Chaos Is a Ladder: What’s Next for Healthcare Marketing Leaders

Stephanie Wierwille: [00:00:00] Welcome to the No Normal Show brought to you by BPD. This 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, while delivering the future to healthcare’s leading brands. I’m Stephanie. We will EVP of Engagement here at BPD, and I’m joined, as always by the amazing Desiree Duncan, VP of Health, equity and Inclusion.

Hello. Good morning, Dez.

Desiree Duncan: Morning, happy Friday.

Stephanie Wierwille: Happy Friday. It’s, it’s a good Friday vibe this morning instead of the usual Monday morning vibe that we’ve been bringing. What pun I missed it.

Chris: Friday? You said it was a good

Stephanie Wierwille: Oh,

Desiree Duncan: it

Stephanie Wierwille: good catch. Good catch. Yes.

Chris: Okay.

Stephanie Wierwille: well, hi Chris. I’m also joined by Chris Bevelo, chief Transformation Officer here at BPD. Happy Good Friday, Chris.

Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Love the love The Friday vibes good. And otherwise, this will

Stephanie Wierwille: [00:01:00] Yes

Chris: show.

Stephanie Wierwille: it is. And we have a lot to cover. So our agenda today we’re gonna first start with some inspo that we saw out in the, out in the wild. There was a non-healthcare campaign that we caught that de caught actually, and we’re gonna share it. We also have a very interesting. Headline from OpenAI that we’ll talk about.

And then our main topic today is really exciting. It is a deep dive into Bpds newest report, which is the future of the CMO, future of the Chief Marketing Officer, authored by our very own Chris Bevelo. Chris, you’re gonna talk to us about the, the report dropping next week.

Chris: Yes, and it’s gonna be all flowers and sunshine.

Stephanie Wierwille: As always.

Chris: keep it positive vibes. We will skip past the Monday vibes and go right to the Friday vibes on the report. We won’t skip past it, but we’ll, we’ll move past it extremely fast.

Stephanie Wierwille: Great. Okay. Friday vibes only. So speaking of Friday vibes Des, last [00:02:00] week we gave you an assignment. I think we gave ourselves an assignment, actually not you des the assignment was, can we get. Desiree interested in speculative fiction. So for those who missed the last episode, we learned along the way in one of our rabbit hole tangents.

Des you said you are not a fan of speculative fiction and we probably need to define that actually. ’cause it’s, it’s a, it’s a genre that’s not often talked about.

Desiree Duncan: Fake.

Chris: I don’t think it’s fake. I just, when you first hear speculative fiction, it does sound like it, it, it sounds redundant, so it’s

Stephanie Wierwille: True.

Chris: but it sounds like it is. So please give the definition, Stephanie, so

Stephanie Wierwille: Okay.

Chris: we can clear the air on that to start with, and then we’ll get to the real nonsense of Dez not being a fan.

Stephanie Wierwille: We love nonsense. So the Webster’s Dictionary definition is a genre of fiction that encompasses works where the setting is, other than the real wor world. So other worlds, other universes, [00:03:00] non-reality worlds. So think supernatural, think futuristic, think imagined worlds. IE you could consider Harry Potter, the Hunger Games.

What else? Star Wars. Star Trek, all of that speculative fiction.

Chris: Lord of the Rings. Yep.

Stephanie Wierwille: Des is shaking her head.

Desiree Duncan: of those.

Chris: She’s just starting off just like right off the bat, like, no, no, I’m out on those. Well, so maybe you can explain why Des, let’s get into the why. So that might help us understand where there might be an in here, where we could introduce you to something you might like. I.

Desiree Duncan: Yeah, it just seems very just kind of out there and wooo to me and like, what are these stories? I like things that are actually rooted in something real and maybe even like actual historical. So what is it? What’s the one that was on HBO? I am looking for it. Oh, Lovecraft Country. So like

Chris: speculative fiction.

Desiree Duncan: is, [00:04:00] however, it’s also rooted in history. gives you the history of the Tulsa massacre. It you the history of, you know, some of. The what happened with just, yeah, it just gives more actual history. But then also it, I, I get lost when they, the, the monster comes outta nowhere and there’s big, like arms and stuff and tackles people.

That’s where it loses me. But I love something that’s actually based on like an actual history or something real. If it’s just all fantasy and science fiction, I’m out.

Chris: Okay, so, I, there is speculative fiction. That’s all just like, like the Avengers movies are a great example of just pure speculative fiction that is really just about fun and whatever. But I would say that if you like Lovecraft country, the door is open a little bit because yes it is. It is kind of speculative fiction based in reality.

But a lot of speculative fiction is a metaphor for reality. [00:05:00] So if you think about Harry Potter, Harry Potter, a lot of people think Harry Potter is a metaphor for authoritarianism and standing up against power and evil. And yes, it’s pretty much speculative, but it’s based in England, Des real world.

The muggles are real world people. Just like in Lovecraft country. No.

Desiree Duncan: Yeah, I mean, I hear you on the, I do love a good metaphor. I, I feel like I speak in metaphors.

Stephanie Wierwille: You do.

Desiree Duncan: But I, I, I guess it’s more, it’s mostly the like fan fanatics, fanaticism around it that just

Stephanie Wierwille: Okay.

