WHY THE CLIENT SMILED

Mira was our second project with Heinrich, and we were once again thrilled with how the strategy, name, and brand identity came together perfectly. We can’t wait for the next project.”

Development and Marketing Associate, Transwestern

Key takeaways

• Dental insurers and providers can embrace technology to shift towards innovation.
• Direct marketing to both consumers and to brokers can elevate dental care from a nice to have to a need to have. 
• New plan design and benefits demand new communications approaches.

When you think about innovation, chances are you think about A.I. or Silicon Valley not the dentist’s office. Yet innovation is just as much about re-seeing the old as it is the new. And dentistry is rife for disruption.

Encourage innovation and technology adoption

Dental insurers can encourage providers to be more innovative as a whole. To start, insurers could cover teledentistry services and encourage providers to adopt these services if they haven’t already. Dental providers and payers can’t afford to ignore this healthcare trend that will likely expand into new specialities. 

This can also give providers an opportuntity to rethink their service delivery methods. Robots could provide routine cleanings. Smart toothbrushes could provide 3-D scans. Insurers could shift away from a typical fee-for-service model to one that rewards innovation, much like medical insurance has done with value-based care.

Advocate for marketing

Dental insurers remain at the center of three key stakeholders: providers, brokers and members. As such, they have an incredible opportunity to not only leverage marketing but make it work for everyone. Insurers can be strategic with their marketing budgets with an eye on conversions, sales and returns in addition to long-term sustainability. 

Insurers could heavily promote innovations like teledentistry to brokers and members through an integrated marketing campaign of email, paid media and direct mail. Such a campaign could promote the ease and convenience of teledentistry while raising awareness of it. 

Additionally, insurers could be encouraging good oral health habits through newsletters and social media. Insurers can encourage those with dental emergencies to seek dental providers rather than treatment in emergency rooms or urgent care, which may be more costly, through a friendly text message or push notification. 

Brokers need help communicating the value of plans and oral health with easy-to-use materials created for a digital world. Insurers can help brokers understand and overcome consumer objections and barriers with conversation guides and sales materials created for a digital-first world. 

Oral health can become synonymous with whole-person health. Consumers need to see dental health—and by extension dental insurance—as an essential not a luxury, especially during periods of perceived or actual economic uncertainty. 

Communicating plan innovation

According to Deloitte, “In the future of health, health insurance companies likely will not exist as they do now.” Wellness organizations focused on social services, care coordination and smart device distribution and education will take the place of insurers. Visionary insurers understand the need to not just react to market changes but also anticipate them through innovative plan offerings and benefits. 

Additionally, they understand the importance of communicating these innovations to brokers, members and prospects to maximize usage and adoption. 

• If an insurer provides free dental coverage to children, for example, they could develop an integrated campaign targeting young families. 
• They could provide a free smart toothbrush to those over 65, who may struggle more with proper dental care due to medication side effects or mobility issues, with every plan. They could marry paid digital media with a content plan aimed at lead generation. 

Whatever the innovation, communicating its benefits remain paramount. 

Ready to see our work in action? Check out our Smile Stronger B2B sales enablement campaign.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from working as a content strategist in Medicare B2B sales enablement, it’s that too often, carriers think only about what they want and not enough about what their sales agents need.  

Don’t get me wrong, I 100% believe in achieving business objectives—I just think there’s a way to do it that’s less “rah-rah us” and more “what’s in it for you.” Said another way, great B2B sales enablement content is about finding the overlap between your business goals and your audience’s needs.  

To do that, you need to stop thinking about them as a sales channel and start thinking about them as consumers. This is especially true when working with an independent sales force that can choose to sell other carriers. 

Why you need to think about B2B sales enablement from a B2C perspective 

As the tension between Medicare carriers and independent sales agents grows over commissions and plan availability, it’s more important than ever for carriers to develop deep, lasting relationships with agents. That means creating—and maintaining—personal relationships. 

I always hear people say, “It’s just business; don’t take it personally.” Sorry, but no. Business, as any good salesperson knows, is inherently and incredibly personal. There’s even a book on it. 

That’s why so many business meetings take place on the golf course, over breakfast, or during happy hours. When you know and trust someone, it’s easier to do business with them. You’re more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt when things go wrong. 

