtedly appear.One direction AI could take us – a direction we’re just on the fringes of now – is proving direct causation, being able to definitively identify why certain things are happening.Domain experts and clinicians will need to be increasingly involved in AI application to make sure learning models are founded on a true understanding of the practice and context, utilizing the right questions and labels.There will likely be an increased focus on weeding out biases from data collection. If the data that AI analyses reflects biases, it will embed those biases in all of its outputs. In the future we will see increased focus on collecting unbiased data.

Who are you, what is your brand promise? Mount Sinai Health System is different from many academic medical centers because the school was born out of the health system.  Their primary commitments – a defined brand, commitment to growth, organizational excellence – all roll up to facilitating a quality patient experience where the customer journey matches the expectations set by the brand promise.  Brand encompasses more than advertising – it should serve as the "soul" or DNA of an organization, driving each function with purpose.  Mount Sinai committed to an organization-wide rollout to define its brand position, including a series of workshops, one-on-one interviews, coordination with HR, testing, and iteration.  Definitions are critical to the success of brand positioning because not everyone has the same baseline understanding of marketing. Teams must define core concepts like positioning, brand, and logo. Organizational feng shui: Centralizing the marketing function Value-based care, digital health innovation, and consolidation have created a significant debate on centralizing the marketing function in health systems.Mount Sinai saw an opportunity to drive organization-wide efficiencies by centralizing its marketing function. However, to execute, they needed to stay aligned with business goals and develop a scalable strategy while maintaining chair relationships. The Mount Sinai team needed to demonstrate that decisions made in silos result in disconnect from a larger mission and a loss of efficacy. For instance, some facilities were bidding on the same keywords in their SEM programs, ultimately driving up costs for everyone.   The real digital front door Most health systems' real digital front door is google, as 80% of customers start online – even if they've already received a diagnosis and referral. Health systems need to show up with content that meets these research needs. Once you've assisted the research process, you need to make the decision easy for them with convenient access to your services. Patients with diagnoses will likely be emotional, and a challenging provider selection process makes for a stressful experience.  Each diagnosis is unique, meaning patient research needs per diagnosis are also unique. To accommodate patients, we must build numerous decision-making pathways based on diagnosis without overwhelming the patient. Technology is valuable because it offers a virtual experience. It's valuable because it's convenient. Don't over-invest in technology that doesn't serve the goal of a convenient patient experience.   

TakeawaysCanoe vs. speedboat Transformation in healthcare before COVID-19 was like a canoe – slow and steady, but after we were operating like a speedboat, trying to merge our normal operations with a sudden influx of COVID-19 related demands.Banner Health had invested in the technology that prepared them for when those boats changed speed. These investments focus on reducing friction points for patients.The pursuit of consumerism perfection Banner Health is using consumer benchmarks across industries to set their pursuit of a better consumer experience.Banner Health shifted from a traditional hospital mission statement to “making healthcare easier, so life can be better,” to align their efforts in a way that serves the consumer experience. A digital front door was critical to live up to this new mission.The team started writing content for engaged consumers who aren’t necessarily patients today but could become patients in the future to build a relationship with people before they become patients.Optimizing the digital “back end” Health systems need data to personalize marketing, but much of the information they collect is PHI.Banner Health implemented Salesforce as their CRM because they needed a way to use consumer data instead of patient records to improve the consumer experience.Banner Health integrated Cerner and Salesforce to empower call centers to deliver a more informed, more efficient patient experience.“Return to care” emails were personalized and automated to be sent from each patients’ physician with the date of their last visit — the result: a 50% open rate and a spike in direct bookings.Feedback loops are a mustBanner Health has a weekly cross-channel communications meeting based on constant polling such as return to care hesitancy and receptiveness to advertising.This meeting allows them to monitor consumer sentiments and how marketing should be talking to consumers.