Desiree Duncan: off. If, if it’s something that people are like, oh my God, this is the best thing in the world. Like, no, thank you.

I’m

Chris: Well, that’s a different issue. That sounds just like you’re contrarian.

Desiree Duncan: contrarian. But most of the times these fantasy shows, sci-fi, they all kind of fall into that. Like there’s a theme. So then I again, just [00:06:00] like, you know, wrote a definition for myself that like, oh, this is not for me. This is not my identity. But I hear

Stephanie Wierwille: Okay.

Desiree Duncan: might check out some stuff.

Stephanie Wierwille: So, okay, so I think we gave a challenge to our listeners last week to let us know, and we’ve asked, we’ve asked BP Deers, so Des a few for you to look at. I would say the Handmaid’s Tale, but even I, that’s too much for me. So maybe I’ll skip past that. Dune. Maybe Dune is more interesting or Westworld or dark matter.

Okay. Shaking head on all of it. Okay. So we need more ideas.

Desiree Duncan: actually, Handmaid’s Tale. Handmaid’s Tale would actually be, I’ve watched that, like

Stephanie Wierwille: Okay.

Desiree Duncan: that where it’s like human, you know, just not like elves

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Desiree Duncan: like, you know what I mean? Just people doing

Chris: But can I just say, Des like. Maybe it’s the geek in me ’cause I have a huge portion of geek. To me, I feel like you’re really missing out on just being able to [00:07:00] escape. Like if you’re constantly looking for a connection to realize and the whole point of a lot of this is to escape. The Lord of the Rings is amazing.

Escape. Right it, Harry Potter’s amazing escape. You just suspend belief. You’re not trying to go like, well, that would never, like nobody would have a wand that could actually cast a spell You’re missing like the ability to just let go. You gotta let go sometimes does. And just like, like allow yourself to suspend disbelief or suspend belief, I guess is what I should say. And enjoy it. Enjoy the fact that there’s elves. that’s, that’s a cool thing. Like go curl up with a book and let your mind go somewhere. That’s not real. That’s the whole point. the point.

Desiree Duncan: I get plenty escape. And to quote the dude, that’s just like your opinion, man.

Stephanie Wierwille: Well, okay, so we still have our assignment out. We still have the assignment. We’ll keep working on this. [00:08:00] but, you know, Des maybe, maybe just maybe. Part of what you’re hitting at is you’re really good at identifying what’s going on in the real world, and you live in that world. And I think you interestingly find things in the real world that are unique from what others see.

So an example is you recently found, This, this campaign from Stella Trois. I did not catch it. do you wanna share a little bit about what you saw and the, what you saw that was so cool was this really interesting human insight. not about elves in it.

Desiree Duncan: Yeah, I mean, I, I don’t love fantasy and all the, I love comedies. I don’t love comedians. I love their takes. I feel like they’re some of the, they give some of the best insights because they’re just looking at what all of us little humans are doing, and they’re kind of, you know, shedding a light on it. so Cell Artis, they have this out of home campaign. It’s a part of their Worth It campaign, and it is a number of ads where you see basically this person, [00:09:00] they’re in this hugely crowded bar and they have their cell artis beer in their hand, and it’s just. The title worth it, and it really touches on like, yeah, you’re, you have to deal with all this stuff, but you get this experience that you’re like, oh, finally, I, I get to like, even just shed this layer from the week or from the day or what have you. And it just really like spoke to me because it touches on again, just like. That relevant human experience. And then contextually, these ads are showing up outside of some of these large popular bars in these major cities. So it just gets you like all, all excited. And if you were even remotely craving a beer rather than a cocktail, stuff like that, walking in, you’re gonna be like, I’m gonna get a Stella. Is the, the gist, I imagine. But yeah, I, I love when something really touches on just that mundane thing that you would find on Seinfeld that they pick apart, that really resonates and makes it relatable.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, it was so singular, so focused. That’s what I like about it is [00:10:00] as marketers we sometimes try to do too much, and it’s just like that one little moment.

Chris: Yeah.

Stephanie Wierwille: So that was fun. So thanks for sharing that. Dez. Our second headline maybe is a little more speculative. So this is a rumor that is really interesting, which is a rumor that’s floating around a, a report, a reported development coming from open ai.

That open AI is. Reportedly developing a social media platform. And we don’t know yet what the social media platform, social media network could entail, but one of the rumors is that it is around AI generated images, so sort of a newsfeed for everybody to share their AI generated. Slop, if I can say that.

Right. Sometimes. But you know, there’s other ways that this, this could take shape, like people sharing their prompts or people just engaging with AI generated content. So I’m gonna ask you all, what do you think about this? Do we need another social network? Do we need a social network from open ai?

What’s your take?

Desiree Duncan: Personally kind of here for it. [00:11:00] I, there’s some good stuff within the slop. I’m more in, I’m probably the most interested in the creative output of the AI world, and I follow a number of Instagram accounts as well as I’m in a number of Facebook groups just to kind of see what people are doing, how it’s progressing and like.

Maybe even get my own inspo. but it would be really cool to just kind of have a focused spot for that and just get all of that content injected into my veins, as Stephanie would say. I’m here for it and also I’m, I’m sick of all the ads on the other places that like take away from my actual experience.

