[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 instead, we celebrate the new, the powerful, the innovative, the bold, all focused around the future of healthcare, marketing and communications.
Hello, I’m Stephanie Rebel, EVP of Engagement here at BPD, and I’m joined by Chris Bevelo today. Hi Chris. How are you doing?
[00:00:28] Chris: I’m good, Stephanie. I’m, I’m really happy that it’s Friday. Um, I’m happy that it’s Friday.
[00:00:34] Stephanie Wierwille: I’m too. I’m too, what are you, uh, any big weekend plans as you head into the weekend.
[00:00:41] Chris: No big plans. I don’t think we have big plans, but we have plans. We have some plans, um, fun plans, but nothing big.
[00:00:48] Stephanie Wierwille: That’s the perfect weekend. That’s the ideal scenario if you ask me. Um,
[00:00:55] Chris: How
[00:00:55] Stephanie Wierwille: yeah.
[00:00:55] Chris: Wait, do you have anything?
[00:00:58] Stephanie Wierwille: Haven’t even thought about it yet. I, I [00:01:00] feel like at one, 1:00 PM at Central Time Friday is when I first realize I need to start thinking about the weekend.
[00:01:07] Chris: Oh, wow.
[00:01:08] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Yeah. Um.
[00:01:10] Chris: we’ll have to explore that some other point,
[00:01:12] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay,
[00:01:13] Chris: I.
[00:01:13] Stephanie Wierwille: so I’ll give a quick rundown of what we’re chatting about today.
Um, we have a couple he headlines to cover actually one headline that we’re really excited about. We’re gonna talk about Reddit and their first healthcare summit and what that means for marketers. And then our main topic today is all about what the future could look like, uh, in an AI world. We’ve been hitting on AI a lot.
We’ve been hitting on, um, our platform that we’ve launched. Around this whole idea of the AI dream, the Einstein divide, what it means to think big and bold. And so today we’re gonna kind of move into that future world and break it down for you all. Uh, before we do it, a couple quick little plugs and housekeeping items next month.
The No Normal Show is coming to Health, the conference in Las Vegas, HLTH, and we are [00:02:00] super excited about hitting the ground floor, interviewing people live. Talking about all the biggest topics in health and healthcare. And so that’s everything from workforce realities to the rise of ai, to new interest in this space, all the things that happen at health.
So if you are going to be there and you wanna chat with us, reach out to us at info@bpdhealthcare.com or hit up Chris and I on LinkedIn, um, and we can interview you and make that happen. We’re also headed to shush mid. So Chris, maybe if you wanna talk about this, ’cause I’m pretty sure you’re headed there and you’ve got a really good group of folks that you’re gonna be sitting down with.
[00:02:35] Chris: Yeah, a couple things. Uh, we have a panel session on Rome is Burning, which I think most people who listen to the show are familiar with. Uh, Vic, Vic Rice from UNC Healthcare. Matt go from Quick md and Tanya from University of Miami, so stellar panel. We’re gonna dive, um, probably more into the opportunities, things that we’ve talked about here in the [00:03:00] show quite a bit. Uh, and then we’re also doing a sunrise breakfast session. I think it’s at like four 30 in the morning. I’m not sure. It’s not then, but it’s early. And we’re gonna talk about a new, uh, paper that we’re finalizing, uh, that kind of outlines a huge opportunity for health systems that are going through m and a activity to save millions in ebitda. you heard that right? Millions in eba. It’s not an accounting trick, it’s not a slight of hand, it’s a real thing that happens outside healthcare. But for reasons that we will talk about once we release the paper and at the sunrise session, uh, doesn’t happen in the healthcare space and it’s a huge missed opportunity. So how’s that for a tease,
[00:03:42] Stephanie Wierwille: That’s a pretty big promise.
[00:03:44] Chris: millions?
[00:03:44] Stephanie Wierwille: I love it.
[00:03:45] Chris: but it’s, it’s a true story.
[00:03:47] Stephanie Wierwille: Join us at sunrise and also save millions. I like it. Um, okay. Another big event that we have coming up, uh, is the Joe Public Retreat. We love this event. It happens, um, just about every year [00:04:00] here at BPD, and it’s one that’s really looked forward to by folks in the space.
And so this year, IE next year, 2026 in February, the topic is the AI dream. We’re gonna bring everybody into the lab together, if you will, and we’re gonna concept the biggest. Boldest ideas and ways to use AI in your Marco on function. So today’s main topic will actually be a little bit of a teaser for that because Chris and I are gonna get into what some of those big, bold ideas could actually be, what they could look like.
Um, but join us on February 18th through 20th in South Beach and Miami and um, we will get to work together. It’s gonna be great.
[00:04:34] Chris: Yes.
[00:04:36] Stephanie Wierwille: And then lastly, uh, we have a blog that we’ve recently shared@bbdhealthcare.com called the Einstein Divide. This is related to the topic we’re covering today, and the topic we covered, I think two episodes ago.
Um, which is all about breaking down, um, how to think differently, how to think more bold, how to come up with these Einstein. Level ideas that you can use, uh, for your Mark Marcom function [00:05:00] leveraging ai. So go find that@bbdhealthcare.com. And with that, I think that rounds up our, our quick little plugs for the day.
Uh, before we, before we get into our headlines, Chris, we were just chatting about this weekend plans, but actually I think last weekend there was some really interesting things happening in pop culture, didn’t you? I believe you watched the Emmys.
[00:05:23] Chris: I did. I don’t often watch these shows from beginning to end. Um. And I didn’t quite see the beginning of it, so I missed the, I just caught the, the end of the first award, which was Seth Rogan, I assume. I think it was best actor in a comedy. Uh, but yeah, watch the whole thing. Thought it was amazing. There’s one thing that we’re a little bit behind the zeitgeist in talking about all this, but so what, that’s, there’s one thing that I will say was a complete fail, but I loved the show and I thought. I was so happy with the winners.
