Can CMOs Lead the Future of AI?

[00:00:00] Stephanie Wierwille: Welcome to the No Normal Show, brought to you by BPDA marketing services firm that delivers the future to healthcare’s leading brands. This show is where we leave all things status quo, traditional old school, and boring in the dust, and celebrate the new, the powerful, the innovative, the bold, all focused around the future of healthcare, marketing, and communications. I’m Stephanie Bel, EVP of Engagement here at BPD, and I’m joined by Desiree Duncan, VP of Health Equity and Inclusion. Hello and good morning, Dez.

[00:00:27] Desiree Duncan: Good morning, Stephanie. Welcome back to the Land of the Living. you were just out living your best life

[00:00:34] Stephanie Wierwille: I was in the land of Vino. Um, and Hi Chris. Um, good to see you again. Um, I’m joined by Chris Bevelo, chief Transformation Officer here at BPD. Hello. Hello.

[00:00:44] Chris: Hello, Stephanie. Hello De. Great to be here. Excited, excited for our conversation today.

[00:00:51] Stephanie Wierwille: Me too. We’ve got some good, good topics. So speaking of that, um, a few topics here we have to touch on. Cracker Barrel, all the Cracker Barrel [00:01:00] madness and fun happening on the interwebs. So we’ll get into that. Also, um, we have a headline, uh, an interesting one around Kaiser Permanente and some rallying happening for ai, job protections and what we’re seeing there, a little bit broader, um, in the industry around that type of, uh, thing. And then we’re gonna get into a really fun topic, which we’re calling, um, the Einstein Divide based on a new blog post that BPD has published. But it’s really all around the future of AI and marketing and how healthcare marketers and CMOs can really lead the way. Um, so those are our main topics. Before we get into it, though, a few headlines, um, and housekeeping items. Uh, first of all, we always love to say, please sign up for the No Normal Rewind, which is a newsletter that recaps these discussions. It’s where you can get, uh, links out to the types of articles that we’re referencing, a little bit more news, um, and a little bit more extra takes on some of the insights that we’re sharing. Additionally, we will, uh. [00:02:00] Talk at length about this, but as I mentioned, we have a latest blog post called The Einstein Divide. You can find it on our website, uh@bpdhealthcare.com. Um, and then another helpful blog that we’ve recently published, which is called You Are Full, but Are you growing, touching on the fact that so many health systems are really at capacity. Um, but our blog post digs into what does that mean for a marketing standpoint, and is it, are you really full in every single service line? And then also how do you think about growth in this interesting, uh, environment. Um, and then lastly, uh, we have, uh, a couple notes about the Joe Public retreat. I’m gonna turn it to you, Chris, if you wanna share a little bit more around that.

[00:02:38] Chris: Yeah, we can officially talk about it now that it’s public and we are inviting folks to join us. So if you’re not familiar with the Joe Public Retreat, it’s an event that we used to put on annually, and then this little thing called COVID happened kind of threw us off track. Interestingly, it. the last one we did before COVID was on February 15th, 2020, uh, when the first two [00:03:00] cases of COVID were reported in San Diego.

So, uh, still have fresh memories of that, but we’re back. We had one last year, uh, and we have another one scheduled. It is a, uh, it is really a retreat. We tried to keep this a very unique environment where there’s only 40 people, um, who can attend, and it is essentially two and a half days. Of deep, deep conversation where people just roll up their sleeves, kind of what happens to the Joe Public Retreat stays at the Joe Public Retreat. Uh, this is for senior health system marketers, CMOs, VPs, that kind of thing. Uh, and we had a great event last year, but the one that we have coming up is gonna be, I think, quite special. So this is gonna be February 18th through 20th, uh, in 2026. So I don’t know how many months away that is, five months, six months, which is kind of. Ridiculous to say that out loud, that it’s that close, uh, in South Beach. So we always try to do it in a really cool locale. South [00:04:00] beaches, um, I think defines cool and this year. We are gonna be focusing on ai, but in a way that I think is different than, uh, most anything else you can get out there. Uh, we have Paul Rader. So many people are familiar with Paul. We talk about him all the time on this show. We had him last year as a guest panelist. Uh, he’ll be back spending a full day with us. And the group is going to dive into what does the future of health system marketing look like if AI comes to fruition? So kind of building the vision for, say, two to three years from now. Uh, if everything we believe and everything we read, uh, about AI really comes in the way that it’s supposed to come. is that fundamentally going to change how we show up? Uh, in also marketing? We believe it will fundamentally change how we show up. The question is what does that look like? Uh, and so we’re kind of, we’re kind of promoting this as you’ll be able to say you were in the room when, [00:05:00] uh, that vision was created. Uh, that will allow the people in the room to say, okay, this is kind of where we’re headed. How do we get there? Uh, for good and for bad, right? Because there will be a lot of positives with that, but there will be a lot of challenges that that presents, whatever that vision is. So it’s gonna be an incredible experience.

Uh, we always have great dinners, social events. Uh, we have had wine tasting in the past. I’m not sure if we’re doing wine tasting. this year though, I don’t know why we wouldn’t, doesn’t seem right in South Beach. What would you taste in South Beach rum? Of course we’ll have rum tasting, something like that. Uh, but it’s an incredible experience. So you can go to joe public retreat.com or find, uh, a link in our show notes to figure, find out more, see the agenda, and to register. Hurry to register again. Only 40 people can come. We are probably a third full already and we just started promoting it, so it will sell out.

