At the tenth annual Joe Public Retreat, BPD Healthcare brought together the nation’s leading health system marketing and communications executives with a bold goal: to reinvent the MarCom function based on the full potential of AI by 2028.
Over three days, the group envisioned a bold future – and asked some existential questions:
When personalization is table stakes, what differentiates one system from another?
What kinds of teams will you need to build the future?
In 2028… does marketing function as it does today?
In a small group setting with senior-level voices, the conversations pushed beyond tools and tactics and into something much more consequential: What purpose does marketing serve in an AI-enabled system?
Below, three themes that emerged from JPR 2026.
1. Marketing Is Becoming an Enterprise Intelligence Function
Marketing is shifting from campaign execution to continuous orchestration of growth and stewardship of lifetime value and enterprise impact.
Forward-looking teams will:
- Unify CRM, EHR, operational, and behavioral data
- Measure trust and access as performance metrics
- Move from episodic campaigns to dynamic, real-time journeys
- Embed marketing with finance, operations, and strategy
Implication for leaders:
In a future that runs on data, marketing and communications will be able to drive the business in bigger, bolder ways.
2. Your Current Org Chart Is Built for a Pre-AI World
Organizations will win or lose the AI race based on their people, not their tech. The challenge is in reimagining structure, incentives, and talent models.
Organizations accelerating fastest will:
- Make AI capability an expectation, not an extracurricular
- Update job descriptions and performance criteria
- Reward experimentation and efficiency gains
- Build internal AI councils or change agents
- Address automation fear openly
Implication for leaders:
The real competitive advantage will come from how quickly culture, roles, and workflows evolve.
3. Data + Governance Will Define Competitive Advantage
Health systems have massive data assets. Most are fragmented, inconsistently structured, or hard to activate.
Winning organizations will:
- Treat data architecture as a growth priority, not an IT backlog
- Create marketing-controlled sandboxes for experimentation
- Embed privacy, policy foresight, and governance into AI planning
- Prepare for agentic browsing and AI-first discovery environments
Implication for leaders:
Data is everywhere. Intelligence is not. Without connectivity and structure, AI scales fragmentation instead of insight.
Okay – so where do we start?
The future of marketing doesn’t begin with a platform overhaul or a sweeping reorg. It starts with a few meaningful steps toward better connectivity – connecting two data streams that have never informed one another, or breaking down one persistent silo. AI will amplify whatever structure already exists, and each step builds on the last.
Looking for guidance? AI can reimagine marketing workflows, unlock new creative possibilities and drive measurable business impact – let’s chat.