[00:05:54] Stephanie Wierwille: Aw,
[00:05:55] Chris: Adolescents and or, what else [00:06:00] was, what else was I excited
[00:06:01] Stephanie Wierwille: the studio right.
[00:06:03] Chris: the studio, like we said before, the studio I thought should win. It was super funny.
[00:06:08] Stephanie Wierwille: Yep.
[00:06:08] Chris: Trammell, I said, if Trammell doesn’t win, then don’t think I’ll ever watch again. And he won for severance.
So I was really happy with the outcome. That has a lot to do with how I feel about it. I think.
[00:06:20] Stephanie Wierwille: I feel like if you took bets on predicted the winners, you would do a really good job. You seem to have always a really good pulse on what’s gonna win and what’s gonna do well.
[00:06:30] Chris: Maybe, um, I did not think the pit would win. I
[00:06:33] Stephanie Wierwille: Hmm.
[00:06:35] Chris: Uh, I actually thought it might be, um, oh, I don’t remember what else it was I was hoping for and or ’cause I just think that’s an amazing show. There was another one that I thought, oh, adolescents actually I thought would win. I, well, no, that’s a different category anyway.
Pit’s amazing. It deserved it, and Noah Wiley deserved it. So
[00:06:52] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay.
[00:06:53] Chris: kudos to that show. Also, like the woman who plays the chief nurse, who I don’t know her name. Of the er. [00:07:00] She also won. So it was great. The thing that was a fail, as everybody knows by now, is they tried to do something to incent people to stay. their time limit when they, with their acceptance speeches. And so they put up like a hundred thousand dollars that would go to the Boys and Girls Club if people stayed within. But for every second they went over or every minute, I can’t remember how it went, the, it would reduce the amount. So as the show went on, amount kept getting lower and lower and you’re like, what do we what?
This seems really depressing. Um, and Nate Bargo, Zi, whatever the host was trying to have fun with it. Like, oh, you know, John Oliver just costs boys and girls. Like, oh, a show like adolescents. That’s really sad that it just took money from teens. But, he had a little fun with it, but it was just kind of like weird.
And then at the end, of course, they ended up giving them money ’cause it was a negative territory because people had gone over. So it really didn’t work in any way that you could imagine [00:08:00] in any way.
[00:08:01] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah,
[00:08:01] Chris: it was just more of a weird distraction that you feel sad when you saw the money go down. I
[00:08:06] Stephanie Wierwille: that’s not good.
[00:08:07] Chris: are we doing here? Yeah,
[00:08:09] Stephanie Wierwille: I feel like that’s the kind of thing that sounds great, like a great idea in advance. And then when it’s happening, it’s like a slow motion, like train off the track situation. But anyway, um,
[00:08:18] Chris: that’s exactly
[00:08:18] Stephanie Wierwille: yeah.
[00:08:18] Chris: it was.
[00:08:19] Stephanie Wierwille: Oh, well. Um, all right, well, I did not watch the MAs this year. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to, so I caught some clips.
Um, but there was, there was something else that caught our attention, I think, beyond the MAs. I think it was like the next day there was this really wild clip that went viral, uh, A UFO that was. Hit by a missile and it bounced off. Chris, do you have any conspiracy theories? I don’t know if anyone out there listening saw that it was almost like buried down the headlines.
Um, but it, you know, I’m very curious of your takes on this, this moment.
[00:08:54] Chris: It was, it was buried because it happened when some other really big news stories, which we won’t get into [00:09:00] happened I think the same day, and it didn’t happen right then. It was just the video was shared in a congressional committee hearing along with others. Uh, and the video shows this thing, like we’ve got other, we’ve seen other videos of these things, these kind of spherical objects. Um, if you’re a fan of raising Arizona, you’ll know that reference. Uh, and they’re, and they just, they fly at, at an amazing speed, and they go up and down and all these kind of weird things. And this is a drone footage that’s wa that’s tracking this thing. And another drone from off camera shoots a hellfire missile at it. Um, which should destroy it or at least make the missile explode. And instead what happens is it hits the thing and the missile kind of goes off track, but keeps going, doesn’t explode. And the thing has like three little parts break off, the three little parts that break off kind of track with the original thing and then eventually come back into it. Um, so it’s super weird, and nobody has an explanation for it. That’s what [00:10:00] makes it
[00:10:00] Stephanie Wierwille: Hmm.
[00:10:01] Chris: a, an alien, whether it’s somebody’s technology like from around the world that we’re just not familiar with, um. I will admit to one thing though. I I would love your take on this, Stephanie. ’cause I, I don’t know where you’re at with UFOs. Um, I can’t believe we’re alone in this universe, so I think that’s ridiculous. Um, whether we’re being visited by UFOs, I don’t know, but sometimes I, I see that and I’m like, gosh, I hope it is a UFO. Because maybe these are like greater beings that will come in and send the world straight we’ll just like save the day.
I’m not worried about them destroying mankind. I’m more hopeful that they’ll be like, all right, I dunno what y’all are doing down here, but this is a mess and here’s how you fix it. Um, a sad statement, but sometimes that flashes through my eye. Maybe it is. Maybe it is a UFO.
[00:10:53] Stephanie Wierwille: I would, I have more than a flash on that. That’s my strong belief. Chris, it’s funny we didn’t actually sink on this in advance, but yeah, we’re in the [00:11:00] same place here. Um, and some of the team was at a happy hour last night and we chatted about this. Mari, our shows producer who’s listening, um, had a similar take.