So an ad free, open AI social network. Sign me up.

Stephanie Wierwille: Okay, Chris.

Chris: Would it be ad free though? Like isn’t that, that could be. could sucker you in and then the ad ads later, if they’re trying to make money, I don’t know. Do we need another social media? I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know whether we need one or not. I’m so mixed on social media. I went off of it for years. I’m back on it now. but [00:12:00] I’m very particular nothing zuck related. In fact, I’m really watching the antitrust suit against Facebook because, or meta that might entail them spinning off Instagram, which I think would be phenomenal So, I don’t know. I don’t know if I’d get involved in that.

I don’t know if I really want to be tied to open ai. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t have

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.

Chris: either way. I would just watch and see.

Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Well, I think watch and see is all we can do at the moment. I, I think they’re probably exploring this because they need to develop more, more ways to generate profit. So yeah, I would expect ads in the future and, and I would expect, you know, even more ways for them to train their models on user data.

Chris: It does make me pause that OpenAI. Is looking for other ways to make money. And social media is the like, wait a second. You can’t figure out how to make money from ai. Like, what are we talking about? I mean, we’re to believe [00:13:00] all of the things that we’re told about AI and chat, GPT and all that, need social media to make money.

I would understand if you wanted it as a source to feed ai. That makes all the sense in the world. boy, if they’re, if they need this as like a revenue stream, there’s something amiss. I’ll just leave it there.

Desiree Duncan: I hear you on that. And I see it as like a, a, a kind of what you said on the ladder about like a place to kind of like feed into their membership, their. Spon not sponsorship, but like growing its membership so that later on there could be that number attached to it. but yeah, I see this as an opportunity ’cause they saw numbers grow exponentially, which with the updates of the image generation.

So I imagine it’s tied to that.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. We will see, we’ll see. We’ll watch it. Okay. We’ll move on to our main topic now, which is really exciting. so BPD has a report launching very soon [00:14:00] called the Future of the CMO, the threats and opportunities ahead for Health System Marketing Enterprise, and. This is a, a topic that we’ve been talking about for, for some time, but this report goes really deep and it gives, some new research and some new, really anecdotes and data and stats and, and quotes and facts around the real state of the, health system marketing world specifically.

As it, as it. Revolves around CMOs. and so Chris, we’ve, we’ve set up what Rome is burning is before, so I think most of our listeners are aware, but maybe for anyone that’s new, can you just give a little bit of a background on Rome is burning and the journey we’ve been on?

Chris: Yeah, for sure. So really quickly, this journey started two years ago. Essentially when we saw a number of things kind of coming together that made us go, oh, wait a second. This is, this is new. Those things that came together, we saw as new significant threats to the CMO role at health [00:15:00] systems. Which at the time coincided with, I don’t, I don’t remember how many.

It was like eight significant size health systems who had eliminated their CMO role. So that, that alone was something that was new. I’ve been around this, this business for a long time. You might have seen it here or there in small organizations. These were sizable brands. And so we’re like, wait a second.

Is there something going on here? And so we titled it Rome is Burning, meaning there’s some existential threats here. Since then, in the two years since then, we’ve continued to explore it and talk about it. And I think I mentioned this last week, but just to recap what this report is that is now out is based on, you know, us being in this industry and talking to people over that time. it includes a panel that we did with CMOs at the HIMS conference last April, which was kind of overflow of people there. So great input from both the audience and the panelists. We also had a dinner at that conference with some of the top [00:16:00] CMOs. On this topic we partnered last fall with NRC to go out and do qualitative research.

So we talked to a few dozen health systems. We interviewed a a few dozen CMOs from health systems and about 10 CEOs, and then also for our Joe Public retreat, where we had about 40. Health system marketing leaders in attendance. This was the theme of that entire three day retreat. And so we pulled all of that together into a report that looks at an update of what those challenges are, but like we said last week and what like we’ll spend more time on today looks at what the are as well from this shifting landscape that we see.

And that’s what the report’s all about and we’ll talk about it today. But we are going to continue to pull at this, tease at it, poke at it, get more feedback, explore it more deeply over the coming months as well. ’cause there’s so much that we could talk about.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yes, yes. So I’ll just very quickly hit on those challenges and then we’ll get [00:17:00] into the, the Friday vibes, the, the opportunities. So three quick challenges that the research has showed over the last couple years which some of them are even picking up now in 2025. So the first challenge is financial.

Financial challenges, the entire financial picture for health systems. And back in 2023 when this platform was first launched, health systems were coming out of a really, really difficult financial year. And I would say things are not much rosier. We covered last week, all of the challenges coming our way in terms of tariffs and.

Supply issues you know, Medicaid cuts, funding cuts, all of that. So that continues. The second challenge is supply and demand. Chris, I think your term is the pig through the snake here, which is, you know, the, the sense that, that there is a constricted, Supply and rising demand, especially with the aging population, but more factors here as well.

And then the third, which we’ll talk a lot about in our opportunities is ai, which is a threat and an opportunity. So interestingly when this research first [00:18:00] started I remember at, I think it was that hemps panel you mentioned, Chris. You ask the audience in a poll, what the top. Challenges or threats were, and only like one or two people said ai.