We’ll have a waiting list, uh, but first come, first serve, get in there. And we’re having [00:06:00] an early bird discount right now. Um, so if you get in there, you can get a discount on your registration. there you go. Joe. Public retreat. Yes, let’s go.

[00:06:10] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, I mean, last year’s was just absolutely amazing and I think what was interesting, we’ve talked about this so many times, but I think last year people got really, really rallied up around the AI conversation. So it’s gonna be awesome to just be heads down on all things AI in the future this year, and I cannot wait so good.

[00:06:28] Chris: Yes,

[00:06:30] Stephanie Wierwille: Um, all right, well, let’s get into it. Um, uh, we always love to check in and just say what’s going on in your lives. Before we get into our, our deep topics here, anything happening in your worlds, Kristen and Des,

[00:06:42] Chris: uh, I’m sure there is, but. happened in your world you might want to talk about. Weren’t you? you on like a two week, be recently

[00:06:50] Stephanie Wierwille: this Bender?

[00:06:52] Chris: all the places and all the things. Tell us about that.

[00:06:55] Stephanie Wierwille: oh my gosh, it was such a dream. So I went to Italy and I did all the Italian [00:07:00] things, Rome, chin and Tuscany and the Amalfi Coast, and, uh,

[00:07:04] Chris: I.

[00:07:05] Stephanie Wierwille: practiced my, my few words of Italian and ate all the food. So we, it was, it was a blast. And I think now I have that, you know, very cliche American Italian hangover, where I’m like in my kitchen trying to like mash up fresh garlic and olive oil and, you know, trying to make a. Butoni El Pomodoro. And, so that’s the phase I’m in now is, you know, so when I was let me tell you about the, you know, flower. Yeah. Yeah. Practicing all of the, you know, cliche American, uh, uh, things we do. Chris, you were there last year, right?

[00:07:43] Chris: I was, so have you been des, have you been to Italy?

[00:07:47] Desiree Duncan: I’ve never been. I’ve, uh, I’ve been to Spain, England, and France, but not Italy.

[00:07:51] Chris: Okay. So the question is, you can’t answer this, or maybe you can Northern or Southern Italian food, Stephanie. I mean, it’s clear cut to me.

[00:07:58] Stephanie Wierwille: Southern.[00:08:00]

[00:08:00] Chris: Oh, no,

[00:08:01] Stephanie Wierwille: Oh, really?

[00:08:02] Desiree Duncan: Smoke.

[00:08:03] Chris: no.

[00:08:03] Stephanie Wierwille: am a pizza pasta girly. And my understanding is northern is a little more, uh, meat heavy and also some pasta too. Right.

[00:08:13] Chris: I, I could be confusing them as an Italian, you think I would have this down As somebody who visited Italy not that long ago. Uh, my recollection was the food in Rome was not nearly as good as the food in Florence or Venice. So I don’t know if Florence, Northern, that’s definitely northern. So I don’t know.

I could be confusing. Ryan Kani is going to hunt me down. And he is gonna throw me in a gondola, which is what I’ll call it, and send me out to sea for not remembering the difference.

[00:08:40] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, so I did learn, and I loved learning that Italy is not really a, I mean, it’s a country, yes, but like it’s not historically, right? All the regions are

[00:08:48] Chris: Yeah.

[00:08:48] Stephanie Wierwille: All the food is completely different. So like in Chin, we had like the trophy. Pesto Oil trophy. That’s, I’m not getting it quite right in Rome.

I agree with you. I felt like the Roman restaurants were mostly catering to tourists. [00:09:00] That’s how I just felt versus, you know, in some of the smaller towns, it felt a lot more authentic. But that said, I still learned a ton, and I learned why jarred tomato sauce is so terrible, and I feel like I will never eat tomato sauce from a jar again.

And that’s a big deal coming from me, who has lived her entire life on Ragu. So here we go.

[00:09:23] Desiree Duncan: I see a pot of tomatoes in your future, like with every single thing that you’re making, you’re just going from scratch. I love it.

[00:09:30] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Well anyway, we’ll have to have a whole deep dive with Ryan on that one.

[00:09:36] Chris: Yeah.

[00:09:36] Stephanie Wierwille: okay, so from good food to, uh, Southern Food. Uh, so our first headline here, we have to talk about Cracker Barrel. Now I will say we’re

[00:09:45] Chris: Do we wait time out? Do we,

[00:09:48] Stephanie Wierwille: Do

[00:09:48] Chris: I think we’re the last people on the face of humanity. What? Those are like 7 billion people on earth now. Something like that. And I think we are literally the last three people to weigh in on this. So I guess we have to,

[00:09:59] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, well, we’re [00:10:00] gonna do it differently. We are not gonna get into all the political discussions that the Internets are having. Um, but you know. I think everybody knows by now, so I’ll summarize very quickly. But Cracker Barrel went through a rebrand. They’ve been kind of rebranding for a while in their interior design, but now they came out with a new logo and they dropped, uh, uncle, uncle Herschel in the barrel from the logo and the internet just went completely wild.

So, um, I’ll just leave it there. Uh, Chris Dez, how did you feel?