Despite AI’s creep, businesses are still made of people. It’s not possible to check your personal life at the door.  

That’s why we need to abandon the idea of staid (i.e., boring business-y) B2B sales enablement. In the fog of information overload and ho-hum content, you must break through. The best way to do that is by treating your sales agents and brokers as customers first and as salespeople second. 

What a B2C approach to B2B sales enablement looks like 

B2B sales enablement content isn’t about selling your plans, products, and benefits. It’s about empowering brokers to generate more leads, close more sales, and retain more business. 

To do that, you need to understand their sales journey, their pain points, and their aspirations just as you would with Medicare beneficiaries. You need to empathize with sales agents to empower them. 

Once you understand their workflows and hurdles, you can create the right sales enablement tools and resources that help them work smarter, faster, and more compliantly. By addressing agents’ needs first, you’ll achieve your business goals as a natural outcome. 

Let’s make it more concrete with a real-world example. 

• Situation: Launch a new sales enablement content platform 

• Objective: Drive adoption and engagement of new platform 

• Goal: 50% independent broker adoption by year end 

• Agent needs: Get essential Annual Election Period (AEP) to-dos done like Annual Notice of Change (ANOC) outreach  

• Content solution: Create an easy-to-follow sales play on the new platform with step-by-step instructions for strategic ANOC outreach 

• Outcomes: More agents complete ANOC outreach, which drives retention, and platform adoption exceeds 50% 

Make tentpole moments and flagship content your go-to sales enablement solutions  

Since Medicare is notoriously complex, it’s no wonder selling it is too, especially for carriers with multiple products, benefits, and lines of business. Too often I see the tendency to kitchen-sink sales enablement plans by including everything everywhere all the time. The thing is, even the best brokers can’t juggle all that at one time. 

It’s better to focus on higher quality content rather than mass quantity. A great way to stay disciplined is by creating tentpole moments—those go-big tactics that give you a lot to talk about before, during, and after they occur. B2C marketing is no stranger to tentpole moments, but Medicare B2B sales enablement content tends to be about the three Ps: product, product, product. 

Heinrich created a B2B tentpole moment with Ascend, a virtual sales enablement conference to level up agents’ lead pipelines. We empowered agents to generate their own leads and explained why agent-earned leads make for stickier sales. Over the course of two days, agents learned from top-performing agents about social media, grassroots marketing, and referrals. One agent said it was the best field support they’d ever seen from a carrier. 

Sure, it’s great that agents liked it. But what matters more is what it did for agents and the carrier. Ascend attendees had a 120% increase in sales compared to non-attendees. That’s a huge win for agents and the carrier. 

Another B2B tentpole moment was the creation of an agent value proposition campaign, Improving Lives during AEP 2025, a particularly fraught time for the Medicare industry. We tapped into agent’s deepest reasons for selling Medicare—helping others—and expressed gratitude for the hard work agents do with Agent Appreciation Week with an inspirational video, optimistic virtual thank-you card, and daily giveaways like Starbucks gift cards. The campaign deepened agent loyalty and helped Humana exceed KPI benchmarks by 500% or more during an AEP filled with industry tumult.  

Our sales enablement content strategy takes a similar approach. We create a flagship content piece for every selling season. It anchors agents’ attention to what matters most during that timeframe, whether it’s the Open Enrollment Period (OEP), lock-in period, or AEP. 

For example, onboarding and retention dominate Medicare brokers’ workload during OEP. As such, we created an onboarding and retention playbook to sustain clients for the long haul. As we learned more about agents and their needs and the Medicare market evolved, we reimagined the playbook from a static, in-the-weeds PDF to an interactive guide focused on what matters most. 

From 2021 to 2025, our onboarding and retention guide has an average viewing time of 13 minutes and 56 seconds—almost 14 times the 1-minute benchmark for web-based content. This level of engagement time proves agents aren’t just flipping through the guide but are actively studying it. 

Heinrich is your go-to B2B sales enablement partner 

While we were born for business, we live for creativity. That creativity comes to life in our agent content, of course, and also in our B2B sales enablement strategy. Marketing isn’t just about effective communication—it’s about seeing things anew. Get in touch to see what we can do for your B2B sales enablement content. 

