The Digital Evolution in Healthcare Marketing

Transcript:

Elise Orlowski:

I’m Elise Orlowski, a senior video director here at Cramer.

Tripp Underwood:

And I’m Tripp Underwood, a creative director at Cramer.

Elise Orlowski:

At Cramer, we work with so many incredibly fascinating people from all over multiple industries.

Tripp Underwood:

We have so many great conversations, many that are just too good to keep to ourselves. Now we’re sharing them with the world.

Elise Orlowski:

Right here from Cramer Studios.

Tripp Underwood:

This is Pivot Points.

Elise Orlowski:

Cut.

Tripp Underwood:

As everybody knows, COVID 19 impacted virtually every industry in the world in the past few years. Some got a lot quieter, like live in-person events like we do, and some things got busier, like virtual events, which we now also do. But pretty much every industry went through some kind of lull, rush, lull, rush kind of pattern. But there’s one industry I know of that had zero lulls, basically got very busy in the early days and stayed at a hundred percent going forward. That’s the world of healthcare marketing communications. Today, we’re talking with somebody who lived that rush firsthand and is still navigating the after effects.

Julie Walker:

We’re excited to actually welcome Kelly St. Vrain, who is the vice president of digital marketing communications and creative at Siemens Healthineers. She works in the global brand. She’s a healthcare marketing veteran. She’s a longtime friend and partner of Cramer. We’re really thrilled to actually have you here today.

Kelly St. Vrain:

Thanks for having me.

Tripp Underwood:

Thank you for coming.

Kelly St. Vrain:

I actually remember the very first Cramer interaction I had. This is totally dating myself. I actually looked you guys up in the White pages. Our offices are just down the street. We were looking for somebody to bring staging equipment to some… We had a doctor from Mass General who was coming to talk to our employees. Of course, nobody had PowerPoint projectors and things like that in those days. It was like, “How are we going to let this guy speak?” I just was like, “Production company. There’s one down the street.”

Tripp Underwood:

These guys are close.

Kelly St. Vrain:

That was 27 years ago.

Julie Walker:

Kelly, I just want to reflect back on early 2020. You and I, you were actually in an edit suite. We were working probably on some product launch and all of a sudden the phone started going nuts. We had to get find you a conference room. Something was happening. Something was happening in China that was going to all of a sudden impact healthcare pretty significantly.

Kelly St. Vrain:

I think we were producing some kind of event or something. It was a very crazy time and all of a sudden the phones start ringing and it’s like, what is this going on? We’ve heard rumors. We heard the rumblings of something going on in China, but my company is actually based in Europe. It started to move this way. I do remember that, that I got the phone call that it’s like, okay, it’s time.

Tripp Underwood:

Priorities started shifting.

Kelly St. Vrain:

Time to jump into action everybody.

Julie Walker:

Absolutely.

Tripp Underwood:

Then that happened. It’s two years. I don’t feel the need to belabor the point. I think everyone remembers pretty clearly. A lot of things changed and here we are today. Talk to me a little bit about the state of the industry of healthcare marketing communications. Where are we? What learnings do you think we saw in those two years? What do you think is going to stick around? What do you think maybe has gone with the pandemic, so to speak?

Kelly St. Vrain:

Yeah, sure. I think, especially in my industry, which is in-vitro diagnostics. It’s blood and urine. It has not always been the sexiest topic for people to talk about, but we were thrust into the limelight in a way that we weren’t really expecting. All of a sudden, you went from being at the cocktail party and you mentioned what you do with blood and urine and people are kind of like, “Oh, thanks. I’ll talk to you later.”

Tripp Underwood:

Wash your hands.

Kelly St. Vrain:

Exactly. To all of a sudden, everyone you know asking you questions about assays and testing, and what is sensitivity and specificity? It became very much in the forefront. I think that really changed the way we thought about communications. We are typically a B2B business and usually we’re talking healthcare provider to healthcare provider. All of a sudden, even though technically our business model was still B2B, everybody was interested. We had to tailor the communications in a very different way so that they were understandable by those audiences that don’t live in in-vitro diagnostics every day.