[00:10:33] Chris: Des, why don’t you

[00:10:33] Desiree Duncan: I mean, I’ll go first. Uh, it’s always so interesting just how the opinions that non-brand managers have around like logos. Uh, but I’ve been kind of following since they started doing the interior and I’m conflicted. You know, as a proud southerner, like I, I like some of the heritage, but also we love a brunch spot. And for me, I’m feeling like just it’s the continuation of the ification of, [00:11:00] uh, some of these brands and some of these experiences. It’s like, how do we keep the, some of the novelty but like just refresh it without feeling like we’re just kind of getting rid of it. Which they say they’re not like you can still get all of your different like candies and treats and all that. but it is so interesting when. People are chiming in with about something they know nothing about. Chris, what’s your thought?

[00:11:22] Chris: Well, that’s, that’s kind of my, you could tell from my, maybe interrupting Stephanie earlier again, 2 cent Nation. Trademark. I’m trademarking that already. ’cause there is a whole book in this. I know. There is it. It just drives me nuts every time this happens because of what you said, Des like people come out of the woodwork, Like we were joking beforehand. Like one of my cats said, Meow, meow. Bad logo, meow. Everybody’s got something to say about the logo change. And it’s just like, what is the deal with it? Why? I know why. There’s a lot of reasons why, but just because people [00:12:00] can doesn’t mean it’s always great that they do. You can, you can apply that to everything that, where that might apply, but I always, I’m, I’m, I’m, what I’m trying to figure out, and Stephanie, I think you’re gonna talk about this a little bit, is in the past, my advice on this has always been just let it go. Just let, if you’re the brand, let it happen. It’s gonna happen. You can’t, you’re never gonna please everybody with whatever you do. just let the, let the internet have its moment. ’cause that’s what it will be. And a year from now. going to talk about your logo. Um, now in this case, because of some of the stuff going on, they, they like had a stock hit and are saying they’ll never go to Cracker Barrel again. Like, I don’t understand that part either.

Like if the every, if the experience is really the same, the food is the same, like you’re not gonna go ’cause the logo’s different. Like, come on. I think again, that’s 2 cent Nation. Everybody’s got an [00:13:00] opinion. Your job as a smart person is to ignore. Those opinions, tune them out. Who cares what, uh, everybody thinks about the Cracker Barrel logo? Um, wonder whether I need to change my stance on that advice, because if your stock goes down, there something that can be done to prep people for this? I don’t know, but I just think it’s the, it’s the ultimate in 2 cent Nation this.

[00:13:29] Stephanie Wierwille: I also think the news had a little bit of a, well, a lot of a heyday with it because the stock went down, but the stock’s been going down since 2021 and like if you zoom out on the stock, like the little dip that they had this last couple weeks was nothing in the broad. Since. so, I don’t know, the news just goes wild.

Um, but to your point, Chris, I think, you know, anytime there’s a logo change now in this world we live in or any kind of rebrand, a brand has to be prepared for conversation. And I thought what was interesting was. It kind of felt like [00:14:00] Cracker Barrel wasn’t really, cracker Barrel wasn’t really prepared for the conversation.

So I was looking at how did they react and they published a statement, um, which was quite, quite long, and they talked about how, you know, uncle Herschel is staying on the menu. His favorites are still there, the rocking chairs are still there. Their values are the same. So that all made sense, but I thought they, it was interesting how they also shared some talking points for their employees, and it was very much like. Do not engage in customer conversations this. And the employees were sort of like, what? I just, it just seemed like, look, they’re a, they’re a pancake company, right? They’re a biscuits company. They could have had a little fun maybe with the discussion, or at least been prepared for how do we, how do we navigate? Um, so I guess that would be the learning from my vantage point is people, people are gonna talk, they just are. you do with it

matters the most.

[00:14:54] Chris: yeah.

[00:14:56] Desiree Duncan: In that case around the, you know, any buzz is good [00:15:00] buzz, right? Because like, to your point, like the socks were already going down, but at least people are actually talking about you and your brand. Uh, but have we become just too sentimental about everything where we’re like, oh, we’re just like grasping at straws for like, oh, but you know, I’m losing this.

And it’s like having this, uh, that kind of ma that mindset. It’s like an abundance, there’s, it’s fine. It’s literally fine. You can still get your crispy pancakes.

[00:15:24] Chris: right. Like, it just, that’s part of the, the thing that drives me nuts is like, don’t people have jobs? Like what? I don’t understand. I mean, you go through LinkedIn and it’s just full, and then you’ll see people like, well, I guess I should give my 2 cents. And it’s like, no, you shouldn’t. Like, nobody’s asking for everybody’s opinion on this, but because people can give it, um, there’s so many other things that you could be focused on. Um. So I don’t know, I, and of course there’s just as many people who are like, no, it’s great, it’s cleaner, it’s whatever. As there are saying, oh no, you’ve lost the heritage. And, maybe the redundancy. Like, [00:16:00] I never, I didn’t know it was Uncle Herschel. So now I’m like, okay, your name is Cracker Barrel and you literally took the cracker in the barrel off the logo.

Like, would argue that’s reducing redundancy. I not say that? Does his, does his wincing, wincing at my. I’m trying to argue for the logo. I don’t know. I don’t care. we’ve eaten it. Cracker Barrel, it’s not like a place we seek out, but I don’t seek it out because of the logo and I will not avoid it because of the new logo.

