Brand as a Competitive Advantage
Mark Viden, SVP of Brand at CommonSpirit Health shares about using brand promises as operating principles to gain competitive advantage.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Pipeline Visionaries.
I'm Ian Faiz on CEO of Caspian Studios.
Today, we have a special guest, Mark.
How are you?
>> Great. Good to be here.
Good to see you again.
>> Indeed, it has been quite literally years since we
chatted on a different podcast and
different, well, I would say different companies,
but different names of companies in your case and excited to bring the
conversation
to our Pipeline Visionaries audience.
>> Excellent. Well, looking forward to our conversation.
>> Indeed. Today's show is always brought to you by our friends at
Qualified.com. For our listeners,
you can go to Qualified.com to learn about the number one conversational sales
and
marketing platforms for your company's revenue teams that use Salesforce.
Go to Qualified.com to learn more.
If you use Salesforce, you should be using Qualified. Go check them out.
First question, how did you get into marketing?
>> That was, marketing was like a passion I had all my life.
I remember being given a book by my grandfather, Ogilvian advertising.
I was sixth grade and fast forward, graduated from college in Boston,
found my way into Hill Holiday, which was at the time the largest
ad agency in the city.
Worked on a number of clients in the most junior position you could imagine,
but really learned a lot.
And then I moved client side to head up a very small marketing department for
mutual fund company and life found me in San Francisco.
I think I had one winter too many in Boston.
And found myself in a small boutique agency that served a lot of different
brands, Houghton, Mifflin, Union Bank of California, NBCI, and kind of the rest
of history as they say.
So it's been not, you know, not planned full in terms of every step that I've
taken, but every step has felt like the right move once I've done.
>> And flash forward to your role of SVP a brand at Comin' Spirit Health.
Tell us a little bit about your role.
>> Absolutely.
So I oversee brand for one of the nation's largest healthcare systems in the
country.
We serve over 20 million patients, have a number of consumer facing brands,
Dignity Health, CHI Health.
And so this organization you referenced that was part of a different company
when we last
talked.
That was Dignity Health.
And Comin' Spirit Health was created back in 2019 when Dignity Health and CHI
emerged.
We've since acquired Virginia Mason in the Pacific Northwest and a number of
other entities.
And we have partnerships with academic institutions like Baylor College of
Medicine and Texas
and Creighton University Medical Center in Nebraska and Arizona.
So really a larger platform to extend our brand.
>> And we're going to get a lot into the brand piece and how this all fits in.
So let's get to our first segment.
The trust tree where you go and feel honest and trusted and share those deepest
, darkest
marketing secrets.
So being the seventh largest healthcare company in America, healthcare
organization in the
country, how do you think about marketing?
>> Well we start first by building an emotional connection with a consumer.
We know that consumers are attracted to brands that align with their values.
There's something almost subliminal or subconscious to how consumers relate to
brands.
I have to say in healthcare that's a little unusual.
Most healthcare advertising focuses on very specific clinical services,
offerings, etc.
And what we thought is let's really start with that emotional connection in the
patient
journey.
>> What's the thing about healthcare?
No one wants to think about what hospital would I want to go to if I needed to
go to
a hospital?
>> Right.
>> What do you care, ER, wherever you are in your healthcare needs?
And so we wanted to kind of lodge this stickiness, if you will, this memorable
sort of call
to action.
But hello human kindness and it's an invitation we think to really align with
the consumer
on that emotional journey.
>> Yeah, and who are your customers?
Who are the folks that you serve, those target audiences?
>> Well, of course everyone needs healthcare.
But by and large, and we're not unique in this, you know, women are the
healthcare drivers.
They're often taking care of not only themselves, but their partner, their
family, in many
cases they're aging parents.
We know that they're busy, they have a lot in their play as we all do.
And so how do we make those choices and decisions easier for them?
And so we focus a lot of our advertising on that audience.
>> That's amazing.
>> I love that and true in my household as well.
>> Very terrible at healthcare.
I don't know what it is.
Myself included, like we just don't like to think about it, I guess.
>> Yeah, and I think there's something in our lizard brains in there where it's
just
like, "Yep, once I'm old enough or once I'm in the heavens, I just walk into
the woods."
>> Exactly, exactly.
>> It's like I'm not going to be a burden on anyone anymore.
But obviously, serving so many different types of people and all of that, how
do you
think about how the brand interacts with them and sort of the origins for the
Hello Human
Kindness platform?
>> So again, as we think about the customer journey, we're starting right with
awareness
and preference, building that awareness for our brands.