That meant being very clear and trying to take these, what are sometimes very complicated medical processes, and make them simple for everyone. I think that’s something that really has stuck around as well. People are people and even our B2B customers really appreciate being clear, being simple and trying to be a little bit more authentic and real when you’re having those conversations with them, even if it is in advertising.

Julie Walker:

It’s interesting because I know that health literacy has already always been out there, but all of a sudden patients became consumers and the need to be direct and the need to be clear.

Kelly St. Vrain:

Absolutely, yeah. Even though somebody wasn’t out necessarily buying the test that they were going to get in the early days of the pandemic, they were still having to go to the lab and get a test done. They were very interested in it. People became very consumer-like in that way. They wanted to know which test is best. How do I know which one is the right one? What is a total assay versus what is an IgG assay? That really is not something everybody talks about every day. The need to do that education, what’s the difference between a PCR and an antigen test, became very, very important. It was really that consumerism that we started seeing that made you realize that things were different.

Tripp Underwood:

How did… Traditionally, you’ve done product launches throughout, and then I imagine that some thing’s got ramped up while some thing’s got slowed down during the pandemic, but did that experience change your approach to marketing strategy when it comes to product launch at all?

Kelly St. Vrain:

Oh, for sure. We couldn’t get out and use our normal channels during that time. We’re not sending sales people into the customer accounts unless it was absolutely necessary. The human element disappeared. For those relationships, it became very strained because how do we make sure that we’re still engaging in those relationships and servicing the customers in the same way that we always had? Particularly, when you’re launching a product, you rely on things like trade shows, for example. That’s a very human person on person interaction. Without that channel available to us, we had to find new ways to do that.

Siemens Healthineers, in particular, jumped on that really early. We built our own platform to be able to have this dialogue and engage with the customers in a way that still felt like it was human. That’s not easy. It’s a computer, it’s a mobile device, but we really tried to make sure that we had the experience of getting a product demo on the computer as much as we could as if you were standing there. We spent a lot of time with Cramer really trying to figure out how do you take this 3D model and make it seem like it’s there with you and be able to open the hood and see what’s underneath it.

That was successful for what we needed to do at the time. I’m glad trade shows are coming back because I miss being out there with people, but it was definitely something that’s not going to go away because even after the trade shows were over, what we noticed was our sales force really liked having those because the customers don’t always have time to do the in-person engagement and to be able to jump on a virtual event and be able to just show here’s how this works. The customers really appreciate that because it was like, “Okay, it’s simple. I get it. I understand.”

Tripp Underwood:

Right. Yeah, I think that’s… Across industries, this idea of suddenly the digital, or the virtual, or what have you, replacing the in-person. That’s never going to happen and never anyone’s intention. I think what the goal now is, we learned some things. There’s things that we liked about the virtual. There’s obviously things that were never going to take away from the in-person, but how can we try to combine the best of both worlds. We’re casting a wider net because audiences are changing too. I think the audience at home became very accustomed to being marketed directly to. If you’re one of those people that doesn’t like trade shows, for instance, you don’t want to be left out of the conversation. It gives us more tools to work with. It’s more work to do, but it gives us more tools to reach the people we need to reach.

Kelly St. Vrain:

We think about it as digital facilitating the relationship. I think a lot of ways, and there’s different kinds of relationships. We’ve really leveraged digital trying to also help out our sales force, using digital marketing campaigns so that we can really give people a little bit of that self-service upfront so that the burden is also off of our sales people to be in every single engagement and be able to interact with customers when they want them there. That’s really helped us because it has facilitated the relationship. Even though I’m not maybe sitting here in person with them, you’re still having that touchpoint.

Tripp Underwood:

Touchpoints. Touchpoints are important.

Julie Walker:

I think it’s also giving you the opportunity to bring access to individuals that wouldn’t have the opportunity to speak to. Whether it’s senior leadership at Siemens Healthineers, or whether it’s key opinion leaders, et cetera, that are able to talk with the audience.

Kelly St. Vrain:

Yeah, absolutely. Our CEO frequently is doing video addresses and things like that so that everyone can experience what it’s like to listen to her and be able to get that trade show experience even if you’re not there.