So I think we are all on the same page that. That, yes, there is more advanced life out there than us, and we’re not the only ones. And instead of shooting at UFOs, can we go be friends with them? Like that sounds great.
[00:11:23] Chris: It is weird that we shot a hellfire missile at it. Also, there are theories, conspiracy theories, that this isn’t necessarily somebody from millions of miles away, but somebody from a different dimension,
[00:11:33] Stephanie Wierwille: Ooh.
[00:11:33] Chris: right? They can travel back and forth in time, so they’ve come from the future to do things and. know.
It’s all kind of
[00:11:41] Stephanie Wierwille: Let’s go.
[00:11:42] Chris: the, the footage is that keeps coming out more and more is, you know, the professionals just are like, we don’t have any explanation for it.
[00:11:49] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
[00:11:50] Chris: how in the world did this thing survive? A hit by hellfire missile? Keep going. What’s with the three things that broke off and then joint rejoined it?
Why didn’t the hellfire missile [00:12:00] explode? Why did it like bounce off? That doesn’t make any sense, I guess, for a hellfire missile, which. anyway, a good distraction. Um, but I think when, when that congressional hearing hit, it was like number 17 list of things going on in the world that day. Um, so it got swallowed by. What seems like a regular occurrence, massive headlines that in the, like 15, 20 years ago would’ve been the dominant story for a week or a month, or now, like, oh, it’s two o’clock, so here, here’s another one.
[00:12:32] Stephanie Wierwille: Right, right.
[00:12:34] Chris: we, we
[00:12:34] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Well, we’re giving air time to it then because, uh, you know, I think UFOs is a great, a great little rabbit hole to go down every once in a while and escape from reality and say, what if, um, so all right, we’ll move it now into the healthcare realm. So there was, uh, a healthcare summit by Reddit, and it was the first one that they’ve ever had, which is really exciting, uh, because Reddit, of course, is a platform where [00:13:00] people talk a lot about health and they’re sharing all kinds of things about healthcare, and they’re.
Jumping in there and sharing symptoms and issues and asking questions and having conversations and talking about rare diseases. And it’s a space where I’ve heard recently a lot of healthcare brands, especially health systems, are asking, how do we get more involved in Reddit? What do we do about this?
Given the fact that Reddit is now sourced often by ai and it’s, you know, pulled into AI conversations, um, it’s really important for SEO. Um, so really cool to see what Reddit, you know, publicly leaning into healthcare. Um, I have a lot. That I’m excited about on this, but I wanna hear, Chris, what was your, what was your thought as you, as you saw this?
[00:13:39] Chris: Well, as a representative of the Olds, I will say that I have never spent time in Reddit. Uh, I know of Reddit, but what I know of Reddit is it’s kind of like the wild west of the internet, so it’s. Probably not a fair perception. Maybe that’s where it started. Maybe it still has that component. Uh, kids though, [00:14:00] all of whom are in there, um. Early to mid twenties are completely versed in Reddit. I’ve spent a lot of time in Reddit, often cite Reddit, uh, which I used to just dismiss ’cause I used to think it’s the crazy corner, like I said. Um, but I’m the last person in the world that should be. Well, maybe not the last person, but among the last people who should have an opinion on Reddit, given my complete lack of experience with it and my old perspective of what it was, and maybe not understanding what it’s today.
[00:14:33] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Okay. Okay.
[00:14:35] Chris: help whatsoever.
[00:14:37] Stephanie Wierwille: Um, so yeah, Reddit did start off as a little bit of the Wild West. It does still have a tiny bit of that component. It cer certainly has lots of snark. I actually, there’s subreddits that I follow intentionally for snark, like just literally like people just jumping in and saying very, very, very snarky things about things.
And I follow those
[00:14:54] Chris: can you name one? Can you name a subreddit
[00:14:56] Stephanie Wierwille: yet.
[00:14:57] Chris: is just.
[00:14:58] Stephanie Wierwille: A snarky one. I don’t [00:15:00] wanna name a snarky one. I’m gonna name, so like I also follow, I just went on a cruise right, three months ago, Royal Caribbean Cruise, and there’s a subreddit focused on Royal Caribbean. It’s really fun to watch that and see, even if you’re not on a Royal Caribbean cruise, people are asking very, very, very detailed questions, which is perfect for what I like, which is like, Hey, if I’m in this exact room, can you tell me where the outlet is?
Like before I travel, like things like that. And you can just crowdsource anything. So there’s a lot of brand conversations. There’s a lot of, you know, any topic you want, any healthcare topic you want. If you have an issue, I go on there all the time to diagnose myself. I shouldn’t admit that, but I do because it’s real.
People having real conversations.
[00:15:40] Chris: Yeah.
so I mean, you shouldn’t not admit it because that’s what a lot of people
[00:15:44] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
[00:15:45] Chris: Um, I mean, you don’t wanna admit that you’ve, you, you know, daily follow the subreddit of grocery cart justice. Um, that’s the kind of
[00:15:53] Stephanie Wierwille: I’m never gonna live that down.
[00:15:55] Chris: No, you’re not. But, but, but go on, like, explain.
So the idea that, that you even have [00:16:00] a summit was bizarre to
[00:16:01] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
[00:16:02] Chris: That’s just weird to
[00:16:03] Stephanie Wierwille: Really? Why?
[00:16:04] Chris: well, just because I don’t, it doesn’t seem like it’s a, an an actual website with a central driving force behind it. More. It’s just like a, a forum of, it’s a million forums on a million topics. So the idea that they would have some kind of organized event is just again, counter to my. Old person view of what Reddit is, so
[00:16:31] Stephanie Wierwille: Well.
[00:16:32] Chris: here.