Resources Five long-term consumer behavior changes due to COVID-19The Joe Public Retreat 2022 Takeaways The "untouchables" Making room for new, high-ROI initiatives could mean retiring old practices that no longer make sense in today's changed (and continually changing) world. We call these old practices the "untouchables" because they're often repeated on behalf of leadership without a clear business case.We discussed three "untouchable" marketing initiatives, including open enrollment campaigns, disease of the month campaigns, and the U.S. News & World Report.Modern brands are human brands The way people interact with brands has changed, and health system marketers must be more creative and relevant in how they connect with their audiences.Staying creative and relevant means we have to become human brands, prioritizing honesty and authenticity while listening to our audiences at every opportunity.Patients' experience of your hospital or health system brand must match your brand promise – what your patients can expect from you at every step of their consumer journey.Today's consumers have more options, and those options often offer low-stakes trial periods, resulting in waning brand loyalty. To counter this trend, health brands must become human brands.Thinking different, differently Creativity means taking risks and ignoring unfounded doubts. But don't just be different to be different. Be different to resonate.Between COVID-19, social unrest, and election turmoil, events within the last year created stressors and ignited new fires. The result: changed behaviors.Multiculturalism is no longer a nice-to-have. It has to exist in the data we pull, the strategy we employ, and the creative we develop. It's not just about language.Can you still have a single brand slogan? Will a broad slogan resonate across audiences? What are the implications if that is the case? Hospital and health system marketers must consider these questions.

ResourcesTrust Index ReportDeadly SpinUncoveredTakeawaysThe lay of the land Health plans historically integrated horizontally but now are integrating vertically, expanding their power within the healthcare industry.Growing payor reach and control creates a power imbalance that allows payors to force providers into minuscule reimbursement rates. This power imbalance works to the detriment of healthcare consumers.Trust Index results reach rock bottom For the last 12 years, ReviveHealth has published an annual Trust Index report which measures the level of trust between payors and providers based on honesty, reliability, and fairness. The Index represents 40% of the hospitals in America.This episode of The No Normal Show examines this year’s results featuring health plan executive turned whistleblower, Wendell Potter.We thought that COVID-19 would rally the entire healthcare industry to solve problems together for the common good. Instead, the Index showed the greatest decline in trust in the past 12 years – a 34% decrease year over year.Uncovering the factors at play Health plans influence policy and the public through massive and expensive lobbying campaigns. This practice shifts blame for exorbitant healthcare costs to providers.Health plans unilaterally alter language in provider manuals that fundamentally reduce how much they reimburse providers for care.Health plans are accountable to shareholders, which means that their core objective is to turn a profit and lower utilization costs.Health plans are increasingly denying claims or requesting retroactive analysis with little explanation while also increasing prior authorization requirements and out-of-pocket costs. This delays treatment and increases costs for providers. 

Think of your favorite book. Is it your favorite because the synopsis on the back cover was really good, or is it your favorite because of the storyline and the interplay of characters? We'll admit — we kind of set you up for that one, but hear us out: sometimes (not all the time) to get the full value of content, you just have to experience the entire thing. This is one of those times. But, of course, we're not going to leave you hanging if you're not convinced. Here are a few of the questions posed by our audience and answers they received from ReviveHealth's CEO, Brandon Edwards, and EVP, Chris Bevolo.  Audience Questions When are ReviveHealth’s clients planning to get back to their jobs as marketers and communicators to support the organization’s business priorities?Unpopular opinion: While the dust may be settling, we are undoubtedly still in the No Normal and will be for a long time. For example, new variants in Michigan have caused hospitals to delay surgeries again to deal with an influx of hospitalizations.Even as businesses start to reopen, we have to remember that the world has been changed for good.We must accept these changes and re-establish our identity in this changed world. Who are you? How is your health system different? Who are you competing with?”What would you have *hoped* hospitals would have done in the COVID era to progress, but maybe they missed the opportunity on?  It would be remiss to ignore the limitations and significant lack of funding health systems faced during the pandemic.If adequate resources had been available, we would have hoped health systems would have dispersed care sooner rather than requiring patients to navigate complex medical campuses. Our organization believes that physician acquisition and partnerships is the key to financial growth. Our ad budget has been slashed in half this year ... how can we show our value with our hands tied by a limited budget?Many health systems spend their growth budget on acquisitions rather than looking internally to their marketing teams.  Communicating the value of your team may be challenging, but it is possible. Marketing and advertising are often (and mistakenly) used interchangeably. As marketers, we know that "marketing" is much more than that. Communicate that marketing means setting price strategies, developing messaging for target markets, filling your funnel, and keeping it full. As for the rest, you'll just have to listen to the episode for that. (:

ResourcesUnited Airlines "Fly the friendly skies" campaignDelta Airlines personalization exampleTakeawaysWhy brands are like people Brands are kind of like people – some you want to be around, some you don’t. Modern brands build positive connections with their audiences through thoughtful interactions.  Healthcare is inherently “human,” which gives healthcare brands an opportunity to build lasting connections with their communities. Lead with authenticity Above all else, modern brands must be authentic. Align with your purpose and values and stick with those values in every action. If there’s an opportunity to prove your authenticity, take it. Actions speak louder than words, and today’s distrustful consumer requires consistency of action to build trust. Authenticity requires brands to communicate transparently, and it doesn’t have to be at the cost of creativity. You can have creative and honest conversations with your audience.  Listening could be your competitive edge You can't have an in-person conversation with everyone, but you can use technology to understand your audience and personalize their experience of your brand. Listening to your audience opens the way for a two-way conversation, building brand relationships more effectively. Surprising consumers in creative ways People are familiar with advertising, so we have to meet them in unexpected ways in unexpected places to capture their attention. Powerful creative can significantly impact a brand’s ability to engage its audiences. 

Resources from today's episodeWho is the COVID-19 vaccine for?Why you should be looking closely at Optum's acquisition of Change HealthcareTakeawaysWe've changed ... now what?COVID-19 spurred new trends in how health systems deliver care, including the pace of play, focus on alignment, consumer attunement, and inclusive branding.Healthcare marketers should continue these trends into the future to maintain footing within our increasingly competitive industry.4 trends here for the long haulPace of play:Healthcare marketing teams are now working at a new rate of speed, agility, and decision-making. We should continue to seek opportunities to improve agility.Focus on alignment:Health systems have been focused on alignment between people, processes, and delivery, which has opened a “seat at the table” for marketers.In order to keep this seat, marketers must challenge themselves to do fewer things better whenever possible.Consumer attunement:Consumers are first – a truth that’s never been clearer to our industry and the leaders within healthcare organizations.Use this time of enlightenment to reintroduce conversations about modernizing the patient experience and connected digital infrastructure to drive personalized marketing.Inclusive Branding:Many organizations treat DEI like a mission trip – help a little and then return home. This behavior makes it hard for communities to trust that health systems have their well-being in mind.We must acknowledge that we can’t market ourselves to trust but must make a long-term commitment.

Resources in Today's Episode:Setting the stage for Rapid RenewalConsumer trends reportAmazon expands Amazon CareChicago Trump Tower vaccinated early – thanks to hospital COO who lives thereDispatchHealth raises $135.8 million in series CKey TakeawaysIntroducing Rapid RenewalRapid Renewal is a phase of the No Normal representing healthcare's recommitment to long-term transformation. COVID-19 accelerated transformation in healthcare with much of the groundwork done by competitors vying for top-of-funnel services and insurers with eyes on health systems' margins.Catering to emerging trends such as dispersion, mistrust of experts, and worship of crowds in marketing plans will give hospitals systems a competitive edge.Dispersion – it's time to focus on "how" instead of "where"Dispersion is the re-distribution of efforts and resources to remove unnecessary friction and costs. Applied to healthcare, this means creating a fluid customer experience – independent of location.Shifts away from traditional care delivery models such as Amazon Care and DispatchHealth tighten the race for top-of-funnel-services by increasing care convenience.To counter these forces, health systems must renew the way patients interact with their brand to offer a better care experience.In vogue: mistrust of expertsBetween COVID-19 and socio-political unrest, 2020 saw a deep erosion of trust in government health institutions like the CDC or even CMS. Health systems and hospitals now have an opportunity to own the role of "trusted health expert" but should tread cautiously to maintain this newfound trust. Goodbye, top-down marketingThe public's trust no longer belongs to experts but instead to the crowds. To account for this change, healthcare marketers must start talking to people, not at people.To garner top-of-funnel engagement, healthcare marketers should look away from top-down marketing and transition to influencer, word-of-mouth, and peer-to-peer referral marketing. 

TakeawaysA wide geographic footprint doesn’t come without its challenges Spanning 29 states, LifePoint Health needed to keep a constant pulse on the state initiatives affecting each of its markets. This required a clear and constant line of communication with the compliance team.  The marketing and communications team’s greatest challenge was tracking and responding to changes across markets. For instance, South Carolina was the first of their markets to have a COVID-19 case, and therefore needed different communications than other markets at the time.  LifePoint was able to take learnings from each of its markets to iterate and refine marketing efforts.  Getting standardization and localization to work in harmony Local market leaders and corporate LifePoint Health strategists worked in tandem to produce effective results across state lines. Focus on service line marketing vs. branding depends on the competitive nature of the market. In more isolated markets with less competition, branding is less of a priority, but in highly competitive markets, branding takes the stage. Earning that coveted “seat at the table” COVID-19 has highlighted the importance of marketing and communications teams in achieving health system objectives. Now, it’s up to us to demonstrate our strategic worth by supporting organizational initiatives. Maintaining marketing’s position as a strategic partner calls for targeted hiring initiatives, alignment on strategic plans for the market, and executive buy-in. When communicating with executives, make sure you’re speaking to the value points they care about. For instance, CFOs and CEOs will likely care more about the bottom line and ROI, whereas CNOs may care more about clinical quality. 