Tripp Underwood:

What other trends are you seeing within the trade show space now that they’re starting to come back? I know you’ve worked in a few so far this year. We’ve worked together on some projects. Is there anything you’ve seen on the floor that you like, or any ways the industry has changed and you think is going to be continually evolving?

Kelly St. Vrain:

Yeah, I think the way we go to trade shows is going to continue to change. Over the past couple years they’ve been smaller, mostly just for the reason you’d expect that there’s not as many people there, but as they’re really starting to come back, we’re also seeing a lot more prioritization and trying to focus on the topics that you know you can’t get any other way than a trade show, and being able to push some of the other types of activities to a digital space. It’s much more of a hybrid experience now, as opposed to being one or the other. Now you really can get that hybrid feeling because you might go to the show floor one day and kick the tires on whatever the new hot thing is, but then you might attend a webinar or some kind of education event online.

That’s great because even at trade shows, people are vying for space and you’re elbowing people out of the way and you can’t see the webinar that great. There’s certain things that I think digital actually does better in a lot of ways where you can really focus on the content and you’re not being distracted or jostled or whatever reason.

We’ve definitely seen it scaling down of the actual space and really focusing that space on the experiential aspects of marketing, as opposed to let’s have every shiny new object that we have, let’s really focus on what experience are we trying to create for the customers.

Tripp Underwood:

Which I think is very valid and not unique to your industry. If you think about… The research I’ve done, travel budgets are shrinking across the area. If you used to send a sales rep or a purchaser to six different expos a year, that person might only be going to one or two now, which means you as a vendor there needs to really double down on making that impression. To your point of maybe it’s better to make a big splash and a representation and focus your energy and then have those continual touchpoints throughout the year, as opposed to trying to be all things to all people because if we don’t get them this time, we’ll get them next time.

Kelly St. Vrain:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s kind of this Netflix experience that you want to create so that it’s really delving into what is that person as an individual interested in? What can we deliver to them of their interest? As opposed to just broadcasting one thing out to everybody, we want to be able to recommend based on their interest. That’s really helped our customers also focus their time. They’re busy. Their travel budgets are shrinking. They want to make the most of their time. I think that digital marketing has really helped us do that for them.

Julie Walker:

Has it helped you stand out against your competition?

Kelly St. Vrain:

Yeah, I think it has in some ways. Particularly with Siemens Healthineers, we have this great brand that we can lean into. I think seeing a Netflix like experience coming from Siemens Healthineers will really… The customers have an ease of use to that experience. I think our brand itself lends itself very well to being simplistic and clean and accessible. We really want to make sure that there’s access out there for everybody who wants to get this information. I think that that has helped us take a step in a direction that maybe not everybody has in terms of making sure that we’re providing that online or digital experience, whether it’s through advertising, or whether it’s through some kind of online webinars or educational services, or just our regular website, making sure that that is built up in a way that customers can really interact with it, as opposed to consume it.

Tripp Underwood:

Well, so much of your solutions and devices are built around customability anyway. That idea of the flexibility and being able to use.

Kelly St. Vrain:

Absolutely.

Tripp Underwood:

There’s no reason why the marketing can’t take some of its own medicine, to use a medical point.

Kelly St. Vrain:

Yeah, absolutely. It’s all part of the same thinking.

Tripp Underwood:

Exactly.

Kelly St. Vrain:

We want to make things as customized to individual people as we can. Businesses are businesses, but they’re made up of people. We want to make sure that the people have what they need. That’s part of why the instruments that we sell are also highly customizable. So is the marketing. We’re trying to really make that feel very cohesive.

Tripp Underwood:

And so is the future of healthcare from what I’m told. This is just…

Kelly St. Vrain:

This is true.

Julie Walker:

Healthcare is human.

Tripp Underwood:

That’s all the time we have today. I want to thank our guest, Kelly. Of course, my co-host Julie. Everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. We’ll see you on the next episode of Pivot Points.

Kelly St. Vrain:

Thanks guys.