[00:16:32] Stephanie Wierwille: Remember they went public, when was it, 2024 and that’s when a lot of things changed leading up there. Their IPO, Reddit really got their, their corporate act together and they really went, you know, they did clean up a lot of the. Deep, dark web discussion that was on there, if you will. Right. They cleaned up some of that.
They really leaned into advertisers. They gave a lot of new advertising opportunities because they have to monetize of course. So Reddit has really become one of the, I would say, mass [00:17:00] social channels. And there’s so many ad opportunities. In fact, you can even, um, in the same targeting that you use on meta, you can even share on Reddit.
You can share some of the same content. Like it’s really sophisticated now from an advertising standpoint. And what they’re trying to do is in court. Encourage brands to jump into conversations where it makes sense. It’s, brands are more welcome now in Reddit than they were five years ago. So if a brand were to see somebody is asking a question, they could jump into that conversation and answer questions, bring it offline, handle issues, all of that.
Um, it’s much more corporate after the IPO.
[00:17:34] Chris: Oh, is that a good or bad thing
[00:17:37] Stephanie Wierwille: I mean, from a marketer’s perspective, it’s great.
[00:17:40] Chris: from a user perspective? That’s you.
[00:17:43] Stephanie Wierwille: As as a user, I still really enjoy it and get a lot out of it. That hasn’t changed for me, and in fact, I think some of the cleanup has been really helpful, but I don’t know. That’s me N of one.
[00:17:53] Chris: Well, I
[00:17:53] Stephanie Wierwille: I.
[00:17:53] Chris: say the only time I encounter Reddit is when I’m searching for an answer for something [00:18:00] uh, the other day I was trying to figure out. to like, I don’t know if it was like setting up my Samsung TV or there was some piece of appliance or, or electronics that I needed to get like an answer to. And when I.
Googled it, the first answer was Reddit. And I always just ignore it
[00:18:16] Stephanie Wierwille: Oh.
[00:18:17] Chris: because I’m like, that’s just some. Like Hank Frank from Albuquerque who’s got an opinion on this thing, like why it’s not helpful to me. So I will now give Reddit another chance. I will maybe explore it a little bit and I will not just immediately dismiss anything that pops up in my Google searches from Reddit. ’cause perhaps I could learn something.
[00:18:36] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah, and also it’s just fun to watch. Sometimes I just watch it for the pure entertainment value. Um, so
[00:18:42] Chris: Watch it. What are you watching? I. thought it was all just like
[00:18:45] Stephanie Wierwille: Snarky conversations?
[00:18:47] Chris: Oh, okay. Not like
[00:18:48] Stephanie Wierwille: No,
[00:18:48] Chris: watching.
[00:18:49] Stephanie Wierwille: no, no, no, no. Um, all right, so that’s your homework. Report back,
[00:18:56] Chris: see how old and terrible I am. Like watch it. What do you mean
[00:18:59] Stephanie Wierwille: [00:19:00] threads.
[00:19:00] Chris: video? I don’t, how do I get the video? I’m ready to work.
[00:19:04] Stephanie Wierwille: It’s, you know, how the best convers, the, the best content is in the comments on Instagram and TikTok, right? We all break a hip running to the comments. That’s Reddit. You can just live there. You just live in the wild comment section. So that’s my summary. Okay, we’ll move on. So our main topic today, um, is a follow up from two episodes ago where we broke down what we call the Einstein Divide, or Einstein versus Edison Thinking.
So a quick little recap. We talked a lot about how everyone’s talking about ai. Literally you can’t open an app, go to a conference, have a phone call without AI coming up. Um, and what we’ve been hearing from especially health systems and healthcare organizations is a whole lot of conversation about efficiency and automation and not a lot of conversation about doing brand new, novel, innovative things that have never been done before.
So we categorize that as sort of this Edison approach, which is take the existing light bulb, make it better, smarter, faster, [00:20:00] scalable, create the ecosystem around the light bulb. Uh. Make it go, you know, to scale globally. That’s Edison, that’s iteration. That’s taking existing marketing and automating it effectively, making it more efficient.
That’s what everybody’s focused on with ai. What we’re talking about today is what we call Einstein thinking, which is what if we wrote alongside a light beam? So asking these. Really wild questions and thinking, what if, what if there was no such thing as a website for your health system? Um, what if there were no campaigns?
That’s what we talked about last time. So today we are gonna put our futurist hat on, which Chris, you are the futurist du jour.
[00:20:37] Chris: it made of
[00:20:40] Stephanie Wierwille: Is that a UFO reference?
[00:20:43] Chris: No. Well, maybe. But I’ll, I’ll, I will, I will. I wish I had tinfoil with me. usually carry it with me wherever I go, but for some reason I don’t have it. And I could craft a tinfoil hat, but this isn’t tinfoil thinking. This is Einstein thinking. It’s
[00:20:56] Stephanie Wierwille: That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. I don’t know if Einstein wore a hat. [00:21:00] Um, not a tinfoil one. Um, so one thing I, I love is, you know, as, as we’ve dug into Joe Public 2030 a lot, um, Joe Public 2030 of course shares this sort of what if, what if scenarios, what might happen in 2030 and beyond. And so this is kind of building upon that and saying, now given all that we’ve discussed in AI and seen over the last year.
Let’s now transport into 2030 and beyond. And imagine if you woke up in 20 30, 20 32, and you are a chief marketing officer. What does your day look like? So that’s the premise for our topic. Um, I have a bunch of examples, but before that, anything you wanna add, Chris, or any initial thoughts?
[00:21:45] Chris: The only thing I. exercise, um, if done right, and this isn’t an exercise, we’re just gonna talk through some, some ideas. Um, you kind of have to put aside all the practical challenges that may pop into your head because they will [00:22:00] pop into your head. You’ll be like, well, wait a second. How is that gonna work?