That’s where’s

[00:16:29] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, guess, yeah, we, we have other headlines to get onto, but I think the last thing I’ll just note is it is a very interesting metaphor around loss aversion and you know, the cultural state of things where I think there’s just such a sense of progress versus loss that people are really hanging on to something that.

Who was talking about Uncle Herher before this? No one. Right now. They are. So anyway, so speaking of, uh, just some of [00:17:00] these cultural bubblings that are grazing to the surface, our next headline is, um, Kaiser Permanente is dealing with some, uh, rallies and union pushback for a ai. And specifically the rallies are around AI job protections and asking for. Uh, more job security and specifically, um, you know, just the stance around ai. Kaiser Permanente has been very AI forward very much, um, and, and really sharing that, you know, the purpose of AI is not to automate away jobs, but it’s to augment jobs. But that said, there is pushback around it. And I do wanna note this is not the first time this. Has come up in healthcare or outside of healthcare, right. We’ve seen nurses, um, lobby against AI over the last few years. We’ve certainly seen, you know, I think Hollywood is the most obvious and clear one where unions have really, um, pushed back. But almost every industry has had this, so we expect this is gonna continue.

Um, but what, what, how did you all, what was your take in your read on these, um, these rallies?[00:18:00]

[00:18:01] Desiree Duncan: I mean, everything feels so nebulous right now that I think people are really wanting something come. Concrete on paper around like, what does all of this mean? But you, you can’t, because you know we’re building this ship as we go. But all of this kind of screams at the idea of wanting to just have something that they can hold up, that this is the truth, this is what’s going to be happening.

But know.

[00:18:24] Chris: There’s a great article that I just saw, uh, by Charlie Wartell, who I really like him. If you’re not familiar with him, he writes about technology and culture and uh, he writes for, I, he used to have a substack, I’m not sure. But this article is an Atlantic, um, and it’s called AI is a Mass Delusion Event, and. It basically says, the one thing we can all agree on is that the potential impact on people, uh, is really causing us as a culture to kind of lose it, uh, because of what you just said, Des, like there’s so much unknown. Um, and so [00:19:00] it’s just, it’s scary. It is promising. you know, you got some people who’ve been around longest in AI saying it’s a, it’s a threat to humanity.

Humanity. And then every other day I see an article like, AI is fake and there’s really no, there’s really nothing to it and it can’t think and all this stuff. Um, but it’s having enough of an impact and touching people enough that they see it. like, I think in this case you’ve got healthcare workers that are like, okay, I’m starting to see it implemented and that makes it real. but. I don’t know. On, on the other hand, I just feel like, you know. When I see these kind of things, it makes me think of like employees at the horse and buggy company who are protesting this new thing called an automobile and how that’s gonna disrupt their industry and they don’t like it. And it’s like automobile is gonna come and the horse and buggy is gonna be like relegated to Central Park.

So I don’t know the solution. I understand if you’re in that [00:20:00] position, the fear, uh, both of jobs and of the impact on patient care and all of that. Um. it’s, there’s no simple, simple path forward. I think it’s understandable, I guess is the best way to put it.

[00:20:13] Stephanie Wierwille: And I think it’s just one, one more thing to be prepared for as a, especially in the communications world, is, you know, thinking ahead to how are you proactively planning, uh, for this type of conversation and what are the right messages and talking points. Um, see our comms episode for four episodes ago, right? Um, okay, let’s get into our main topic. So we are really all about AI today in our main topic. Um, and this is really based on a blog post that was shared last week, I think Chris, two weeks ago. Um, it’s called the Einstein Divide. So I’ll just give a little bit of a setup and then we’ll dig in. We’ll brainstorm, we’ll discuss, we’ll, we’ll throw some spa against the wall, um, and, and kind of brainstorm around the AI future. So.

[00:20:59] Chris: to throw Maa [00:21:00] Choli. Do you know what that, you guys know what Maa Choli is?

[00:21:03] Stephanie Wierwille: no. Educate me.

[00:21:06] Chris: So it’s got two other names, but one of ’em is Zdi. It’s we always called it Mos Cholo growing up, but you know what Zdi is, right? The little tubes. Yeah.

[00:21:16] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay.

[00:21:17] Chris: you have tubes stuck against the wall.

[00:21:19] Stephanie Wierwille: Oh my God, I’ve

[00:21:20] Desiree Duncan: It’s just gonna like bounce off the wall.

[00:21:22] Stephanie Wierwille: Sorry, des.

[00:21:22] Chris: What does,

[00:21:24] Desiree Duncan: That’s just gonna like bounce off the wall. Right? It’s not even gonna stick.

[00:21:28] Chris: why would it, why would that not stick, but Getty does?

[00:21:33] Desiree Duncan: I don’t know. I know.

[00:21:35] Chris: thinner, it’s gonna, you’re right there’s more spa, more of the spaghetti noodle area that can stick to a wall relative to its weight a macho noodle. So

[00:21:51] Desiree Duncan: It’s physics.

[00:21:52] Stephanie Wierwille: Yes,

[00:21:52] Chris: there’s our, there’s our science corner for the day.

[00:21:56] Stephanie Wierwille: I have so much to learn

[00:21:58] Chris: I.

[00:21:59] Stephanie Wierwille: and [00:22:00] physics. Um,

[00:22:02] Chris: Sorry, Stephanie, back to the topic at hand.