Healthcare isn’t just a $4.6 trillion dollar industry—it’s a belief system. Like anything that unfolds over time, healthcare requires consumer faith. Faith they’ve made the right choice in plans and providers, that their treatment plan will work, that their provider will have good bedside manner, that they’ll be advocated for and listened to. 

Sure, prospective patients have more online reviews than ever before, but, with bots and fake accounts on the rise, people still trust their friends and family first.  

Health outcomes can be delayed by months or even years, especially when dealing with chronic conditions. It takes time for interventions to work, making it hard for senior consumers to evaluate their effectiveness upfront, let alone stick with them.  

The problem is that the U.S. healthcare system isn’t set up for true preventive healthcare, especially for seniors. It’s designed for sick care.  

Increasingly, that model appears broken from a financial and operational perspective. Despite business-model turmoil, one thing could be the ultimate tipping point—consumer mistrust. 

The state of consumer mistrust in healthcare 

Trust in government health agencies has continued to fall since COVID. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer Special Report, Trust and Health, 61% of surveyed Americans believe institutions, including business, government, and nonprofits, actively undermine their access to better care.  

That same report shows an 18-point decline in trust in the media to report accurate health information. Friends and family have always impacted healthcare decisions. Now influencers have become our go-to healthcare experts over scientists, providers, public health professionals, and healthcare journalists.  

Consumer mistrust and dissatisfaction are especially high in senior care 

Only 11% of older adults give the overall U.S. health system an A grade. Here are the reasons seniors have lost faith according to a report from by Age Wave and The John A. Hartford Foundation: 

• Care-delivery fragmentation 

• Navigating a complex system 

• High out-of-pocket costs 

• Widespread inequities 

• Wishing providers spent more time getting to know what truly matters to them  

Too many seniors feel ignored, overlooked, dismissed, and treated like conditions rather than people. It’s no wonder they feel betrayed by the very system that proclaims it wants to help them.  

Seniors are caught in the middle of payers and providers—not to mention politicians—pointing fingers at each other. Who’s actually standing up for seniors in all this? 

What seniors want from their care 

At the end of the day, seniors just want the healthcare system, especially their providers, to listen. They want carriers and providers to understand what matters most to them and how to help them achieve it. They don’t care about backend logistics. They just want to be well cared for. 

The senior care organizations that practice senior-first care will win in the long run. Some are already working to fix this like value-based and accountable care organizations. Here’s how others can adjust. 

• Respect seniors and what they want from their care. As people age, their priorities change. They may be focused on spending more time with loved ones, maintaining their independence, or continuing to do the things they love. It’s more about everyday quality of life and functional health rather than clinical health. Strategic senior care companies will adopt aging-friendly care practices that center on consumer wants and needs.  
   

• Communicate their organizational values and how they support senior consumer goals. Too many senior care organizations get stuck on the bottom two rungs of the benefit ladder—talking up product/service features and functional benefits.  
   
  They skip over the emotional side (i.e., consumer goals) and what they, as a company, stand for. The senior care companies that express their values and the positive impact they make on seniors’ lives will be the ones to earn more market share. 
   

• Show up for and protect senior consumers. Consistent actions speak louder than words, and care delivery extends beyond the exam room.  
   
  The senior care groups that do what they say they’ll do time and again will earn the trust of senior consumers. They are the ones who take the extra time to listen to seniors, who sit side by side with them as partners and dig deep to understand seniors’ whys.  
   
  The ones who protect senior consumers from complexity and confusion will come out on top. That means doing things like removing barriers to health like food or housing insecurity, streamlining prior authorizations, improving interoperability, and making the claims process simple to follow. 

It all boils down to senior confidence 

It’s time for the senior care sector to stop focusing only on tactical care-delivery frameworks and start focusing on enhancing seniors’ confidence in your organization and the healthcare system as a whole. This isn’t something marketing alone can fix. It requires a radical mindset shift at all levels and from every part of the healthcare system, including carriers, providers, and sales agents. 

We need to get back to the foundations of senior care—helping people. That requires time and effort to make connections, strengthen relationships, and maintain trust. It sounds simple, but it isn’t easy. 

While a plethora of data and new technologies promise to change healthcare for the better in the near and long term, we can’t afford to sacrifice the human side of things. Without emotion and meaning, senior care is just a brutalized and brutalizing business. Seniors deserve better. 