And blah, blah, blah. This is, again, this isn’t tinfoil thinking. This is thinking based on things we know or hear. In of, uh, regarding the potential of ai, right? So a lot of this won’t be things that are even possible today, but in two or three years will be. Uh, but you can’t get stuck at least in this kind of thinking, um, worrying about the practical. or maybe the negative implications of ai, which we covered in a prior podcast as well. This is about just dream. Just dream what this will be. Because if we can come to some kind of collective dream, then we can work toward that dream, um, and dream in a positive way. There will be implications no matter what. Right. So I’m not saying ignore those, but for this exercise we will be ignoring that we are not, um, naive. We are just intentionally sticking to the vision
[00:22:58] Stephanie Wierwille: Yes, exactly. Great. [00:23:00] Really important setup. Okay. So I’ll throw out the first one out and maybe we can build on it and come up with others. Um, but I like to think about the question you asked a couple weeks ago. Chris was. Hey, the word campaigns is probably outdated. If you’re transporting yourself into a true AI future, like why would we have these three month, six month programs or campaigns that that run if we can have this always on algorithmic marketing brain.
So imagine it’s, you know, 8:00 AM on, I don’t know, September 19th, 20. 31 and you’re a chief marketing officer. And yeah, after your morning workout, you get a notification from your AI agent on your wearable of choice, and it basically says, Hey, cardiology vol volume is declining. I already noticed this over the last few days, weeks, there’s been a dip in scheduled procedures.
So on your behalf, I went ahead. I scanned all this data for you. I scanned everything from market data [00:24:00] to service line volume data to consumer data, to your campaign data, to even things like maybe voice search or market sentiment or all kinds of things. And based on this, I’ve already adjusted your always on program.
Your cardiology, you know, always on messaging is completely updated. Everything is done. You don’t have to do anything. You don’t even have to approve it. I just wanted to let you know. Um, and I also went ahead and doubled down on provider referral marketing because I noticed that there was a dip in referrals.
And so I went ahead and changed that messaging as well. Stay tuned. And then, you know, all you’re doing is saying like, cool, thanks. And now you’re waiting for, uh, results, which is, Hey, by the way, there was a new scheduled appointment here. There’s a new scheduled appointment there. This is the forecast of downstream revenue.
Your job then becomes merchandising That, talking about that, sharing that. You kind of just, just weighing in. Chris, what’s your take on that scenario?
[00:24:56] Chris: So what’s interesting is, like I was gonna add to your list of things that would [00:25:00] do, I don’t even know how much you would have to socialize or communicate it. ’cause part of my job as AI agent will be to let the card, the head of cardiology know
[00:25:07] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
[00:25:07] Chris: done this and to let the, um, service line leader know and to let the CFO know, um, and to let the schedulers know that there may be more volume coming because we’re gonna turn up the knobs in this way or that way. Um, so then you gotta wonder like, what is that person then doing? Well, what, so again, like don’t worry about the, the, the marketer who’s like, cool, I just get to take the morning off. Right. Um, to me that just seems completely feasible, I do, I do think it is Einstein thinking because it’s so removed from where we’re at today, but I also think that that’s completely. Doable. And I think of the, I’m going completely against what I said. I can, I can hear somebody say as an objection, well wait a second. Like I don’t want some AI bot just putting stuff out in the market for us. Like I need to [00:26:00] approve all that. And like we talked before, um, the new approval will be performance and. This all assumes that you have trained your AI in your brand standards, your brand voice, your brand messaging, uh, and it almost doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, right? Like you don’t need to see it because what difference does it make if the end result is more cardiology patients, um, that you’re looking for, right? So that leads to bigger questions like what does brand mean in three or four years? But it, I don’t have anything to add other than how do we make that happen? Because I just think that that is, and that’s, and, and imagine that’s not like you just took a campaign. broke it down related to cardiology. The point here is that that would, that would happen across everything that you do. Everywhere that you’re allocating resources essentially, and maybe even beyond that. So you may be like, Hey, we have [00:27:00] 15 service lines. We can all allocate funding to 10 of them or five of them. But the AI might say like, boy, you’re really missing an opportunity over here.
I know we don’t have anything and maybe the AI’s not gonna spend the money for you. But they may say like, I really recommend that you take 20% away from this and give it over here. Um. so it is, it would be holistic, all encompassing, just machinery working. I just think that that’s, I think that’s, that’s gonna come someday.
[00:27:30] Stephanie Wierwille: too, and I think this is probably the closest, in the most realistic, well the most close to where we are today of our examples that we’ll share. But just to build on what you’re saying, like the more. Marketer’s job then is to then kind of orchestrate this thing to basically say, you know, what would be really cool now is if we could actually incorporate, you know, capacity.
Like we talked last time about are you full and what does that mean? And so now how do we incorporate in capacity and have it actually pull different levers and shift and say, cardiology’s full. Now I’m gonna go over [00:28:00] here. And then it’s like, okay, now how do I get new kinds of data? What, what could I incorporate?
You know, this is maybe a silly example, but like are there patterns in like weather that lead to people needing certain services? That’s a silly example, but what is all the data that could, that’s the marketer’s job is to say, let’s add this in and test it, and then I think their job becomes FaceTime because even if you’re getting a notification and the cardiology lead is getting a notification, you might not be reading it the same way.
So sit down with a cardiology lead and talk it through and be like, what else could we do? I think that’s the job, and I think that’s far more interesting than. The current marketing job.