That was the beginning of 2024. Fast forward now the end of 2024. Many, many CMOs are saying not only is AI a key threat and opportunity, it might be the single most important thing they can do in 2025. So all three of these threats have just sped up. Is there anything else you would add to those threats before we get into the ops?

Chris: No, and, and I think like the only thing I’d add is what’s happened year? Certainly throws that supply and demand thing up in the air again. Because we, we’ve spent last week talking about how economic downturns can dampen demand, right? And so to what degree does it dampen demand and kind of shrink the pig that’s going through the snake? That’s certainly an open question. As we move forward it really depends on how far things go economically and what that means for health systems. So something we have to keep [00:19:00] an eye on.

Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. I think I’m gonna make an AI generated image of a pig in a snake, Chris. ’cause every time you say it, I work really hard to picture it. And now you said shrinking the pig and my brain is exploding.

Chris: It is. A lot of people don’t know that metaphor. I’ve had to explain it, and so maybe I’m again, old

Stephanie Wierwille: I didn’t. No,

Chris: pig,

Stephanie Wierwille: no,

Chris: Well, you have to visualize a snake and then it eats a pig and like a, like a python will eat a pig hole. So it like swallows it whole, and then it is just, you can literally see the pig move through the body of the snake as it’s digested.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Okay. I did get there, but I have to say it was like the four, it was like early 20, 24 when it first clicked for me. So,

Chris: yes,

Stephanie Wierwille: we’ll make it, we’ll make an image.

Chris: some, there’s some disagreement on as to whether you can literally see the pig move through the snake,

Stephanie Wierwille: Oh,

Chris: supposed to stand for.

Stephanie Wierwille: oh,

Chris: get

Stephanie Wierwille: oh.

Chris: reality of whether that digestive situation happens,

Stephanie Wierwille: That’s.

Chris: that’s where the, the visual comes from.

Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Sounds like speculative [00:20:00] fiction. All right, so, so let’s, let’s move to our opportunities because what’s really exciting about this report is it digs really deep into the, the things that you can do. What do you do about this? It’s not just challenges. Yeah. Threats. You know, yes. CMO rules have been in some cases eliminated, in some cases reduced.

But what do we do? and so I’m gonna quote Lisa Schiller from, I think it was that HIPS panel who said is evolve or dissolve quoting Usher and. So this report talks about how do you evolve. So Des I’m gonna kick it to you for the first opportunity ’cause you’re really passionate about this one. This number one opportunity is how do you become a leadership whisperer and how do you become the voice of the market?

What does that look like?

Desiree Duncan: Yeah. You know, as the voice of the market, you understand more than just the consumer voice. You know, the, there’s the quote from Seth Godin, you know, don’t find customers for your products. Find products for your customers. And I often think about, of course, like on the [00:21:00] consumer brand standpoint, CMOs, they have like, you know.

All the books and podcasts I listen to, they have, you know, insights folks, market researchers that are going out into the world to see, you know, how their product is developing, what updates do they need to make to it, what new products they need to make that. Then they go in tell the engineers, Hey.

This needs to happen. And then, you know, and that all connects to growing the business. But with right now most of our marketers within the health care marketing is, you know, we’re really focused, hyper-focused on the consumer. So with, you know, Dr. Marcus Collins, who, you know, personal hero, been obsessed with his word for the last couple years, you know, he’s talking about this opportunity to look beyond you know. Starting with, of course, the consumer and like how we are so focused on the demographics and that demographic demographics don’t define us who we are, what decisions we make, we wanna move beyond that. We want to look at psychographic cultural identities. And then I would personally even add like [00:22:00] value graphics.

You know, we don’t talk about that, but that’s something else that really talks about the, helping us understand choice also ties into Dr. Collins. but it’s all about understanding who people are, what’s going on in the, in the world, as well as how all of this kind of affects your business.

So from a political standpoint, from a climate standpoint, you know, all of this plays a role. And then if you are able to be that person that is bringing all of that knowledge, that insight, that’s really gonna affect even like the strategy, for example of, you know, where the hospital is going. You know, that’s a, a major opportunity.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. I love that. I think the key word here is blending blending lots of data, blending lots of insights, and, and you’re right, it’s this, this is very different than what. Marketers and communicators have historically done, which is we’re gonna be the voice of the customer. This is about being the voice of the market.

This is about understanding, to your point, what is the future of hospitals and health systems? What is the market telling us? What’s the political climate like? What are the industry intel? How can we actually bring that to the [00:23:00] board, not just the chief strategy officer or their chief executive officer?

So, Chris, I know you’ve been in a lot of these rooms and heard the quotes directly. So, what to you is interesting about this, this opportunity?

Chris: Yeah, I mean I think Des really captured it well and credit where credit’s due. Paul Kackley really introduces at the Joe Public Retreat, the idea of voice of the market. And, and I think what’s interesting about it is. There was a lot of conversation in that particular venue about the semantics of it all and how marketing has, has become somewhat of a, a, a dirty word again.