There’s more senior-care thought leadership here. Check it out. 

Key takeaways

• Carriers must recognize consumer mistrust and frustration. 

• Health insurance data paints a paradoxical picture. 

• Insurance companies can increase consumers’ health and insurance literacy. 

• Validating consumers’ biases first helps change the conversation later. 

• Fight emotion with emotion, not reason or logic. 

• Positive stories need to be repeated—but your actions speak louder than words. 

• Empower consumers to be smarter healthcare shoppers to reduce their costs. 

• Disrupt the status quo in a way that’s unique to your business. 

Kyla Scanlon coined the phrase “vibecession” in a 2022 Substack. The phrase describes how people’s feelings about the economy contradicted the data. People believed the economy was in a recession even though the data painted a fairly rosy picture. Basically, the vibes were bad, hence vibecession. 

Health insurance carriers now find themselves in a vibecession-like situation after a tumultuous 2024 and 2025 that promises to extend into an even messier 2026 and beyond. 

Consumer sentiment’s in the red 

Consumer sentiment with health insurance has fallen precipitously: 

• Healthcare quality and coverage have the lowest positive ratings since 2001. 

• They believe insurance carriers play too big a part in health policy. 

• A pricey, often unaffordable cost burden that too often delays care. 

• Unforeseen bills, in-network claims denials and denied prior authorizations.  

The vibes are bad. Like, really, really bad. 

Health insurance data isn’t clear cut 

In today’s data-driven world, we treat data like an oracle. We say, the data says! But what exactly does it say and who decides? Consider these seemingly contradictory data points. 

Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) found that 94.39% of 2024 Medicare Advantage and 96.30% of Medicare Part D claims were paid properly. Yet of the top 10 Medicare Advantage providers, 9 overbilled, according to the Inspector General or were accused of fraud by a whistleblower or the U.S. government.  

KFF found that 73% of U.S. adults say delays and denials in prior authorizations are major problems. At the same time, 93+% of medical services and 92+% of prescription medications are not subject to prior-authorization review. 

Is the math not mathing, or could it be that the truth is more complicated and nuanced? Regardless of which data points are “right,” health insurance carriers need to adjust to the vibes. 

Lesson #1: The confusion is real 

Economics, finance, and money are hard. At least for me, which is why I’m a writer. I get the basics of supply and demand, but as soon as you start talking about compound derivatives and futures, my mind is wiped clean as a chalkboard.  

Apparently the same goes for most Americans, with majorities getting it wrong on when we were or weren’t in a recession, the rise of costs vs. wages, wealth accumulation and poverty.  

With health insurance, many of us fall into the confusion boat. As Larry Levitt and Drew Altman said in a 2023 JAMA article, “the reality is that many people are hopelessly confused by how their insurance works.” Consumers may have unrealistic or inaccurate expectations of how health insurance works. They don’t understand how to choose the right plan for them or what costs to expect in their real lives, especially unforeseen ones.  

Carriers can help increase healthcare literacy by simplifying complexity and increasing transparency. They’ve been doing this already with enrollment assessments, guided onboarding via apps, comparison guides with real-world examples and benefit reminders, to name a few.  

But there’s more they could do. Here are a couple examples: 

• Use member and claims data to proactively communicate when providers leave the network and provide guidance on how to find another one. Even if a member is enrolled in a PPO, carriers could use past claims to infer members’ main providers. This helps carriers get ahead of a potential problem and alerts the member that someone’s watching out for them. 

• Trigger automatic communication journeys once someone submits an appeal or a complaint. Most people don’t know that they have the right to appeal denials or which government agency they can contact for help. Giving members this information enhances trust and confidence. They’re more likely to see carriers as doing the right thing for the member over their bottom line. 

Photo by Nik on Unsplash 

Lesson #2: You can’t overcome confirmation bias 

If new information won over old positions, then we’d be able to change our minds on a dime. But the truth is, we often double down, even on decisions we know are bad, like making one more bet to get out of the hole or dating that person hoping one day they’ll change. 

That’s why confirmation bias is so powerful. The more confident we are in an initial choice, the more biased we become, seeking out only information to reinforce our beliefs and blocking out information that contradicts it. 