[00:22:05] Stephanie Wierwille: we’ll just start a new podcast that’s all about pasta. Um, please. Okay. So, um. So we’ve been having lots of discussions around AI with healthcare, um, and health system marketers and communicators and CMOs and, oh, I think over the last, I would say year and a half, and we’ve been really sitting down and, and talking about what does AI transformation look like?

How do you educate your, your teams? And we noticed an interesting trend and so we’re couching this trend in. Physics and science kind of metaphor here, which is Edison versus Einstein. So let me kind of paint the picture first and then I’ll, I’ll bring it back to the AI world. a lot of people think that Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but he did not, right?

He was not the first person to invent the light bulb, but self several got there first. Um. Several inventors had been [00:23:00] tinkering with the light bulb and there was a light bulb, but just wasn’t cheap enough, fast enough, good enough, it couldn’t scale. And so Edison had a team and his team of inventors sat down at Menlo Park, um, and they iterated on that light bulb and they tested all kinds of different materials for the filament, for the wiring setups, um, and also for the o overall ecosystem.

So think about all the things that go around that light bulb. Um, and so, you know, that’s obviously really important and world changing in so many ways. Um, but what’s interesting, I think about that was it wasn’t a brand new idea. It was making something that already existed, smarter, better, cheaper, faster, scalable. then you have on the other side of things, you have Einstein. So speaking of physics, Einstein was always obsessed with physics. He was studying Newton and Maxwell and Faraday and, um, really learning, learning, learning. And he was, uh, kind of. Frustrated in the best way around how some of these theories conflicted. Um, he was frustrated with the rote, uh, mechanics of [00:24:00] physics and science and math, and he actually went to a school a little bit later on that was all about imagination. So he took all of this. And imagine these crazy things like what would it be if I rode on a beam of light, uh, what would happen with time and with speed?

And then he imagined, you know, what would it be like if I free falled in an elevator? What would happen to gravity and what would happen to space? And just these crazy imaginations. And so from this, he came up with these brand new concepts around special relativity and the theory of, of general relativity around gravity and space time and, and, um, and time itself. So, okay. Why do we tell those stories? Like, what is the point? So the point is we’re seeing a lot of Edisons in AI transformation. Um, we’re seeing a lot of, okay, uh, we have marketing, we have a team. How do we automate things? How do we go faster? How do we take CRM and make it completely automated? How do we make, uh, performance marketing more effective?

How do we automate creative and apply AI so we can get creative done in two days? [00:25:00] All of that’s great, but what we’re not seeing is the Einstein side. We’re not seeing the what if we’re not seeing teams sit down and say, okay, what is a problem that’s never been able to solve, be solved? And how could we come up with this wild imagination and then leverage AI and technology and data to solve it? So that’s my long-winded storytelling. I’m gonna pause here, um, um, and hear from you all.

[00:25:26] Desiree Duncan: Yeah, that, hearing that story, it gets me thinking about even just the way we use AI in general, right? Um, we spend our days just kind of like, I don’t know about you, but oftentimes I like, will wake up just kind of anxious and panic. I’m like, oh, I gotta get this thing done. And I just jump into the act and the tactics of doing the things, you know, where, um, only when I’m more thoughtful and maybe go for a walk afterwards.

That I actually start to, uh, unpack things in my mind and un noodle. And so essentially what you’re saying is that we need to actually spend more time doing that and less just focusing on the, like plugging the [00:26:00] question into the machine and it spitting out answers. And so it’s like really, uh, creating a space for that in your, in your.

Your own world and your team, uh, because speaking of that earlier abundance versus scarcity mindset, you know, AI puts people in that scarcity mindset, uh, so you’re spending more of your time convincing your folks of using AI versus the abundance mindset of like, wow, the, the possibilities are endless.

Um, but it sounds like, yeah, really giving more space to that, letting your mind just kind of. Roam and, and really think and unpack some ideas rather than just like, how do I do this thing faster and quicker and what have you?

[00:26:37] Chris: Yeah. Well first of all, Stephanie’s being super humble because this, this is a brainstorm of her making. So the, all the flowers to Stephanie for, for coming up with this, this concept, which I think is just spectacular way to kind of describe the opportunity. I mean, there’s opportunity in being a a Edison of course. Um, [00:27:00] this also makes me think of that we try to use, uh, in our creative activities. It’s, it’s a, it’s kind of a framework from Edward Deno who’s this. guru, I don’t know else to describe him. Um, and he has this concept called lateral thinking. so lateral thinking is when you have a problem, you start at the problem and you try to solve it, starting with the problem. you might get to solution A or solution B, and if you’re really creative, you might get to solution CRD. That’s lateral thinking. his suggestion is, and it sounds very similar to what you described from Einstein, don’t start with the challenge or the question. Jump out to something completely out in left field. So come up with something that’s nothing to do with it and work your way backwards. So what would happen if I fall down an elevator shaft? Is a, is an example of not trying to like start with gravity and all that, but you’re just starting with some random thing. And if you [00:28:00] start out in left field, you might start in like W or V and work your way backwards to G or H.