I mean, when I started this, I started in this business, there were still a lot of people who refused to say that they would market. It was kind of back to the seventies and eighties and nineties mindset that that’s beneath. and, and clinical, you know, organizations, you don’t market yourself. That part’s gone away. But I think now what that really means is, hey, it’s not valued as much as it used to be. And a lot of the CMOs in the room felt like is the word marketing hold. Its back. Now, obviously this can’t be just about a title change, [00:24:00] but imagine what it might convey if you were the chief market officer. As opposed to the chief marketing officer. So marketing to a lot of people don’t understand. Marketing means how you’re redesigning our menu, how are you, what does, what’s the ads look like? All that kind of stuff, which of course is part of it, but Chief Market Officer means you are in command of the market. And all of that entails the way that does described it. So want to give a shout out to Paul Keckley and, and, and think that like, it’s, it’s an interesting way to think about, know, how people might perceive your value if, if you’re tied to the market instead of marketing.

Stephanie Wierwille: I love that. And market being part of marketing, but we don’t think of it that way. I love that frame. Okay, so we’ll move to opportunity number two, which is the span of control. And I love the title for this one. Shout out to the, to your, to your. Brilliant writing pen Chris, but two roads diverged designing your span of control.

So tell us a little bit about the genesis of, of this opportunity. Chris

Chris: Again, two roads [00:25:00] diverged, not my language. Who is that? That is a famous poet

Stephanie Wierwille: Henry David Thoreau. Oh, failure.

Chris: who does

Desiree Duncan: Frost?

Stephanie Wierwille: I think you’re right.

Chris: I think it’s Robert Frost.

Stephanie Wierwille: Oh, I, I lost f for me.

Chris: Thoreau. I was

Stephanie Wierwille: That’s what I said.

Chris: completely, but it is, I think we actually cited in the thing, so this is super interesting because the conversations that we’ve had with CMOs. Really paint two options here, which is cool. But they’re really significant options. And, and what this means is, you grow your value and your, and your power and your accountability within an organization by pulling more underneath you? Or do you grow those things by focusing on fewer things? Because there’s pros and cons of both. Most of the CMOs that we talk to have more than marketing under, you know, traditional marketing under their, kind of under their span of control. Just to go ahead back to that language, we’ll talk about experience, which a huge part of it [00:26:00] in a second. Comms was a big talker and a lot of, a lot of folks are having comms kind of come back together. That’s been split. Now it’s coming back together. You can talk about government relations, you can talk about pricing, strategy, all of those things. And so there’s kind of a camp that says like, Hey, the more of that you have. The, the better you are. And then there’s a camp that says the more of that you have, you become a jack of all trades and you’re not able to make real impact in any of them. And really, should we be in charge of the, the, the experience really?

Should we be in charge of the call center? Shouldn’t we just focus on doing a few things really well? And there’s a real argument to be made there because if you’re not having material impact. It doesn’t matter how many things are under your belt, if folks just think all of those are, are kind of incremental add-ons.

So what’s great is you have a choice, right? It’s not that one is better than another. You really do have a choice depending on what you prefer, what organization, you know, situation is. but that, that [00:27:00] distinction to me was really interesting that it didn’t point to one or the other. It was like, well, it depends.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Yeah. So the, the question is, do you land grab, do you expand or do you cut focus? And I think, you know, as I, as I considered this and have heard some of those conversations, it’s interesting because you know, the list of all those land grabbing opportunities as you set them up, Chris is really, really long.

Right. But I thought one of the interesting points of the conversation that we’ve heard from chief marketing officers is on one hand it’s like, oh, I have, I have a lot on my plate already and it’s really challenging. And, you know, things like internal comms or comms in general can be a struggle. Or HR in some cases, but on the other hand, I don’t actually wanna give up anything, right?

So there’s that tension. And I understand that I’m a do it all kind of gal, like, let’s, let’s do it all. But then you really lack focus. So what I loved about this articulation in the report, I loved Paul Matson’s. Take Paul Matson from the Cleveland Clinic. He says, if you can’t have a material [00:28:00] impact on an organization with a strategy.

Why pursue it? And I think that’s the kind of ruthless focus I need to put that in front of my wall every day to stare at. And that will tie into one of our themes later, which is around financial impact.

Chris: The most extreme example of this is A CMO came into a health system a number of years ago in Minnesota, and cut his team by like 75%, like proactively, independently, cut his budget, cut his own and got buy off from his CEO and said like, I’m going to do these three things. the only three things I’m gonna do. The rest of it I don’t care about. Like he had to let go like he set up so that if somebody wanted to create a menu, he set up like a system that they could work with, a vendor with templates and go off and they would just do it and he wasn’t gonna worry about it because in his mind. I don’t care whether the template or like the menu is perfectly on brand or not, is that really gonna matter? I’ve gotta focus on the things that [00:29:00] really matter. I remember when he presented what he did at a Joe Public retreat. This was back in, I think 2020 like jaws literally on the floor it was, it was the most extreme version of the, of the focus camp. So I’ll just add that in there.

Desiree Duncan: I think from the land grab camp, I think about how it’s gonna be about the team underneath you. Like this is the, if you’re that ambitious, like you, you’re trying to make a name for yourself. This is that opportunity for you to be that visionary figure where then you have these really strong folks underneath you that are driving this and helping you.