And as we thought about that, what we realized is, I think when you go into a
healthcare
setting, when you have an interaction with a nurse, a doctor, caregiver, it's
one of
the most meaningful, sacred things that can happen.
Trust has to be there.
Connection.
You're hoping for empathy and you're hoping that the caregiver is going to
listen to
you.
And what we know from our organization is that when we started to build the
brand, we
didn't start with consultants or agencies.
What we started doing is we listened to our own people first.
We talked to our physicians, our employees, our nurses, our clinical staff and
said, "What
do you think we should be known for?"
And what they all said in different ways was this sense of compassion, of
caring, of empathy.
And then we talked to consumers and we said, "What's most important to you?"
And what we heard was, "Sure, great care."
Like everyone, that's like table stakes that you're going to have the
technology I need
and the kind of clinical expertise that's going to address whatever else me.
But what patients, what customers are really looking for in addition to that is
that care
experience is being listened to.
And patients are very realistic.
They know in this day and age that everything's been compressed, that they may
only have
five minutes or ten minutes, whatever the time is with their doctor.
But in that time, they want to be looked at in the eye.
They want to be heard.
They want to really be understood.
And so out of that came Hello Human Kindness, this sense of humanity holds the
power to heal.
When we are present with each other, healing can occur.
And what's really lovely about this, in my opinion, is that what we saw was,
there's
this cultural tension that's only magnified since we began the work where there
's this
discord in society where we're shouting, where we're not listening, where we
may move into
a new neighborhood and not meet our neighbor for many years.
Oh gosh, especially in the Bay Area, are you kidding me?
Absolutely.
It drives me absolutely crazy.
I was like not getting to know your neighbors.
It's like my whole family's favorite things.
I was going to say, if you say hi to someone on the street, you may be looked
at in a funny
way.
You know, is that someone slightly crazy?
And so people are yearning for a more human connection.
And it doesn't matter where you are in the country.
It doesn't matter if you're in a red state or a blue state.
People want more connection.
People want to be more connected with their families, with their neighbors, and
those
that they interact with.
So that's what Hello Human Kindness is born from.
And again, we think it's a wonderful metaphor for our way of healing, our way
of caring
for you, that it's yes, medical excellence is right there, but also is this
sense of
personalized care.
I love that.
I am a military vet, as I think we've talked about in the past.
And so I go to the VA for a lot of stuff.
And it's always so interesting to me as someone who like grew up, you know,
like her, not
grew up, but spent a lot of formative years in the army of like how well
branded the army
is.
Like everything is like so unbrand, right?
And like it is very like there's a lot of thought and you know, put into that
sort of
stuff.
I guess I should say, I don't know if there's a lot of thought put into it, but
there is
a lot of execution of that sort of thing.
Whereas you launched Hello Human Kindness years and years ago at this point.
And you stuck with it as a core part of the company of the mission of the brand
of your
marketing of your messaging.
And I think that's super fascinating.
So so often people switch their brand, their messaging, they're, you know, all
those sort
of things.
And yet you stuck with it.
Do you feel like the resonance over time has really been valuable to you to be
able to
like say like, Hey, this isn't just like a brand slogan for us.
This is something that is enduring.
Absolutely.
So you know, you mentioned the military and the military and push back if I don
't have
this right.
But I feel like cohesion is a critical component of the military.
And so how they achieve that cohesion is really baked into the ethos into the
culture.
Likewise, what we wanted to bake into our organization is really the sense of
delivering
on a brand promise, the brand promise of human kindness.
And I think that that's what takes it out of the realm of a slogan and into an
operating
principle.
And so Hello Human Kindness isn't just our advertising campaign.
I think we have a great out of the box, memorable advertising platform that all
of our geographies
are using.
Yes.
But what makes the durability of this is that it is again, the lens upon which
we look at
the patient experience, the employee experience, even how we build the care
experience, the
physical manifestations come to light.
They're all grounded on our brand principles.
And so brand is really sits at the center of so much of our organization.
So it never even occurs to us to think about, well, let's toss this out and go
look at something
else.
And you know, I'll share with you what I see and have seen all the time is the
competitors
will start to nibble at what we do.
They'll start to come in and borrow some of our themes.
But they never stay with it because again, I think it's kind of like the flavor
of the
day.
And then the shining object over there captures their attention and they're on
to something
else.
Well, where we have this anchoring principle, Hello Human Kindness, that again
is seated
through so many areas of the organization.
It is our brand promise.
I love that.
So does the SVP of brand do marketing?
Like what is the scope of your role?
So I oversee brand advertising and brand advertising is a layer that extends
across the entire
organization.
It is setting up how we create that awareness, that initial awareness and that
preference.