Growing up, my dad always called out gasoline prices. Like him, I became a watchdog. When prices dropped, I barely registered it; instead, I steadied myself for costs to skyrocket again. And because they always did, I was proven right. See, gas is sooo expensive. Eggs became the gasoline of the vibecession, with abundant sticker shock and negative media coverage. 

Rather than try to convince consumers they’re wrong, carriers should first validate their biases. 

• Yes, health insurance is hard to understand.  

• Yes, navigating the healthcare system is the worst.  

• Yes, denied or delayed coverage is frustrating. 

And then do everything they can to say and do the opposite.  

• Make it excessively simple to understand coverage.  

• Make navigating the system 1% easier year over year.  

• Be more transparent about what services or claims are typically denied to both members and providers.  

• Provide tips to members on how to appeal denials. 

• Host workshops with providers on how to better submit more accurate claims. 

It’s cathartic to kvetch, but it’s more important to be strategic. Once you’ve validated their biases, you have a better chance to reframe and redirect the conversation. 

Lesson #3: Feelings beat facts in the long run 

Not just one, but seven studies confirmed that people who make decisions based on feelings are more rigid in their defense of those feelings, especially over time. “What we document is a basic effect where deciding based on feelings seems to offer people more choice protection,” said Yale researcher Taly Reich.  

Emotions are automatic and unconscious. We can’t choose how we feel. Emotions color our worlds, opinions, and perceptions. And they’re as sticky as a broken jar of honey. 

When consumers feel the economy is depressed, distressed, or uncertain, there are no facts you can use to convince them otherwise. The same is true of consumer sentiment toward health insurance. 

Carriers need to fight feelings with feelings. Infuse your messaging with emotionally resonant words like “frustrating,” “thrilling,” “relaxing,” “satisfying,” etc. Get inside consumers’ heads to figure out what resonates most with them, not what you want them to know about you.  

One way to do this could be leaning into the feeling consumers want. For example, consumers want to feel like their carrier has their back, understands them, and cares about them—they want a feeling of trust. Carriers need to lean into security, empathy, integrity, and hope. Not in a way that ignores reality through spin but that instead reinforces credibility. In practice, this could be acknowledging a denial is frustrating and confusing and also providing a simple pathway to appeal it. 

Addressing consumers’ needs and achieving your business objectives are not mutually exclusive. You just need to find the right angle to approach both. 

Lesson #4: Repeat, repeat, repeat 

People perceive repeated information as more truthful because the more we hear something, the easier it is to process. When we hear again and again how bad the economy is from our friends, neighbors, family, coworkers, social media, and the mainstream media, it’s no wonder we believe it’s true. 

The more we hear about denied claims, delayed prior authorizations, network changes, and formulary disasters, the more we believe they are not just true but rampant.  

Here’s another truth: you can’t stop people from talking to each other, but you can put your consumers at the center of everything you do. That’s the Zappos effect.  

It’s not enough for you to repeat positive stories about yourself as a carrier. Members must repeat them too via word of mouth, social posts, and online reviews. The more you can surprise and delight your members, the more they’ll tell others, becoming promoters rather than detractors. 

Photo by Kostiantyn Li on Unsplash 

Lesson #5: We’re living in an affordability crisis 

Steven Pinker says humanity in 2025 is flourishing despite some setbacks. Yet my Spidey senses have been on high alert for half a decade now. One reason for the alert is the steep cost of living. Once-affordable cities like Denver, my forever home, have seen prices tick up and up to the point where previously comfortable locals now feel cash-strapped.  

Economics reporter Annie Lowrey explains how our price sensitivity got cranked up to 11, leading to an affordability crisis for our biggest expenses like healthcare and elder care. She says, “…we don’t have better health outcomes than other countries…we just literally pay more.” Consumers feel this most with out-of-pocket costs. They’re shouldering more of the costs with no Atlas shrug in sight. 

The word “patient” comes from the Latin for “bearing, supporting, suffering, enduring, permitting.” No wonder many consumers remain passive, letting healthcare happen to them—it’s right there in the name. 

Carriers can do more to educate and empower healthcare consumers to bring their savvy in other shopping realms to healthcare.  

• Teach them how to shop for providers for both quality and cost.  

• Educate them about quality of care over quantity of care.  

• Give them a guide to the right level of care when they need it, such as telehealth, home-based, or urgent care.  

• Be relentless in your promotion of preventive care, screenings, and vaccinations. 