Resources from today's episodeIf air travel worked like healthcare TakeawaysDefinitions shape how we see consumerism The way we understand “consumerism” has changed to focus on transaction rather than choice.Language shapes our relationships with the world, and healthcare often looks at consumers too narrowly. For instance, “patient” may not be the most personalized way to describe a relationship to a hospital.We should look at consumerism more holistically – in a way that accounts for needs beyond just the rational.The power of digital experiences in shaping your brand Technology adds to the consumer experience, but it is not the experience. Digital exists within the end-to-end journey, fitting seamlessly with non-digital experiences.Transitions between digital and in-person encounters must be seamless, or else new pain points will arise.How Intermountain caters to the consumer experience Intermountain implemented My Health + to allow consumers to check symptoms conveniently, effectively, and affordably. This experience is tied intimately with follow-ups, labs, etc.Intermountain improved the patient-nurse relationship by making feedback loops more human-oriented and less task-oriented. Healthcare seems incredibly different from Disney, but the same human factors come into play. For instance, safety is a top priority not just for health systems but also for airlines, Disney, and beyond.

Resources from today's episodeNew Consumer Survey Findings ReportCalifornia vaccine sites see misuse of codes meant to prioritize Black and Latino residentsLast week’s episode with Amy Comeau at Emory HealthcareVaccine makers Pfizer and Moderna pledge massive boost to U.S. supply after sluggish rolloutFive Long-Term Consumer Behavior Changes Due to COVID-19Retail Health Clinic Engagement Rising; May Be Key to Supercharging COVID-19 Vaccine RolloutTakeawaysHealth systems' future role in vaccine distributionHealth systems haven't been set up for success in vaccine distribution, often hearing about related government decisions at the same time as the public.Your hospital cannot control the unknown, but it can manage expectations. If you cannot offer insights into a future state, then offer context – how vaccine distribution has evolved, why vaccine allocation isn't ideal, which rollout challenges your system is facing.Continue your hospital's position as a trusted healthcare authority – even if it means you can't always be the one to execute. For instance, if you lack adequate vaccine supply, you can maintain patient trust by referring the patient to a specific location.Israel has been the fastest to roll out vaccines, and they’ve hit a tipping point where supply outpaces demand, forcing the country to double down on vaccine education efforts.  U.S. health systems should prepare to act as educators as we get closer to achieving herd immunity.Ways to co-exist with retail while staying competitiveRetailers have entered the COVID-19 vaccine discussion, posing a long-term competitive threat to health systems.Lower patient volume for top-of-funnel services like vaccinations reduces the number of opportunities within health systems' more profitable mid-to-bottom-of-funnel services.To stay competitive, hospitals should consider ways to stay visible to patients for low-margin procedures like vaccinations. That's why we recommend that health systems do not lay off vaccine efforts.What to prepare for if you decide to step back from vaccine distribution If your health system chooses to pause, stop, or scale back on vaccine distribution efforts, you should prepare a plan to maintain mid-to-bottom-of-funnel patient volume.Scaling back on vaccine distribution could impact your health system's ability to secure supply in the future. Be sure to prepare for this whiplash effect if your system chooses to pause, stop, or reduce vaccine distribution efforts.