Other people in the organization then take that and focus specifically on
things like
service line advertising.
So how we advertise oncology or neurology or orthopedics.
And I'll share with you that the brand informs all of those communications.
It's not like if you're a consumer, you're served up one kind of message over
here and
another completely out of the box thing over there.
It's all integrated beautifully and we collaborate and work together incredibly
well.
It's part of how we advance again this platform.
And when I say collaborate, not just with our friends and marketing or
communications,
but across the entire organization.
Our clinical leaders are involved in a lot of the work we do because it's their
brand.
It's what they want to bring to life.
And we'll get into some of the tactics here in a bit.
Any other thoughts on strategy or your personas that you're talking to or
anything else there?
I would just say in terms of strategy that we're always taking a look at market
conditions,
what's changing, healthcare like every other industry is going through rapid
change brought
upon not only by the pandemic, which in healthcare changed a lot, but also by
the economics that
confront us.
And so we're always looking, we're always fine tuning, we're always making sure
that what
might have been successful two years ago is it still going to work today.
But at the core, as I said, at the core of what grounds us is our mission, our
vision
and our values.
And that's exemplified by the brand that we have.
All right, let's get to the playbook where you open up that playbook and talk
about the
tactics that help you win.
So you have a pretty unique approach to your industry to drive this category
relevancy.
And it's interesting that like brand advertising, as part of that, how do you
think about driving
category relevancy?
How do you think about getting that message out in front of people and where
are you putting
that?
Well, again, as I spoke earlier, always by connecting to the emotional response
that we
think a consumer will have, consumers purchase healthcare, not much different
than they would
a car or a watch, meaning it's a feeling, it's a sense, but that's where I want
to go versus
there.
And so how do we create that alignment of values?
How do we inspire them?
How do we punch through the noise?
Again, no one wants to think about healthcare until they need it.
And we know we need to be present in their sort of consideration before that
moment of
need.
It's making sure that we're at the places that our target audiences are before
those
moments.
It's showing up for those kind of activations that hopefully will surprise and
delight.
I'll give you a quick example if we have time, which is we were running a
commercial in
brand on broadcast with a little dog, a girl was sitting in a high chair and
the dog kept
popping up and the super was health and happiness go hand in hand.
And so in a number of our markets, we sponsored pet adoptions with the local S
BCA and we paid
for all the work that went into that so that people could come and have a pet.
And it was a beautiful tie in between what you saw on our communications, be it
television
or digital or wherever.
And then this real life moment where you could interact at the hospital, you
could get a pet,
you could understand why having a pet is so good for your health.
And so that's what we always want to be doing is really extending the brand,
extending our
communications to the healthcare category so it starts with something a little
unusual
and then it ladders to something that's very tangible.
That's great.
I love that example.
So and it's interesting that there are multiple different pieces there and then
one of the
delivery mechanisms is with a TV spot, TV campaign.
Really like you see all sorts of the larger brand things like outdoor and TV
and those
type of activations in a space where you want to get in front of everyone,
right?
Like everyone needs healthcare.
And so you want to have reach and you want to have those types of scale.
How do you think about that sort of like impact driven versus like scale driven
versus like
you mentioned getting in front of women specifically who are predominantly the
leaders of healthcare
in their households.
Yeah.
How do you think of that like scope and scale versus you know, depth of
engagement?
Yeah.
Well, different tactics certainly come into play on that front.
I think that broadcast and out of home still are huge awareness drivers and
even broadcast.
I mean, we all know that the data that shows how it usage viewership is rapidly
going down.
It's still one of the few places where you can reach a lot of people all at
once, even
in the in this era of cord cutting.
But at the same time, what's been really incredible to see is how we can now be
very surgical with
our digital purchases, how we can create a 360 sort of surround where you can
be you
can be watching something on broadcast.
We can then be in the tablet or the phone at the same time with a different but
related
message.
That has been just incredible and you know, with Jen AI coming on board.
We just know that that's even going to get more.
The abilities for us to get more sort of personalized are going to be that much
greater.
And that's what it comes down to is again, how do we personalize content?
How do we make our content relevant to that moment and to that person who's
seeing it?
Yeah.
Any other things that you are like exploring or things that you're exploring
for next year
or different whether it's channels or tactics or ideas or anything like that?
So one of the things we wanted to do and we're just beginning this work for the
year ahead
is how do we take these amazing stories?
And really when you hear the stories in healthcare, it's like no other industry
Yeah.
These are people who are standing by patients going through very difficult
challenging moments
and often doing what I would consider to be heroic work.
And these stories need to be told.
We need to shine a light on this heroism, on this incredible service that's
being performed.