Even helping you shape it, because if you feel a part of something, you’re, you’re really wanting to see it through and not just seeing it as something that you’re just kind of taking direction for. But if you really have that strong team underneath you, I really think that’s a huge opportunity.

If, if you’re really trying to make a name for yourself.

Stephanie Wierwille: I love that point. That is so key and so exciting to be able to elevate, you know, all the people [00:30:00] around you. Okay, so let’s, let’s go to the next one. So the next opportunity is to own the experience. I think this was a really, really good debate among chief marketing officers back in December, and we’ve continued to see it evolve.

So my, I might ask. You, Chris, if you wanna set this on up since you’ve seen this firsthand, and then I know Des you have some really strong and exciting ideas around this one.

Chris: I, I think like an alternative headline for this one would be is like, the more things change, the more they say the same. And we kinda have fun in the paper. Because one of the first papers I ever wrote, I’m gonna date myself, I think it was 2000 and. Five where we made the case that marketers should own the experience. And this was right after the, you start first started seeing chief experience officers in health systems. And I remember of all the things that we put out from thought leadership, that was the one that got real pushback. And people were like, you’re nuts. That’s crazy. You know what you’re talking about.

So we kind of put it on the shelf and we brought it back up with Joe Public. Three, [00:31:00] which was, which was 2018 or now people were doing it again. So it just keeps coming back around. again, what’s interesting is you have a lot of CMOs who feel like that is, that is should a hundred percent be under my purview. But you had, I mean, there was literally somebody at the Joe Public Retreat who jumped off her chair. And she was pretty much like hell to the know, there’s absolutely no way we should be managing that. We need to focus on what marketing’s supposed to do, which is drive growth. a terrible idea. So having the, like, real opposite opinions on this maybe more emotionally than the span of control one that we talked about was, was really fascinating.

But I would say the majority. Of CMOs feel that that should be something they own. They already do own. It speaks to the rise of the chief consumer officer. And there’s real opportunity there for that.

Desiree Duncan: Yeah, I, I, I agree. I could see where could feel a bit scary, but [00:32:00] again, I wasn’t in the room, so I don’t have that the, of the perspectives from the folks in that room. But the way I think about it is I. You know, for me as a consumer, your brand is your experience. that if you can put out all of this great creative and have, you know, all this marketing and you know, but if you to drive that growth, if you get that person the door and the experience is not great, they’re gonna walk back out. The experience is what drives loyalty. And just like an anecdote from like on personal experience, you know, in my family we all went to this one particular hospital, like that was our place. And then a few years ago, my mom had a, you know, serious medical issues with. Was in the hospital for a couple of months and the experience was not great at all.

She had a heart stint put in, in a different place that we never really even considered, and the patient experience was impeccable and based off of the, the one that wasn’t that great. She’s like, we’re. We’re going to this hospital over here in this hospital only, [00:33:00] that you, it starts from like, yes, the ad.

But then once they walk on the door, what’s gonna be the experience? How are they being greeted? How are they doing their check-in? Are they having to do this multiple times? Because, you know, as marketers we’re always talking and listening and hearing the perspective of, of consumers. We’re seeing all of the reviews and negative reviews.

’cause people always love to share the negative. so much of that ties to the experience, the weight and all of this stuff. But if there’s a way for you to streamline and make this such a, wow, this was, I touchstone of all of these things. Like a limit, but I

Chris: Yeah.

Desiree Duncan: hard ‘ cause you have to talk to multiple different people and that’s tough.

Chris: I think that’s where the, the opportunities in that streamline. And we, we really press CMOs on this because every single person we talk to, even if there’s a chief experience officer in, in the organization, reports back. That experience lives in many places. It lives in multiple places. Digital experience lives over there, and consumer experience over there and patient [00:34:00] experience over there.

And it’s just, and it, and I think like there’s no way that that is incidental to the, what you described as about how still today the healthcare experience is not great. It can be great in places, but holistically, it’s not. course that’s related to the fact that it lives in different places. It’s like anything, it’s like it’s, it’s, it’s business 1 0 1 that if you have multiple people accountable for something, you will never get to where you need to be.

So the argument is why not have the chief marketing officer. Be ultimately accountable. She cannot do this on her own. She cannot drive the clinical experience by herself. That’s not what we’re saying. But if clinical experience lives with a chief experience officer and digital experience lives with the chief digital officer, and marketing owns some other part of it, it’s never going to work as well as it should, or it’s gonna be really difficult to pull it off. So that’s kind of the push is can you, can you ask for [00:35:00] accountability for all of it? Knowing that. Of course you’re not gonna do it all, one person’s not accountable for all of it, and the argument is the CMO has the broadest, most holistic kind of perspective I feel like it’s always gonna, it’s never gonna work at these organizations.

So there you

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, well

Chris: soap

Stephanie Wierwille: it. I love the soapbox. I do, and, and I love it. I think it ties back to opportunity number one, which is, if you’re truly the voice of the market, then that means that the experience is, you know, driven by the market needs in all shapes and ways. And I love pulling inspo from outside of healthcare.