ResourcesData Confirms Alarming Trend: Covid-19 Fears Are Causing Americans to Avoid the Doctor’s Office and Delay Routine Care Use and Content of Primary Care Office-Based vs Telemedicine Care Visits During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the US TakeawaysDefining your COVID-19 CRM strategyEmory healthcare implemented a CRM strategy in 2019 but had no real intention of mass communication with patients until COVID-19 hit. With more resources pointed toward crisis communications, Emory Healthcare now utilizes their CRM for monthly communications with patients from their CEO.  Amy Comeau predicts this increased emphasis on CRM communications will continue long-term as the COVID-19 landscape evolves. Why re-evaluating community partnerships is a good idea Relationships with community and senior centers offer health systems opportunities to reach patients beyond their EHR or CRM. Emory Healthcare hosts virtual sessions with community centers. These sessions offer engagement significantly beyond in-person information session benchmarks.Forming a 2021 marketing and communications strategyIt's hard to imagine a world where healthcare branding moves beyond COVID-19 messaging and creative. Healthcare communications should reflect this truth for the foreseeable future.  Healthcare marketers can prepare messaging strategies by defining responses based on pandemic severity. For instance, if variant infections accelerate, your team should plan for communications encouraging the public to wash their hands, wear a mask, and watch their distance. Health systems are learning how to balance crisis response needs with existing business objectives. With this knowledge, marketers are now leaning back into high-margin revenue streams.

TakeawaysHow to make the media your ally, not your enemyTake a transparent, partner-first approach to media, leveraging their networks to get standardized information to the public.   Baystate Health invites the media to virtual briefings in which the health system answers media questions in the order of the RSVP list. This approach reduces the number of duplicative inquiries, standardizes messaging, and builds trust.  Managing misplaced blame for vaccination challengesSome states are more conservative in their vaccine rollout, which can cause confusion – especially for those who live close to state borders and hear mixed messaging. With close to three vaccines on the market, the public expects a new level of consumer choice that isn't necessarily accessible.  Consumers often get conflicting messages from different authorities. When setting your system's response plans, pick a lane and stick with it. For instance, Baystate health has aligned with the state Department of Health and CDC. Planning for brand evolution in 2021Health systems have earned a lot of public trust during the pandemic, but vaccination variables may threaten this goodwill. Branding after COVID-19 may need to involve reputation repair.  Healthcare will have to keep COVID-19 messaging much longer than other industries, but it's not clear for how long. We expect the next big focus to be managing challenges related to delayed preventative care.  We can use this period of uncertainty to update and refine our current marketing assets. For instance, health system marketers can focus on improving SEO, physician profiles, and landing pages. 

Resources from today's episodePatient No Longer: Why Healthcare Must Deliver the Care Experience That Consumers Want and Expect (Ache Management)Through the Patient’s Eyes: Understanding and Promoting Patient-Centered CareChilling trend: A longer, deadlier pandemicTakeawaysDelivering the care patients expect“Through the Patient’s Eyes,”  set the stage for a new, patient-centric paradigm in healthcare in 1993, and now “Patient No Longer” takes it a step further, challenging the healthcare world to look at patients as consumers.COVID-19 accelerated digital adoption and virtual care, expediting the consumerization of healthcare. The following language shifts can influence how we perceive and deliver patient care.  They encourage us to increase outreach before, during, and after care.Positioning → BrandPatient Experience → Consumer ExperienceWhere digital efforts should fit inLeaning into increased demand for virtual care allows health systems to create a positive first impression and creating more business down the line if more acute conditions arise. Health systems should weave digital efforts into the whole care experience rather than specific isolated moments. A different perspective on vaccine sentiments Many surveys report a high percentage of respondents who oppose COVID-19 vaccination. NRC Health found in their recent study more optimistic findings — only 14% of respondents saying they will not get the vaccine. Why the results are different: NRC Health offered a middle ground, “I’m going to wait and see,” which captured 25% of respondents. It's important to design survey questions for neutrality and factor in the way people think, act, and feel. 

Resources from today's episodeHealth workers, stuck in the snow, administer coronavirus vaccine to stranded drivers Washington state hospital apologizes for prioritizing top donors for COVID-19 vaccine Framing What We Do with a Noun or a Verb: Are we “___ing”?  TakeawaysNeed for speedCOVID-19 has accelerated change, requiring health systems and their marketers to find new ways to move faster. Safety protocols and legacy processes can make it challenging to adapt to change.  Health systems can apply some agile marketing principles such as prioritization and iteration to serve COVID-19 demands but should be calculated in each iteration. Because the stakes are so high for healthcare communications, each iteration must carefully balance exactness and speed, as each iteration could potentially reverse public trust.Setting expectations for responsive brandingFaster change means our brands need to evolve faster to remain relevant and avoid sounding out of touch. Continually test messaging to see what’s working and what’s not.  Health systems should consider diversity equity and inclusion as a central pillar of every branding conversation. Incident-based branding efforts can translate as insensitive and self-serving.  On the horizon for healthcare marketers COVID-19 has increased public demand for quality communications, and consumers will likely maintain these expectations in a post-COVID-19 world.  Informative, relevant, actionable content marketing will be an essential function for health system marketing and communications, and consumer expectations for quality content will rise.  Marketers may play a more strategic role in health systems because of familiarity with new technology and the ability to bring data to the table.  We will have to continue to act as technology educators as virtual care becomes more embedded in today’s healthcare system. 