That’s still. A way further out solution or a way to think about that challenge than if you’d started at the beginning and got to A, B or C. Uh, and I think that’s what we’re suggesting here is do you, and this is the challenge with Einstein thinking, I think, um, to your point de how do we let go of what we know? Because if we’re starting with what we know, if we’re starting with incrementalism, if we’re starting with with efficiency, if we’re starting with this like, Hey, we put out this newsletter and how can we make it, you know, how can we take all the steps in the newsletter and make them 25% faster? Nobody’s asking, like, why do we need a newsletter in the future? Like, what is the future of newsletters? What is the future of communication? And work your way backwards from that. So that is what I think this is all about. Um, it’s not un coincidentally exactly what we’ll be [00:29:00] doing at the Joe Public Retreat, so stick that plug in there. Um, when you do that, that’s when your mind starts to go. Boy, there’s all kinds of stuff we could talk about.

[00:29:12] Stephanie Wierwille: Yes. So I love, I love that point, Chris, and I think, um, you know, there’s a, there’s a line in the blog where it says like, what we’re, we’re all focused on making the factory faster, better, smarter. But what if that factory isn’t really a thing anymore? about marketing communications, right? And we’ve already had discussions on this podcast around search and what’s the future of search and SEO. What is a website’s purpose? If people are kind of skipping those clickthroughs? So I’m not saying, I’m not here to say websites are dead, search is dead. I think that it’s a little more balanced than that right now, but the point is to ask the question of, okay, take search and websites out of the equation. Completely, you know, what would the future look like? I think, Chris, you’ve, I love, it’s, this is your question, which maybe we can get into this, [00:30:00] which is do campaigns even matter in this kind of future? Right? Because campaigns are this idea of a moment in time, six month, maybe year long program, stop and start. What would it actually look like if there was just an always on brain making decisions, you know? Now take five steps out from there. I mean, those aren’t even starting a w to your point. That’s sort of starting a C, if you will. So I think the question is how do you push even further? Right? How do you go, okay, like zero based, take everything off the table. were rebuilding, if you were building marketing communications from the ground up with AI and tech at the center, what would that actually look like? Right? What would the modern datafication like? I think that’s the question we wanna ask.

[00:30:44] Chris: Yeah. And I think, you know, the idea of the campaign is, it’s a campaign is named the campaign because it’s gotta define time, it’s gotta define challenge, it’s gotta defined set of activities. Um, and usually those are defined because there’s a set [00:31:00] of resources have to be applied that aren’t infinite, Why would you do a orthopedics campaign you could just. Have the right people receive the right information on orthopedics, whenever the hell they need it, that is, then there is no campaign, there is no defined time. There is, is no, you know, defined set of tactics. It’s whatever is needed, whenever it’s needed, however it needs to be delivered. Um, so you, I don’t know, I just have this vision of you wake up in the morning and your ai, your AI. Marketing genius tells you. Okay. Um, we’re, we’re full on orthopedics, so we’re gonna dial that back a little bit today, but cardiology, you know, added a doctor a month ago and they’re not quite filled. So we’re gonna move some resources there.

And the campaign’s already running, it’s already, you know, using our, our brand and, and all our messages and all that. And all you’re doing is just reviewing. [00:32:00] the flow of, of information of whatever it is and tweaking it if you want, whatever, and you’re not, there is no process to go out to market. It’s just happening time all the time. So that’s just one example. I, to me, there’s no reason that’s not possible, none. It’s just, it’s just gonna take us time for all of those capabilities and technologies to come into their fullest force to be able to do that. But. we should be able to do that with data and AI like.

[00:32:32] Stephanie Wierwille: Absolutely. I mean, I think that’s the promise of, and the excitement around precision marketing and why we’re so obsessed with that here at BPD, and I think that’s where retail has been, right? Where, which is maybe not to that degree, but, you know, imagine a world where, yes, you wake up and it’s, it’s sort of like I’ve, I, as my, the AI agent, if you will, is, has already made these decisions, has already discovered this overnight, maybe literally, and has already made these changes.

And all you have to do is approve and then imagine, you know. It’s letting you know [00:33:00] throughout the day or throughout the week or whatever. Okay, now we’ve scheduled these appointments. We’ve booked these appointments. Now we’re filled up here. Now we’re gonna go over there. Imagine now what if your competitor makes a move and your AI system recognizes that and says, your competitor just did X.

We’re gonna do Y in, in we response. That’s like game theory, you know? Or this change happened in the environment. This policy change happened. Imagine like. All that kind of data you could feed in sentiment data. Um, that’s where it gets really exciting. And so you need PowerPoint decks anymore? no.

You’re just, it’s just happening and the machine is, is, is moving for you. That’s just one territory we could go down.

[00:33:43] Desiree Duncan: I’m picturing a, uh, person just kind of walking down the street, right? They have been experiencing a little bit of like knee pain, right? And they’ve been, you know, telling their friends or spouse about it. Um, and then the. The, uh, the powers at be are starting [00:34:00] to kind of like manifest, just show up, you know, not because there’s a campaign per se in market, but just because like, they can sense your vibes of like, needing this right now or something, right?

So you’re walking down the street, you’re walking past this, uh, you know, digital outta home campaign, but then all of a sudden you’re getting this ad that’s like, oh, are you, you know, having trouble stepping up off, uh, off that sidewalk or what have you, or you’re like, oh. weird. Uh, and then you are starting to get fed, you know, different ads while you’re kind of scrolling through and doom scrolling and all of that.