In this instance, when I think about. The best non-healthcare brands, one that ones that I’ve touched in in my lifetime. I think about like Ulta Beauty or the Home Depot or Coca-Cola or Amazon, right? These, in these instances, the marketing groups are thinking about things like point of purchase.

They’re thinking about shopper marketing. They’re thinking about the in-store experience. They’re in charge in many cases of what’s the window display [00:36:00] next month, right? And that’s. Critical because it is, your brand is a promise. If you see it in advertising and then you show up in the four walls and it’s not what you saw, not just in advertising, but in, you know, word of mouth and everything, then that’s a really broken promise.

And I think I would challenge sometimes, I think sometimes the, the feeling is, oh, well in healthcare it’s so much more complicated. And oh, there’s the EHR and there’s patient comms, and that’s true, but I’ve seen some examples. So one of ’em, Chris, you and I were in Phoenix at the, the health management as.

Academy one of their events last year and I sat and had lunch with a, a chief strategy officer and a chief marketing officer who were so excited to share a new update they had made to MyChart. And usually that’s like boring, right? Oh, MyChart. Oh. But it was beautiful. They completely redesigned it, it was an overhaul.

They were like, we broke all the, you know, typical epic rules. And it was an actual digital experience. It was a digital app. It felt like so direct to consumer, and it was a partnership between strategy and marketing. So it can be done. I’ll just, I’ll just leave that there. [00:37:00] I get excited. That’s my soapbox.

Chris: let me, let me just finish with a, and I, and I’m not, I’m blanking on his name, but in Joe Public three where we talked about the most sophisticated marketers owning experience, we talked to one who came from outside healthcare and he said, healthcare is the only place where marketing experience are separated. In, in all other businesses that he was involved in, including retail, that was part, they were the same thing. Like you to even think about them separated, made no sense whatsoever. I mean, experience is the product and the place and the four Ps among other things. So yeah, it’s just an uphill battle, but it’s an opportunity.

Climb that ladder.

Stephanie Wierwille: Let’s go. Okay, so we have a few minutes remaining. I’ll touch both of the last two opportunities together, but they’re pretty robust, so we. He might come back and dig deeper into them in the future. But opportunity number four is all about ai. Probably no surprises to, to anybody hearing how we’ve been super passionate about this for quite some time.

But as I noticed noted before, [00:38:00] it has been really interesting to see this shift where CMOs are now leaning in and in fact in 2025, it’s. The biggest priority for CMOs in many instances, and that includes everything from completely overhauling the way that marketing communications is done, training teams, educating all levels of marketers.

But it also can include in some instances you know, how do we lead AI for. For the for the entire organization. So Chris, I love the CEO quotes here. I might have you speak to some of them, but there was a few where, where there were some CEOs saying AI is still just a shiny object. And I think as you noted, in the right LOL, as you noted in the pa in the report, that opens the door wide open for marketers to say, Hmm, is it.

Chris: Yeah, that’s, I mean, the, the CEOs we talked to range from some of the, the largest systems in the country to some smaller ones. So of course, we’re not divulging who said what in it. We’re keeping the, we’re keeping the innocent protected. Like it is not good to [00:39:00] hear a CEO say it’s a shiny object.

I mean, good gravy. I mean, I can understand to some degree. But also that just shows me somebody who’s not. Who’s not taking it seriously, who’s, who’s hoping it goes away, who doesn’t want to deal with it. And that was a minority, I would say, kind of opinion. But you know, as much as AI is a threat, to marketers, and it’s really a threat in terms of does marketing roll up under some kind of AI leadership.

Which we see in some cases, are your expectations set in a way because of ai? So people expect you to do more with less. Those are the kind of threats that you would experience. Boy, can AI be a powerful tool for you a marketer? So that’s the flip side.

Desiree Duncan: Again, I mean like we talked about on an episode a couple of weeks ago, months ago maybe even, but like, think about where social media was when it first came out. It was just like this little bitty thing over there. look at it being sued by the government [00:40:00] on the Senate. Not that we wanna go that direction, but like look at. stance that these folks have because of, you know, seeing the course, of seeing the future of what’s possible. And that’s what AI is. It’s like, do you want to be a part of leading those conversations in the past or do you want to go the way of newspapers? I don’t know your choice.

Chris: Scary,

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, I think what came through for me here is that that marketers are being more and more pushed to do more with less. And, you know, all of the signs and factors pushed to that in a variety of ways. And so, you know, do you either just let your budgets be cut and say, oh, well, less budgets, we’re gonna do less and less people, or do you say.

In fact, here’s what we can do more of. I think it’s your chance to, one, thrive in a do more with less environment, and two, maybe even show that you can do more, which that ties to our last, our last theme here. [00:41:00] But before we move on, any last AI notes? Okay, so last theme

Chris: about. We’ll just leave it there. Ai

Stephanie Wierwille: there is.

Chris: to it.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yes. so the last theme here, one i I really love which is all around the financial, the financial impact.

so, so this is, this is the fact that marketers really need to be able to show their financial impact. Back to what Paul Matson was talking about in that quote I mentioned a little bit, before, which is, hey, if you can’t show your financial impact, then why are you doing it in that sense of, do you land grab or do you cut focus?