SCAN Health gets the assignment 

The Medicare sea of sameness hits high tide during the Annual Election Period (AEP), October 15–December 7. SCAN Health’s 2026 AEP campaign is a master class in differentiation and meeting consumers where they are emotionally. Here’s how they nail every vibecession lesson. 

Lesson #1: The confusion is real 

Instead of denying it or doubling down on self-protection, SCAN Health says the quiet part out loud: health insurance is broken. This says to the consumer: your confusion isn’t your fault; it’s the industry’s fault. It’s unfair to expect you to overcome a gargantuan mess by yourself. That’s why we’re here to help you. 

Lesson #2: You can’t overcome confirmation bias 

Rather than combat bias, SCAN Health embraces it. Their video ad speaks to the inanity of a robot not being able to get your name right, the crazy-making experience of filling out forms with required, yet ambiguous, fields, and the quiet rage of being told your prescription isn’t covered. 

Lesson #3: Feelings beat facts in the long run 

SCAN Health’s campaign drips with emotion. Let me diagram the following sentence to show you how: “Let’s face it, sometimes trying to use your health plan can leave you guessing. From hidden costs to unclear coverage, it’s enough to make your head spin.” 

• “Let’s face it” is conversational and real. It immediately creates a sense of intimacy with the reader. 

• “can leave you guessing” makes you feel seen and understood. The speaker knows all about the anxiety guessing brings. 

• “hidden costs to unclear coverage” speaks to feelings of surprise, confusion, disappointment, hostility, and betrayal consumers can feel when using their coverage. 

• “make your head spin” embodies the overwhelmed, worried, fearful, powerless feelings many consumers experience when selecting and using a health plan. 

Lesson #4: Repeat, repeat, repeat 

Over the course of the ad, SCAN Health repeats its key messages: health insurance is broken, and we’re fighting to change it. They do it visually and verbally.  

• Direct mailers that all look and sound the same. 

• Frantically hitting enter on the keyboard over and over to no avail. 

• Slamming hands on tables and counters in exasperation. 

Lesson #5: We’re living in an affordability crisis 

SCAN Health’s declaration of “people over profits” puts affordability front and center. It’s an implicit promise that they won’t increase prices to appease shareholders or cave to market pressures.  

Don’t misread me. My message isn’t to create a copy-cat campaign from the SCAN Health playbook, but to use these lessons as a framework to help you come at consumer relationships and marketing differently. How these lessons come to life should be unique to you as a carrier based on your mission, company values, key differentiators, and/or value proposition. If integrity is a core value, lean into that with radical transparency. If you’re known for your digital tools, double down to make them even better for members. 

If you’re not sure where to start, we’re here to help. Let’s start dreaming. 

Key takeaways

• You can’t predict the future, but you can plan for it.
• Opt for long-term thinking (years) over short-term thinking (days, weeks, months or quarters).
• When you hit a roadblock, adapt rather than give up. The how may change but your what and why likely stays the same.
• Feel the feels but don’t get overwhelmed by them. Create some distance by figuring what what’s going on for you and why.
• Sustainability, adaptability and emotional intelligence are interconnected. You need all three to get ahead in uncertain times.

There’s a military saying that we can’t fight the next war with tactics from the previous one. The same holds true in business (and in life).

We can’t predict when the next recession, pandemic, disaster or disrupter might hit. Chances are that when it does happen, it won’t look or feel like the past, even if there are similarities. 

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to plan. In fact, planning remains foundational to success. Here’s what we can do today to help weather the Next Big Thing.

Photo by Fauzan Saari on Unsplash

Eyes on the long-term prize

When we think about long-term versus short-term success, our mentality and metrics change: 

• We focus not only on the current quarter but also the next 20-plus quarters. 
• We think about the ripple effect of decisions and their implications down the line. 
• We understand we can’t solve one thing just to create ten new problems. 
• We work backwards from the end goal and calibrate our decisions accordingly. 