[00:28:34] Chris: I, I totally agree. I think like, um, again, if performance is the approval and you’re just, you know, you’re increasing volumes by tw by 20%, um, what do you need to be doing? Can’t you just kick back? Well, there’s a few things. One, you just mentioned it, um, you know, you’re still gonna want. Somebody that knows the ultimate goal besides AI to oversee those results and make sure they are the results that you, that you were asking [00:29:00] for. Um, also, all machinery breaks down. All machinery has flaws. There’s no, there’s no perfect machinery. So monitoring, like, what, what’s going on? Like, why are we not getting the results we’re supposed to be getting? Is, is that the content, the messaging, the algorithm is a, is AI trained wrong? Right? Like that’s going to be. Probably nonstop because there is no place where this just ends. And we’re just like, okay, it’s, it’s the AI 3000 and that’s what we’re gonna have. And so it’s just gonna be set to, well, we got it calibrated, right? So off it goes and never shall we need somebody. There’ll be the ai 3000 plus in the ai, 3,200 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So. It will be kind of oversight of what’s not working and what is working, and that I, I think, is going to have to stay human for quite some time. But that to your point, is very different spending all of the time developing all the effort, getting the [00:30:00] stuff out, all of the approvals, uh. All of the data, just like, and, and think of all that we do now in that regard.
And we still don’t know whether it’s working or not. So like it’s hard to argue that like, oh boy, if this was set up right, it was delivering results, or I want to, you know, I don’t know if we want that. Well, yeah, we do because compared to where it is now and all the rounds of approval just to get an ad out that you hope, you hope does something. Yeah. So cool.
[00:30:32] Stephanie Wierwille: It is okay. Yeah. All right. I’m gonna go to the next, I’m gonna, I’m gonna jump to one that’s maybe a little bit more, a little more sci-fi e. So, um, now let’s say, you know, now you’re, okay. You just had that notification. Now you’re sitting down for a breakfast meeting, perhaps with a. A person on your team whose role is the narrative architect, this is a role that didn’t exist in 2025.
Um, sounds really fancy, but what this person is doing is [00:31:00] they’re training a set of, we’ll call them recovery avatars. These are automated video guides that are really improving patient communication. So painting the picture, your patient, you’re in the hospital, there’s so much communication hitting you all the time, right?
And it’s like the doctor’s talking to you about things. You’re, you’re maybe not even really. Realizing exactly what they’re saying. ’cause they’re, they’re, it’s just you’re not in the right mind space to receive the information. Maybe you’re sent home with a brochure, maybe you’re getting, you know, the, the takeaway information, your caregivers there trying to capture it.
The communication issue is a challenge for patients. So what if there were, um, recovery avatars and they’re sort of like your own digital little care guide. They adjust based on your diagnosis, based on your procedure, based on your health literacy, your language preferences. They talk to you how you wanna be talked to.
You can pull ’em up anytime, anywhere. Along your care journey. Um, and they’re kind of translating your, your, you know, all of your data, all of your situation into the right language for you. And you can, they’re, they’re an avatar. You could name them. [00:32:00] So that’s a little sci-fi, but I think that’s an example of something that could solve a real patient problem.
[00:32:05] Chris: Yeah, I mean we already have, we covered some of this a little bit, Joe Public 20 and the Coper consumer. Um, and the idea of digital twins that already exist a clinical standpoint. Um. Again, I feel like some people are already in a place that they’re leveraging ai, not to this degree. Um, but it’s just a matter of time before these things are so powerful that they’re able to represent you in that way.
And again, like I, I don’t know that, like, this is just an interesting question. If, if all of that is true, um, why, why would we need marketing? Right, because marketing job is to connect a buyer to a seller for a need. and its purpose is to drive revenue for an [00:33:00] organization. It is, whether you like to hear that or not, even in healthcare, that’s what its job is. But if, if the need is clinical. And we are able to be completely tapped into the physical, mental, emotional needs of patients, on a, a real time basis. What are we marketing to them for? Well, we’re just gonna know when they need something. They’re gonna know when they need something and they’re gonna be able to act on that something.
We’re not gonna have to like blanket them with advertising saying, Hey, you’re, you’re a 50-year-old man. You should go get a colonoscopy. Hey, we’ve di we’ve, we’ve determined that there’s something going on. You should go get a colonoscopy on all the data we have, right? So well do we need marketing?
Maybe that’s more than two or three years out, but just call into question.
[00:33:53] Stephanie Wierwille: Well, I think this ties into the future of the CMO work, which says there’s a real opportunity to expand the role of marketing. [00:34:00] Um, I mean, if. Hopefully not, but if anybody is still defining marketing as just ad campaigns, that’s, that’s not gonna really be, you know, as high of a need. But what is really interesting is to say how do we shape the patient experience?
How do we shape the whole patient journey? How do we to, to your point about brand, how do we make this brand this living, breathing thing that’s personalized to everybody, anywhere they are, whether they’re in the house. Hospital, whether they’re outside the hospital, whether they’re in their car, like whatever their health need is, we show up in a way that connects them with what they need.
You know, to me that the, I think there’s a real case for the scope of marketing broadening very dramatically in this, in this, um, era.
[00:34:44] Chris: It’s, it’s just a super interesting question ’cause it gets to the, like, what is marketing’s intent? So, and I think brand is the same way. Like, funny because I’m the one who’s the first to say like, all these brand. know, brand is dead, [00:35:00] you know, kind of things that come up every five or 10 years.