And so as we think about this upcoming year, we're going to take those stories
and create
a whole program in social media first where we start to again, let the people
tell the
stories themselves, not artificially created, but rather let these stories have
their moment.
What about something that's not working or fading away or something that you're
not as
interested in?
What we're not going to be looking at next year is really I think the use of
celebrities
and we have a devil in that area before.
Celebrities bring heat.
Universities bring a built-in audience, so there's certainly advantages to
celebrities.
But I just feel that it gets in the way of the authenticity of the message we
're trying
to create.
We do work with influencers, but I'll tell you, even on the influencer front,
we're
very selective in terms of who we're partnering with.
It's not just about eyeballs for us.
Do we have shared values?
Do we have a shared purpose around the topics that we want to talk about?
If we do, certainly.
But those influencers are almost never celebrities.
They're usually people who are the unsung heroes in their communities who are
doing some
amazing work, putting in gardens or addressing food deserts in communities
where it's hard
to get vegetables and fruits and things that are good for you.
That's the kind of partnerships that we want to have as opposed to the heat, if
you will,
that you get from a well-known name.
Yeah, I love that.
Yeah, it's so interesting.
I think that celebrity and influencer and all that is just, at the end of the
day, we
work a lot with celebrities because we're in our fiction series that we do in
Murder and
HR and the hacker chronicles.
The end of the day, those folks, for the most part, especially if they're
actors, want to
act.
They don't want to be brand spokespeople.
You know what I mean?
To invest in them is just extremely expensive and potentially cost prohibitive.
Things like that, you can have hugely outsized results, like you said, but it
also, it's
like dating, right?
You have to find the right person.
It's so true.
The public is so savvy about this.
You may enjoy a commercial that's all focused on celebrity and they're almost
always humor.
How memorable is it?
How does it connect you to the brand itself?
Or is it just a platform for the celebrity?
Again, good people can disagree on this point, but for us, it just isn't a good
fit.
Yeah, that's cool.
One of the ones, when there's a really authentic, organic tie-in, I feel like
it always works
so much better if that's part of who they are and what they do.
If you're selling surfboards and someone, that's a horrible example, and that
person
serves a lot and nobody knew that they surfed, it's like then it can be a fit.
If it's a technology company and they use your technology, then that's a pretty
great
fit.
If it's just shoehorned in there, it doesn't feel as authentic.
I agree.
How do you measure success?
How do you measure ROI?
We use media mix modeling to measure every dollar we spend so we know how all
of our
various tactics are performing down to the geo, down to the tactic.
It's very effective.
We also have brand trackers in place, which are a little longer term.
How are we moving the needle on that awareness and preference capture?
Measurement is absolutely important.
It's part of the dialogue that has to happen to ensure that leaders in your
organization
are coming along, that advertising is not seen as a frivolous waste of money,
but rather
a critical contributor to the bottom line.
Any big trends or things that you're looking at that are coming up?
I mentioned Gen AI.
That's going to be incredibly disruptive.
I've really been immersed in it.
I've had an opportunity to hear a number of people talk about it.
One thing is clear is that content creation will be forever changed.
I still am of the belief you're going to need humans and smart creative people
to curate
that content, to inspire that content, but it will be disruptive without a
doubt.
In fact, just a few days ago, I saw a demo on a video, an advertisement that
was demoed
where everything was artificial, the scenery, the movement, even the voice over
It was all artificial.
It's not quite stellar at this point, but getting close.
You just know how disruptive that's going to be.
We would be foolish not to pay attention to it.
I think that the other thing that Gen AI can do and is starting to really do
well is listen.
It's so hard to understand your customer.
Your customer is changing in terms of their preferences and their alliances and
their
passions.
We know that in this day of social media, how fast that's now changing, it used
to be much
more stable.
What Gen AI is giving us is these tools to better listen, to better listen to
these kind
of macro trends and micro trends that are happening at now, as I said,
lightning speed.
Yeah.
Any other campaign stories or activations or things that you've done that are
particularly
notable?
One of the activations that we recently did that was kind of fun was we had a,
and again,
we always want to tie it in to our advertisements so that when we can get some
earned media out
of it and helpfully explain through the earned media why you might be seeing
this kind of
communication, how it serves, how these moments of human connection serves as
metaphors for
the care we provide.
One of the commercials we had was a girl who had a shaved head.
Her father was shaving his head and it was a beautiful kind of moment of
solidarity between
someone who was getting needed care and a parent who was there for his daughter
to say,
"I'm with you."
And so we did some investigation and found an organization called Locks of Love
where
people who have long hair can have that hair cut and donated and this hair is
then taken
to make wigs for people who are undergoing things like chemotherapy or might
have alopecia.