So. I, what I love about this o overarching theme and trend is it’s not new news by any means, and we’ve been talking about it forever, and that kind of hurts my heart a little bit, but I think like now is the time given all of the factors at play that CMOs and marketers really need to show the financial impact that they’re having on the organization.

So Chris, I wanna hear from you a little bit more of, you know, your, your take on on this last [00:42:00] one.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, I think the first three that we talk about are, are interesting because they’re either new, like the idea of voice of the market or they present like real different paths you can take. the last two that we’re talking about AI and, and financial impact are, are kind of like, no, duh, that doesn’t mean they’re not important though. and I think like you hurting, hurting my heart. We have been talking about this forever. And yet when we go out and do our, our interviews. we asked people, does your organization turn to marketing it does its financial projections and ask, Hey, marketing, what can you contribute our financial projections? and the, the respondents were 0%. None of the CMOs that were asked that were, of course, most of them want to be there and most of them say it’s in the works or it’s in the plans, but none of them said that their organizations turned to them to understand their impact so that they could [00:43:00] help shape their overall financial projections.

So we have been talking about this forever. And yet we’re still in this boat. Now there are some people out there that are not in that boat. We know that. I also know of people that have, that have gotten to that pinnacle that have been in position where the CFO goes, okay, CMO, tell me what you can do and I’ll build it in. which is like, oh my gosh. You know, like, praise be. But now they’re out of the boat again because the CFO changed. And so now I have a CFO that doesn’t buy all of that, and they’re having to convince them that no, actually these numbers are true and we’re actually contributing this way. So I. That was a huge pain point at the Joe Public retreat. And it’s just, you can’t give up. I think a lot of the conversations we’ve had are people trying to come at value in different ways, which makes all the sense in the world, but you still have to try to show impact marketing at the end of the day, by the most basic definition is [00:44:00] marketing’s job is to grow revenue. Like if you go back and take a college course, that’s what it’s there for. So if you are not in some way able to show how you are impacting that, whew. It’s not a great, it’s not a great thing. So keep at it. Just keep on going, keep on plugging away. That’s it all.

Stephanie Wierwille: Keep on swimming.

Chris: Keep swimming.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. it is, it’s pretty depressing that you know, no respondent said their organization considers marketing impact on financial forecast. It’s also pretty depressing the way that CEOs are just. Describing and defining marketing in here. there were some good ones, like marketing is about how, you know, how do you’re relevant and chosen by your customers.

That sort of implies growth, but it’s not, you know, saying it out loud, the really depressing ones are marketing is advertising, marketing is selling or marketing is legalized lying.

Chris: Legal guy lying like, what?

Stephanie Wierwille: Oh,

Chris: That’s the CEO by the way. Those are all CEO situations. Again, we’re not sharing who said it

Stephanie Wierwille: no.

Chris: I’m sure there was like a [00:45:00] little bit of tongue in cheek with that. Let’s,

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.

Chris: I would guess

Stephanie Wierwille: There’s context, I’m sure. And there’s reasons. There’s reasons, right? Like we all know all the reasons in healthcare, why it’s hard to measure growth, right? We mentioned a few episodes ago we were sharing kind of a behind the scenes view of some of the Effie awards judging. And I came out of there partially excited about the progress that’s been made in measurement in healthcare in the last even year.

And partially really depressed because there’s still a lot of like, oh, data privacy issue. Oh, we can’t connect the dots. And that’s not just health systems. That’s. Pharma that is nonprofit, that is D two C in some instances. So, but it’s not an excuse. I think that’s the thing here is it’s not an excuse.

It’s not an excuse to be like, oh, impressions. and the thought I had reading this, this report was why, you know, if. Like, let’s, let’s require all marketers to, to go through finance classes. You know, let’s, let’s put our own MBAs on in our marketing departments in the same way that we would do for learning ai.

Right? We’ve got to start peak [00:46:00] speaking that finance language and connecting it. We, it’s impressions are not enough. It’s just, so 2012, so I get frustrated with this one.

Chris: It’s 2000

Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, that’s true.

Chris: are not results. Let’s all

Stephanie Wierwille: No.

Chris: Impressions are not results. If you could, you buy, they’re an input, you buy them. what comes from an impression is a result. Also, just wanna say again, I think we’ve already said this once, but shout out to NRC who helped with this report, and in particular, Ryan Donahue, who had the conversations with. and had a few of the CMO conversations too. So friend of the pod, Ryan Donahue, thank you for your, your contributions to this. Just wanted to throw that out there as well.

Stephanie Wierwille: Yes. Love it. Lots of, lots of great partners and great, great quotes in here. So we will drop in the show link where you can go to be, be informed when this report drops. And we’ll leave everybody with a little Game of Thrones quote that chaos is. Not a pit. Chaos is a ladder, [00:47:00] hence the cover of this piece.

So with that for everybody listening, thank you so much and be sure to subscribe to the newsletter, the no normal Rewind, which recaps this discussion and more. and also, Go download the report. The report, is available to download and as I mentioned, we’ll link it in the show notes. If you want it right to your inbox, let us know.

you can always email us at no normal at BPD Healthcare either for the report or to ask a question or share with us your speculative fiction examples for Des. So with that we’ll talk to you next time and always push the no normal push into all five of these trends, and we’ll see you soon.