And like, there’s all of these different things that are just, I don’t know, connected to your, your aura. What’s putting out there. ’cause these machines are listening to us. I know we try to turn ’em off, but like they switch out the set settings like every like couple. I don’t know, seconds. Anyway, so I just pictured that being able to be, uh, we’re environ, almost environmentally connected in that way.

Uh, but

[00:34:53] Chris: that’s the

[00:34:53] Desiree Duncan: it’s the.

[00:34:54] Chris: report, if you’ve ever seen that, where he is walking through the mall and the ads are personalized and [00:35:00] there’s already technology that’s been invented. Of course it’s been, I think it’s being used first and foremost for military, where you can direct sound. can literally like have. Uh, a speaker that sends a different signal to me than to you des than to you, Stephanie, if we’re just standing next to each other and we all hear different things, um, this is where I think it’s fun. So every time we talk about this stuff. Uh, this is, this is maybe my superpower. It’s super annoying to everybody.

But like, so Stephanie, like, why would we, why would we even need to approve anything anymore? Just stop and think about why we approve things now. We approve things now to make sure that they’re, message is right, they fit our brand. Um, there’s nothing offensive. To me, like that’ll all be automatically correcting if, so, if the AI machine puts out an ad that’s off brand it gets a bad comment or [00:36:00] something, or it recognizes, oh wow, this one ad went out there and it doesn’t quite fit, it’s gonna self-correct.

Like, I don’t even know if the idea of approvals. Will be a thing in this future because why? Why would you need to approve anything? What you’re gonna get is automatic understanding of the world, automatic reaction to that understanding, automatic self-correction and automatic results and optimization. Such that you will look at the results real time and go, you know what, we’re, we’re not doing well enough over here, so maybe we need more resources. Or maybe there’s something, you know, there’s a ghost in the machine. I don’t know. Um, but you’ll be reacting to the. time results the, it’ll all be self-correcting unless you want to go in and manually change something. that’s what I love doing, is just like, as soon as I hear a word that’s like, well, know, when we, when we hook the carriage up to the [00:37:00] horse, maybe that’ll look different. And I’m like, wait a second, there’s gonna be no, this thing is a saddle. I don’t know.

[00:37:05] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.

[00:37:06] Chris: It’s fun.

[00:37:07] Stephanie Wierwille: because the co it’s sort of, if you get truly, truly personalized, then well, number one, approvals just, they just bloat timelines, right? And, and running things through five different layers prevents the fastness if you have to move. But really who needs to approve it at the end of the day is really the event.

Individual who’s making the final action. So the approval is actually performance. It’s actually, did this person schedule an appointment or not? That’s the

[00:37:33] Chris: That’s right.

[00:37:34] Stephanie Wierwille: And what looks good to me is gonna look good. Different to you Des and eu, Chris. And so, you know, is it on brand? I think that becomes a really interesting philosophical question. Um, because

[00:37:45] Chris: cares?

[00:37:45] Stephanie Wierwille: right. Yeah. I know.

[00:37:48] Chris: That’s my question. Who cares?

[00:37:50] Stephanie Wierwille: it.

[00:37:51] Chris: Yeah,

[00:37:51] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.

[00:37:53] Chris: you’re exactly right. The per the, the, the performance and the approval. The is the performance. [00:38:00] So if it’s not on brand, but it’s performing, who cares?

[00:38:06] Stephanie Wierwille: Yikes. Right.

[00:38:08] Chris: E.

[00:38:09] Stephanie Wierwille: Um, okay. So another totally different territory to think about is patient experience. I get really excited about this one because we’ve talked in the future of the CMO report about patient experiences moving into the CMOs territory more and more, and think about how many opportunities there are.

Of course to make the patient experience better to, but to Einstein fire it. So here’s one example. This may be starting from C, not W again, but all the communication that needs to happen to a patient, even if they’re in the hospital walls, like let’s say after treatment, after surgery, all that information that comes to them.

Maybe when you get a diagnosis, you get all this information, it’s coming from your doctor, and it’s just words that are floating out into the ether because you, the patient, are not maybe in the state of mind that you can really recognize it, right? And understand what’s being said. Imagine being able to. Say, okay. The, the machine has now understood because [00:39:00] it’s in partnership with our a HR, perhaps, um, exactly what communication you need and all of the very personalized journey that might come after that diagnosis. All of the AI generated videos, any po maybe it’s an entire podcast series made directly for you, right?

Only this one person’s gonna listen to it. So we no longer care about views ’cause who cares? We care about. How it affects this person. So I’ll just pause there. But I think like that territory is really interesting. I.

[00:39:30] Desiree Duncan: I absolutely love that because like when you are leaving the hospital or you’re uh, or the doctor’s office, you’re just getting this like generic piece of paper that like, okay, here’s your heart healthy, like lifestyle changes and what have you, and they’re very. Generic. And you’re like, that’s not even like the kind of food I eat or I translate.

Like, help me, like, give me this. And then it translates into recipes like right away. But it’s like making all of this, you know, digitally available and connected and personalized and you can, [00:40:00] and even the patient can plug in. It’s like, oh, well let’s adapt this for this, um, other thing. Or, I really like this food or that food.

I, I don’t know, but it’s, I’m. I’m thinking more in lock step with a patient, like not just like, uh, anticipating their needs, but actually being in communication with that patient to like adapt it, uh, based on what they need to do to get, you know, better.