I’m like, brand’s not dead. People still need brand. Brand. They need brand primarily because you need a shortcut. You cannot, you cannot make a decision on every item in the grocery store and research it. You, you will, will lay down and curl up in the fetal position. If you had to go through all that decision making process. But what if somebody could do it for you? What if AI could do it for you? I. And then, so we talked about, last time we talked about emotional brand versus transactional brand. What if brand becomes pure transactional? Because your AI bot’s just like, look, if you need X, this is the best choice for X. And with my permission given to them, they’re just gonna get me what I need. Right? And I may have to approve a spending level over a certain amount or whatever. But with Starbucks, we talked about Starbucks before. If I want coffee, do I, do I need the emotional connection to Starbucks or is my Ai b gonna be like [00:36:00] coffee’s on its way? And I and I, I don’t even have to go get it. It just brought to me. So it is super interesting to think of all that kind of stuff. Um, the future of brand and marketing. ’cause it could go either way.
[00:36:11] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. Yeah, it could. It could. And both of those are viable. Right. Both of those are viable, which is like, hey, I have a symptom. I need it instantly solved with all the data that, that knows me and knows what I need and knows where I am and all that. That’s a viable path. The other viable path is, you know, to be clear, we are, we are still, you know, in the business of, of health and there’s so much emotionality around that and how would you create a brand that is creating this personalized true health, you know, kind of content and experience and all of that.
So I think there’s paths. Both paths are viable. It’s more about what does your brand stand for? Um, okay, let’s go to, maybe we have time for one more little storytelling example. Um. Gosh, there’s so many here we could pull from, you said digital twin Chris. So I’m gonna go [00:37:00] down that path. Um, so back to the data realm.
So imagine, I don’t know, now it’s the afternoon. You’re the same chief marketing officer, now you’re walking into a C-suite leadership meeting. Um, and together you’re sitting down and you’re reviewing this digital twin of your organization. So the digital twin is capturing all kinds of interesting data, clinical data, financial data, behavior dynamics, and it’s forecasting.
If we did X, our market share would be this. Our volume would be that. Our contribution margin would be that all kinds of key metrics. So we already have this in a sense and not, maybe we don’t call that a digital twin, but we have a lot of data clinically and operationally that are, that is already leveraged, right.
That that’s there. I’m talking about if everything was connected, if you had emotional data around, to your point, your patients and how they were experiencing things. If you had market data, if you had all the marketing data, if you have everything really tied in. What does that digital twin of an organization look like?
And then how could you, I’m calling this emotional triage, [00:38:00] like activate the people, the robots, the systems you need to go. Maybe make changes on the fly if you see something that’s off. And you could do that in real time. You could, let’s say that maybe patient, maybe the, the leading indicators for patient satisfaction.
Things that you’ve identified as leading indicators towards negative HCAP scores are starting to trend down in your digital twin. You could pull all these levers. To go fix that. Um, I’ll just pause there.
[00:38:28] Chris: Yeah, that’s, I, I, I kept wanting to go like beep while you were talking because I just imagine this how like. You know, contraption somewhere that’s got all the answers and speaks to you and says like, Hey, you got a problem in the, the west wing of the hospital in room rooms 22 through 24 because a nurse is having a bad day and it’s actually real time impacting patients and how they’re feeling. And we know all this. So what do you, [00:39:00] you better act on that, right? Um, so yeah. Woo. It just, it’s just, don’t know. People Probably think we do have tinfoil hats on, um,
[00:39:12] Stephanie Wierwille: two.
[00:39:13] Chris: because they’re like, I can’t even like get my chat GBT to give me a, a press release without having to edit or whatever. Um. It’s just really a MA matter of data processing power. really is. Whether you think they’re thinking or not, I always laugh at these, you know, like I think Apple put out something and somebody else put like, oh, here’s research that shows AI isn’t thinking. I’m like, you’re missing the point. Like you’re missing the point. Like, know, nobody’s suggesting right now that they’re sentient. They’re not sentient beings, but you know what? All we are are molecules. Let’s be honest. Our brain is full of molecules. So what is sentient? And so it’s almost a moot [00:40:00] point to get stuck on this. Oh, they’re not really thinking if they’re, if they’re doing the same things that we could do, what difference does it make, whether you call it thinking or not.
So, so that’s the other side of it is it’s just a matter of when to me. Um. And so that’s a digital twin for your organization is why would you have just one?
[00:40:18] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
[00:40:18] Chris: probing question. wouldn’t you have like one for this area? One for that area, or each market’s different or, it’s down to the individual human.
That’s different. I, it just blows your mind. Just like Einstein, like I still have a trouble with Einstein’s thinking, like the idea that the universe is expanding.
[00:40:40] Stephanie Wierwille: Mm-hmm.
[00:40:41] Chris: This is common stuff, but okay. It’s expanding from what and what was, what was, what’s it expanding into what’s beyond where its greatest limit is.
Like what? It just, my, your brain can’t figure it out. So [00:41:00] don’t know. It’s exciting. I think that’s all exciting stuff to think about, but
[00:41:04] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
[00:41:04] Chris: can under, you know, that’s, that’s you and me. Like we could just do this all day. There are other people are probably just like practically like, yeah, whatever. Uh, believe it when I see it kind of stuff, which is fair.
[00:41:14] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah. And, and then that makes, I, I love that you bring that up, that point, because then that makes me, maybe we can wrap on like the, what do you do today? Because it’s, we could whiteboard all these random scenarios and I do love, you know, the doing that. And I think that’s really, really early important because you have to get into that thinking and that’s what we’ll be doing at, you know, all kinds of, um.
Events and podcast episodes we have coming up. But I have to go back to what do we do today? And I think that the bet to place is to say, if I am a marketing and communications leader, I need to make sure that I am wrangling as much data as possible, that I am thinking about the future of the CMO report, and how do I become the voice of the market, and therefore, what market data can I go capture and how do I [00:42:00] connect that to my other marketing data?