And so we sponsored this event in Los Angeles.
We had a well-known hairstylist come in and people lined up to go into a
hospital to have
their haircut.
Cool.
I think it was really meaningful because our caregivers were part of it as well
at that
location and it was meaningful for the child who we invited to come along and
be part of
this.
It was featured in our commercial and it was meaningful for the people doing it
That's what we're always striving for in our activations is to get noticed but
to have
it really linked to what we do and why it's important.
Yeah, it seems like you have so many things that you do that are about building
something,
making a difference, capturing it and sharing that.
It's very much a show-don't-tell strategy, it seems like.
That's right and I know I keep referencing our commercials.
I don't know if I've even explained them but we don't use actors.
What we do is we go and use what we call found footage.
So we scour Facebook and YouTube and Instagram, TikTok, etc.
And we look for these like just amazing moments of where people are coming
together, where
there's, as I said, that human connection.
Because it's with animals as well.
And we just think that they, as I said, there are these beautiful metaphors of
that moment
of care that healing can occur when we're present with each other.
And that's what we want to get out into the world.
It really, we see it as a movement, Hello, human kindness.
It's a movement to just be a little kinder, to be a little more empathetic.
And yes, we think it's part of what we offer at our locations.
But at the end of the day, we would love it if, again, people could be inspired
by it
in everything they do.
All right, let's get to our final segment.
Quick hits.
These are quick questions and quick answers.
Just like how quickly you could talk to somebody from Qualified.
If you go to Qualified.com right now, they can tell you how their customers
generate pipeline
quickly, tapping your greatest asset, your website, and identify your most
valuable visitors
to instantly start sales conversations right there on the website, go to Qual
ified.com
to learn more.
More quick hits.
Are you ready?
I am ready.
Number one, do you have a favorite book podcast or TV show that you'd recommend
Podcast would be outside of this one would be would be smart lists.
I just love it.
The chemistry between Jason and Will and Sean is phenomenal.
They plussed it recently with this HBO show that was even more odd and funny
and strange.
And so it just doesn't matter who they're talking to or the topic that they're
covering.
It just always brings a smile to my face.
So good.
Do you have a favorite non-marketing hobby that maybe indirectly makes you a
better
marketer?
Oh, hiking.
I've been hiking for years and I'll tell you, you need to get out of your head.
It's so easy to just be bombarded with so much.
And hiking allows you to just breathe, to see something majestic, to just clear
your
mind.
And what I find is that then creates the space for creativity later on.
100%.
There's somebody said this and I forget who it was, but it might have been like
the ball
robicon or something that they were like, you know, the like we live in a like
sort
of like a world of like excess information, excess food, excess everything and
like the
antidote to exercise or the antidote to like food is exercise and the antidote
to like
the information saturation is meditation.
And like you could argue what meditation is and you know, all that sort of
stuff.
But like for me, it's like if I don't reset my brain in the outdoors, you know,
and be
around that stuff, it's like get some quiet, get some away from screens away
from the studio.
Oh, goodness.
If you weren't in marketing or business at all, what do you think you'd be
doing?
Well, I was talking to your producer before we began and I said, I'm so
fascinated by
podcasting now, I don't expect to make a fortune in it.
I grew up listening to radio.
I mean, obviously we had other communications.
I'm not that old, but I loved music and I'm just to me what it brings, what a
good podcast
does is it's like those evenings around the campfire where you're listening to
either
a great story or or hearing someone sort of pontificate with some insight that
's just
really cool.
And I just love how it kind of focuses you.
There's something special about it.
So I'm intrigued.
I love that.
Best advice for a first time SVP of brand.
So I think the advice I would have is just don't shy away with what you're most
passionate
about.
I would say not just for an SVP of brand, I would say for any level.
Like if you lose your what you're passionate about in the pursuit of something
else, everything
you do just is not going to be the same.
And so just make sure you're feeding that passion and finding ways to kind of
extend
it.
Mark, it's been awesome having you on the show.
So great to catch up.
So great to hear about all the cool marketing stuff y'all are doing.
Any final thoughts, anything to plug?
I'll plug my team both in house and the agencies who support the work.
I'm being sincere.
They inspire me, excite me.
They're continually educating me.
Many of them are young, creative, engaged.
You know, I mentioned different backgrounds earlier.
They all have different backgrounds and views.
And this has a tangible work.
This has a tangible effect, I think, in the work that we're doing every day.
I love it.
Thanks again, Mark.
Appreciate it and we'll talk soon.
Thanks so much.
I really enjoyed this.
Thank you.
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