[00:40:20] Chris: Yeah, we worked with the health system probably like a decade ago that had taken the step to do a study on patients receive information and they had it broken down into on and all, I can’t remember exactly, but let’s say it’s like five different personas. Right? So just as two extremes. person when they hear a diagnosis and they get instructions, needs to hear the whole thing. I need the whole context. I need the whole detail so I can understand it and process it appropriately. Another person’s just like, just give me the headline. I don’t need all that. I don’t have time for all that. Um, so that’s great work. Now just think about how hard it is to act on that, So first of all. [00:41:00] All of your staff needs to understand that to the degree that they can apply it appropriate. ’cause. It’s not just written communication, just verbal too. Second, you need to know. Who, how every patient shows up, Like is, is Stephanie, uh, the type C and I’m a type D? How do you know that? And then you’re going to have to reinforce that, those two things, the staff knowing what it means to be C versus B, and knowing who and then acting on it, right? Um, that almost seems impossible. Impossible to, to actually make happen with ai. That seems completely doable. Completely doable. And I, we’ve gotta figure out, we’ve also gotta trademark performances. The approval, because it wouldn’t even take, like surveys tell us like how you, like no. You just measure how they engage. How do they engage with information? And you slowly. [00:42:00] Adopt what you’re doing with them based on how they are responding. Performance is the approval, performance is the strategy like that is. That seems doable with ai.

[00:42:13] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Yeah, I know we’re, we’re running low on time here and we could do this all day and we will in February. Right. So, um, but I think one last. Question I’ll ask. I mean, I love Chris. You know, when you pose these questions of like, do campaigns even matter? Um, do approvals even matter? I think one more I’ll throw in there, to your point about, you know, different, everybody is different and how are you speaking to them?

Do segments even matter? Because we all know segments are like these generalized stereotypes of a group, but actually we know that every individual is a perfect snowflake. So like. How do we move away from that? there’s so many

[00:42:49] Chris: Personas

[00:42:50] Stephanie Wierwille: ask, like that channels.

[00:42:52] Chris: journey maps.

[00:42:54] Stephanie Wierwille: matter des

[00:42:54] Chris: Yeah.

[00:42:55] Stephanie Wierwille: floating at your aura?

I, I mean it’s just, let’s tear the whole

[00:42:58] Chris: All these are, [00:43:00] all of these are proxies to allow us to go from, we’re gonna send to, to, to DE’s point. We’re gonna deliver one message to everybody in this way to, well now we’re gonna do it five different ways ’cause we have five personas. Um, I remember we were talking. a few months ago with A CMO, who shall, um, remain nameless, who said, oh yeah, we segment, we have men and we have women. Like, so when you think about that, it doesn’t matter how many segments you have, why would you even need segments or personas or any of that if you can have this one-on-one, um, feedback loop. So, I don’t know, just when you think about that, all of the things we’ve just thrown out there. you start thinking about what marketing is gonna look like in three to five years. that’s where your mind starts getting blown a little bit and how you can start creating a vision of always on real time, one-to-one, whatever people need. That’s the vision, whatever that looks like. And how do we get there? [00:44:00] Um, stuff

[00:44:02] Stephanie Wierwille: It is, and maybe we’ll pause here ’cause I think we’ve thoroughly scared everyone probably. But, um, one last

[00:44:08] Chris: scared them.

[00:44:09] Stephanie Wierwille: I don’t know. I

[00:44:10] Chris: But they should be excited. And isn’t that exciting? Is it scary?

[00:44:14] Stephanie Wierwille: I think it’s super exciting. I think these are the que the right questions to be asking and they’re the fun questions. And if we don’t question everything all the time, then what are we even doing?

[00:44:24] Chris: are you scared or excited?

[00:44:28] Desiree Duncan: I am well, I’m excited for the potential. I’m scared for the environment.

[00:44:33] Chris: Oh,

[00:44:33] Desiree Duncan: I.

[00:44:33] Chris: another podcast. Yeah, we’ll get to that. been singing all the praises and, and next week we shall not. Yeah.

[00:44:41] Stephanie Wierwille: well that’s a good plug for next time. So next time for, for all of those who are very concerned and worried about, uh, the, the future of the world, we will dig into that. Um, I think we like to have both glasses on the rose colored and the non rose colored. So it’s important to [00:45:00] dig into both pros and cons and then create the, the future that we need.

[00:45:03] Chris: For all Einstein Einstein’s thinking did, did lead in many ways to the the development of the atomic bomb. So we’ll just leave it there

[00:45:13] Stephanie Wierwille: that hits. Yes. Yes. Whew. Okay, so that

[00:45:20] Chris: that note. Sorry, I probably should have saved that one.

[00:45:24] Stephanie Wierwille: oh, on that note, for everybody listening, we wanna hear from you. Tell us, are you excited? Are you scared? Somewhere in between. Um, we’d love to hear it. Shoot us a note at no normal@bbdhealthcare.com and, um. Always, share the show with friends and colleagues. Let us know what you’re thinking and until next time, don’t be satisfied with the normal.

Don’t be satisfied with today’s light bulb ’cause we’re going to, um, actually ride on light, not just make a light bulb. Um, so with that push the no, push the no normal, and we’ll talk to you soon.