And how do we make sure that my people understand, number one, what’s possible with AI today. That they’re thinking about what’s possible tomorrow, that we’re upskilling our people in terms of data privacy, that we’re upskilling our people in terms of compliance, and that we’re beginning to build little experiments, small as they may be to get to this wild vision, and we may never get to the true digital twin of the organization.
And that’s okay. The point is to say we have to do those small things today in order to. You know, at least have a competitive advantage over those that are moving in this direction.
[00:42:37] Chris: Or just as importantly, to better serve the people that we’re,
[00:42:41] Stephanie Wierwille: That too.
[00:42:42] Chris: that we’re targeting? Yes.
[00:42:44] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
[00:42:44] Chris: Yes. Woo.
[00:42:47] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay.
[00:42:47] Chris: I need to lay down.
[00:42:50] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Well good then. Mission accomplished. Okay,
[00:42:53] Chris: is tired from that.
[00:42:55] Stephanie Wierwille: good.
[00:42:56] Chris: I just need like something simple to do. I need some Legos or some [00:43:00] crayons.
[00:43:02] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay. Well that sounds like a great weekend activity. There’s your weekend plans.
[00:43:07] Chris: Yes. So
[00:43:08] Stephanie Wierwille: Uh.
[00:43:09] Chris: I saw something. I can’t believe it’s true, but it sure looked true. The Lego kits these days, if you’re not, if you, if you don’t have kids or you’re not a Lego fan, are ridiculously intricate, expensive. Like it’s a whole thing. And I saw one that was the, uh, meth, uh, camper from
[00:43:29] Stephanie Wierwille: What?
[00:43:29] Chris: bat.
[00:43:30] Stephanie Wierwille: No, no, this is real.
[00:43:33] Chris: Well, I couldn’t tell if it was a kit or somebody built it.
[00:43:38] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay.
[00:43:40] Chris: it looked like it was a kit, but there’s no way LEGO puts out a
[00:43:43] Stephanie Wierwille: Oh, it’s at Walmart. I just Googled breaking bad RV model building set at Walmart for 29 99.
[00:43:50] Chris: hot up. It’s, it’s an actual kit.
[00:43:53] Stephanie Wierwille: Yes,
[00:43:54] Chris: that.
[00:43:54] Stephanie Wierwille: it’s on walmart.com. It’s unbranded, it’s not Lego.
[00:43:58] Chris: Oh. Oh, there [00:44:00] you go.
[00:44:00] Stephanie Wierwille: Yeah.
[00:44:00] Chris: like, what in the world? Okay.
[00:44:03] Stephanie Wierwille: Where did you see this? Is this on? This is, this would be on Reddit for normally
[00:44:08] Chris: well, it was, it wasn’t Reddit. It was where you would expect it. But
[00:44:11] Stephanie Wierwille: TikTok.
[00:44:12] Chris: the kind of thing that would actually snap my brain
[00:44:14] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay.
[00:44:15] Chris: well, fact that Walmart’s selling is maybe still brain snapping, but if Lego is like, you know, it would be great. we created a Lego kit that was of breaking bad of the van, that where they made methamphetamine,
[00:44:29] Stephanie Wierwille: gosh.
[00:44:31] Chris: how is Walmart even selling that?
[00:44:33] Stephanie Wierwille: Well,
[00:44:35] Chris: a,
[00:44:35] Stephanie Wierwille: because Walmart, just like Amazon, can’t quite get their arms around their, um, you know, they went in the direction of anybody can sell products type of marketplace and then they can’t get their arms around it. So,
[00:44:46] Chris: I didn’t know
[00:44:46] Stephanie Wierwille: yeah. So anyway, I’m glad we’re ending on a not not safe for work conversation. I love when we end there.
[00:44:53] Chris: Why isn’t that safe? We’re, I think we’re saying clearly meth is bad. That’s our [00:45:00] message.
[00:45:00] Stephanie Wierwille: I
guess,
[00:45:01] Chris: message,
[00:45:01] Stephanie Wierwille: yeah, I guess there was a governmental program about that, you know, in the eighties that, yeah, so I guess, I guess it’s a mass media message. All right,
[00:45:10] Chris: Okay.
[00:45:12] Stephanie Wierwille: we’ll wrap there. Okay.
[00:45:14] Chris: what you get your kids for the holidays.
[00:45:16] Stephanie Wierwille: Ooh, I can’t wait to talk about trending toys for holidays. I’m putting my money on labu boos. I’m already buying, um, a niece, an 8-year-old niece, a lu boo boo.
And I cannot wait. I’m so excited. So maybe that’s a next, uh, future discussion.
[00:45:30] Chris: I’m old and have no idea. What
[00:45:31] Stephanie Wierwille: Oh, Chris?
[00:45:33] Chris: is it? Is it little booboo?
[00:45:35] Stephanie Wierwille: No, Chris.
[00:45:38] Chris: I’m sorry. I’ll look it up.
[00:45:39] Stephanie Wierwille: okay. Please.
[00:45:41] Chris: I don’t have kids. Um. So, I’m sorry.
[00:45:45] Stephanie Wierwille: Okay, we’ll start next time with a, yeah, absolutely. Alright, so
[00:45:49] Chris: to spell it, so I’m gonna go research it on Reddit if you gimme the spelling later.
[00:45:53] Stephanie Wierwille: there you go. Okay, perfect. Two homework assignments in one. With that, we’re gonna wrap here. Um, [00:46:00] so thanks for everybody for joining. Thanks for. Venturing with us into the future with 10 foil hats on, um, and ending with Lego conversation. That is no normal. That’s what we are here to do. We’re here to go beyond the normal.
We’re here to go beyond the usual, um, to go beyond your typical service line marketing and think bigger and broader. So with that, we charge you with not being satisfied, with the normal, with pushing it. And, um, join us next week for a bubo conversation.