Resources from today's episode The Principles for The No Normal Show  Biden inheriting nonexistent coronavirus vaccine distribution plan and must start 'from scratch  Live Updates: Biden Confronts a Confluence of Crises  TakeawaysVaccine distribution challengesWith limited supply and visibility into future supply, health systems across the nation sit between a rock and a hard place when working to meet public demand.Widespread challenges include undefined priority groups, lack of protocol buy-in across the organization, and demands on health systems to "play cop" when adhering to vaccine protocol.Health systems are attempting to address these challenges by utilizing EMR databases and requiring PCP visits before vaccination, but these methods can exclude some populations.Communications strategies to manage vaccine uncertaintyBe transparent about your current supply, visibility into future supply, the number of administered vaccinations, uncertain waiting times, and your plan to educate the public readily available.Address how you plan to ensure equity in distribution. For instance, some health systems are partnering with community centers and faith-based organizations. Health systems should adhere to "high-risk groups" defined by the CDC to avoid further fragmentation in vaccine communications.The vaccine's impact on health equityReports show African American populations are less likely to get vaccinated, and recent survey findings indicate that the problem isn't just access – it's identity.Industry leaders (predominantly white, male, middle-to-upper-class) took the vaccine to demonstrate faith in its effectiveness. The lack of diversity in these efforts creates an "us and them" dynamic, alienating populations who don't fall under the white, wealthy male umbrella.Health systems can address this gap by demonstrating successful vaccinations across different cultures and demographics.

Resources in Today's Episode:WHO infodemic management 50 actions trackerJohns Hopkins COVID-19 profiling by countryThe online competition between pro and anti-vaccination viewsKey TakeawaysThe Infordemic LandscapeAn infodemic is the widespread sharing of misinformation (false information spread accidentally) and disinformation (false information spread with an agenda) that makes COVID-19 interventions challenging.There is too much information on COVID-19, making it difficult for the general public to discern between factual and non-factual information.Frequent shifts in recommendations made by trusted leaders continue to damage the public’s trust in the information they receive.Four tips for combatting misinformationGet to know your audience by conducting surveys, performing social media analyses, and continue to refine how you listen to your audience based on your findings.Distill science and research into a more understandable format to make information more approachable.Build resilience to misinformation by educating the public on misinformation, how it spreads, and why it’s important to report.Engage with local communities by working with religious leaders, employers, unions, chambers of commerce, and other trusted local groups to amplify good health information.How social media affects the infodemicSocial media can accelerate misinformation, therefore we must standardize how to respond to misinformation by analyzing how it is shared, how it jumps channels, and how interactions vary across channels.Around 67% of people identify providers as a trusted source of information while only 11% report social media as a trusted source.

Resources in Today's Episode:“The Fifth Risk” by Michael Lewis Key TakeawaysLay of the land as a New President Takes SeatBiden faces unusual constraints as he plans to enter office, including walking into multiple crises on day one: The COVID-19 pandemic will continue to get worse over the coming weeks, the U.S. is facing major economic issues, including a cybersecurity hack with details unknown by the government; continued racial injustice and concerns over global climate change.Despite the fact that Biden’s win is objectively decisive when compared to past presidents, one-third of the American population doesn’t believe that he won the 2021 election.Democrats theoretically have control of the Senate at this point.Although it’s in Biden’s best interest to move beyond the final events of Trump’s presidency without getting involved, this may be harder over the next 13 days as he finishes his term, and many discuss invoking the 25th Amendment.New Key Players Enter Political Arena“Personnel is policy,” and the establishment figures that Biden nominates give insight into what we can expect from future policyNew Expectations for Healthcare PoliticsBiden will likely make moderate legislative proposals, and the more progressive proposals he makes will be done by executive actionUnder Trump, the healthcare industry faced issues such as Twitter attacks, inconsistent messages, and poorly designed executive orders; under Biden and his new Senate, appointments will elevate people already respected within the industry, we can expect to see more pressure and constraint on pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, and there will be a tighter focus on following proper procedures and providing consistent leadershipBiden’s Key PrioritiesTaming the COVID-19 pandemic through public health measures, vaccine distribution, and rebuilding public confidenceEconomic stimulus and folding other priorities –– infrastructure, climate, taxes –– into those effortsStrengthening the Affordable Care Act and in anticipation of a Supreme Court decision coming in the spring on whether or not it can be deemed unconstitutional based on a specific clause about taxesRestoring strength and security after a cybersecurity hack gives impetus to data privacy legislationUpcoming Healthcare Policy HighlightsContinued debate over the Affordable Care Act, whether it is constitutional, and the impact on our healthcare system if the Supreme Court decision eliminates this insurance option for millions of Americans who are currently seeking care in the pandemic.Pharmaceutical marketing may be more at risk for taxation as the U.S. likely faces a $2 trillion deficit in 2021.Among other priorities, price transparency in hospitals doesn’t appear to be a high priority for Biden’s appointees.

