Into the world of healthcare communications I came, with no healthcare experience. The challenge? Eighty percent of people are healthy and healthy people don’t think about healthcare. However, that same 80% want convenient options for care when they need it. We went to work with insights, personality, technology, and imagination, putting ourselves in the shoes of the notoriously hard to reach healthy people.
We allowed the brand to speak to people as fellow people, not a giant company. Some of our creative was revolutionary for a big, established healthcare organization and, if we do say so ourselves, some were a bit funny.
Our work has exceeded sales and volume goals, grown brand preference scores, and won quite a few advertising awards. We have launched new products, built an enterprise website and intranet and democratized logos, photos, and templates for a workforce of 20,000. Presbyterian Healthcare Services and Presbyterian Health Plan are the state’s most preferred healthcare organization and health plan serving one in three New Mexicans. Oh, we also helped our workforce and community through its first pandemic.
Don’t make a Medicare Advantage plan mistake.
7,000 people at a hospital grand opening? Yup.
Virtual reality groundbreaking for new medical center.
When times are troubling, and the country is in a recession, plants help. A well-loved local greenhouse was selling live plants online, via catalog and in local stores. The greenhouse had one brand, the online store and catalog had another. The product was the same in both. I redesigned their fragmented brands and the fact that sales grew during a financial crisis was very satisfying to me (1%, but still).
I’m no quitter. I tried two times to get fascinated by residential mortgage lending. At the time I was intrigued by how there are so many people buying homes, and yet mortgage marketing was so bland. Changed that with clever and beautiful ideas and similarly fantastic teams. Was able to ring the opening bell on the NYSE for an IPO, and the other position got me across the county where I wanted to live. So positive ROI as they say.
I met a guy at work, and we were both fascinated by the internet. So, we assembled a group of programmers and built a company. We called it SWAN Media. SWAN stood for Something Without A Name. Please know I’d approach the naming differently if I had a do-over. Sold my share to my partner in 1996, he sold the whole caboodle to iXL in 1997. He made a ton of money; I recall making about enough to buy a nice printer. That said, I was on the cutting edge knowing a big thing when I saw it.
Answered an ad looking for a marketing person to promote car phones in the southeast. Got the job and traveled around the country and the world doing competitive assessments, pricing, advertising, merchandising, research and building a customer analytics team before that was a thing (late ‘90s). Also got free phones and service which was cool at the time as we talked on cell phones then and it was expensive.
Before gift cards and unlimited minutes, we did this. One of my many ideas ahead of its time I think.
I thought pens and pencils would be interesting since everyone uses them.
I was not correct about that.
The idea of being a retail buyer seemed interesting, as I do like to shop. You must be quite aggressive to negotiate well. It’s hard to leave that trait at the office.