Resources in Today's Episode:Mayo Clinic's Presentation SlidesFive Long-Term Consumer Behavior Changes Due to COVID-19 Key TakeawaysDo We All Have an Equal Chance for Health? How to Forecast the FutureOn an annual basis, Mayo Clinic looks for a collection of trends.Some trends are healthcare-related, and some are macro-related and are affecting every industry.They take the trends and predictions and determine how these impact their organization.Five Forecasts for the FutureAccurate diagnosis, anytime, anywhere.The patient will see you now – this means that we believe there will be a day when consumers will be much more in control of their health care, and providers will need to adapt to that.Virtual visits will outpace physical interactions. Within two months of the pandemic, there were 2 billion virtual visits.Today's reimbursement model becomes old school – Healthcare is one of the last industries to go through consumer transformation.Research and education are game-changers.Predictions from October 2019 into what 2030 Will Look Like A massive increase in AI innovation.Cybersecurity from the standpoint of moving from attacks on individuals to attacks on hospitals and government entities.Big tech would not stay just in the realm of technology but will disrupt multiple different industries.Rise of consumerism – almost all consumers will feel a need to take control of their information.We're due for an economic downturn, and there will probably be two economic downturns over the next ten years.There will be job losses due to automation and technology implementations.Unaffordability is a big concern in healthcare.As they look at 2030, there will be a more significant increase in social division.

Resources in Today's Episode:‘1619,’ a Podcast From The New York Times.Seeing White Podcast From Scene on RadioThe Radical King book by Martin Luther Dr. King Jr.Stamped from the Beginning book by Ibram X. Kendi Key TakeawaysDo We All Have an Equal Chance for Health? Wealth, class, and zip code can define your health.For Norton Healthcare and its community, West Louisville is where the most disadvantaged population lives.Norton Healthcare had a mobile prevention unit that drove around the west area providing free services and one medical practice nearby.Having partners is very important in addressing racial injustice issues in healthcare. It will continue to take excellent partners to combat these issues.Some areas have been neglected for far too long and need our attention – this is not just happening in Lousiville, but all over the United States.Impact of Systemic Racism on Health Where there is a wealth gap, there is a health gap.Minorities continue to have higher rates of mortality and morbidity than white people.Black adults have a higher chance of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.Poverty affects housing, employment, education, food access, transportation, health services, and other social challenges.Norton Health utilizes community-based research and insights to identify needs and the appropriate action to serve their community best.Most health systems are not where they need to be with this issue – we need to be more open about where we’re at how we always strive to grow and move forward as an organization.Five Health Imperatives 1. Norton Healthcare Institute for Health Equity. Founded on the belief that social class/zip code should not be the most likely determinant of health.Committed to removing barriers that prevent people from having the best health possible.New mobile units, points of care – improve access to care and establish care sites to manage chronic disease.Provide access to mental health resources.Committed to leading critical conversations focused on educating internally and the community.Dedicated to partnering with pipeline institutions to help identify/develop/increase the number of minorities in healthcare.2. Ensure access to primary care for everyone. Look at underserved areas and communities as well as underrepresented clinical providers.3. Mirror the community within Norton Healthcare Leadership. Redefine “leadership.”Evolve “officers and directors” quarterly meetings to a new “system leadership group.”4. Help employees engage in matters of importance to the community. Census, voting, community initiative support, etc.5. Invest money to address needs in underserved areas.Foundation commitment to raise matching funds.Put these dollars towards initiatives that are helping underserved areas.