Long-term thinking tends to lend itself toward greater sustainability. Here’s how:

• We carry less debt because we’ve been proactive upfront
  • We aren’t robbing Peter to pay Paul
  • We don’t have as high of costs
  • We waste fewer resources
  • We don’t make shortsighted decisions that put us in a bind
• We make smarter investments
  • We’re focused on efficiency
  • We allocate resources wisely
  • Our results compound
  • We can meaningfully measure our progress
• We focus on relationships
  • We’re all on the same page in the same playbook
  • We make coordination and collaboration a breeze
  • We’re resilient to setbacks because we are focused on the goal

We might not get it 100 percent right, but we likely won’t get it 100 percent wrong either. 

The name of the game? Adaptation.

Change can be a welcome adventure. But when we’ve worked for months, years and even decades to get where we are, we tend to shirk change. We won’t allow all that time and energy to be wasted. It has to count for something. 

But here’s the thing: it does count. It got us where we needed to go. Having a plan is simply a map; it’s not the actual journey. 

When we come across a giant boulder that wasn’t on the map, we can’t simply keep on keepin’ on. We can lament the fact of the boulder and how it wasn’t a part of our beautifully rendered map, but eventually, if we want to get anywhere, we’ll have to alter course. We have to figure out a path around, over or through depending on our available skills, resources, tools and time. 

We’re still aiming for the initial destination, we’re just going about it in a different way. Cultivate a mindset of adaptability, and change becomes a challenge rather than a burden. Said another, your what and why stays the same but your how shifts.

Photo by Kit (formerly ConvertKit) on Unsplash

I’ve always wanted to be a writer because I loved reading. For too long a time, I believed becoming a writer would just magically happen. Finally, I got serious about it and started taking classes at Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop. 

I then applied to in-person MFA programs in Colorado, but got rejected from every program. I wasn’t sure what to do next, so I went to AWP. There I learned about low-residency programs that let you maintain your daily life while working one-on-one with an advisor during the semester and going to campus for in-person workshops and lectures every six months. I applied to VCFA and got in. 

I’ve since written a short story manuscript, essay manuscript, poems, arts criticism and have begun a children’s picture book series. Oh, and I write for a living. I’m a legit writer now!

The emotions have it

Meditators often talk about our lizard brains, that primal part of the brain that drives our basic needs, in addition to being jerked around by our emotions. We often mistake feelings for facts and construct entire stories for those emotions within nanoseconds. 

Rarely do we interrogate the stories we tell ourselves. Too often, we get stuck in our lizard brains—fight, flight or freeze—when things get uncertain. We make knee-jerk reactions based on emotions rather than facts. 

One study found that “anger increases perceived control and certainty—two key drivers of risk judgments. Consequently, angry individuals view risky situations more optimistically and make risk-seeking choices… In contrast, fear undermines a sense of individual control and certainty, leading to the opposite effect.” 

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

Instead of compartmentalizing or suppressing our emotions, we can work with them by investigating them and reframing the story we’re telling ourselves about them. We need to cultivate emotional resilience and adaptivity. We need to acknowledge what we’re feeling and why we’re feeling it before we can make sound decisions. When we make decisions in a state of calm, we’re more likely to think clearly.

Thanks to many years of mediation, therapy, Esther Perel and Bréné Brown, here’s what I try to ask myself:

• What’s the story I’m telling myself about this situation?
• Could there be other explanations for it? If so, what are they?
• Why is this affecting me this way?
• What’s this really about?
• Why do I feel that way?
• How can I respond rather than react?
• How can I stay cool on the outside when my insides go bonkers?

Everything is connected

Long-term sustainability, adaptability, emotional intelligence. It’s all interconnected. Trying to do one without the other is like rowing a boat without paddles. We just end up nowhere fast. 

It can be easy to succumb to anxiety and fear, to make hasty and/or bad decisions that prioritize the immediate future at the expense of the distant future and staunchly dig our heels in no matter what. It takes courage and guts to do things the better way, which is sometimes the harder way. But it pays. 

 Looking for more musings and metaphors? Tumble down our rabbit hole. 

Key takeaways

• Telemedicine expansion is essential. Scale remote care while maintaining continuity with providers.
• Human-centered design matters. Involve seniors in designing intuitive, empathetic technology.
• System integration needs improvement. Streamline EHRs, pre-authorizations, and interoperability.
• Privacy requires proactive protection. Lead with transparent, simple policies prioritizing consent.

From the introduction of the smallpox vaccine to the invention of the hypodermic syringe, healthcare technology has not only improved health but extended longevity. In fact, technology in healthcare has been so successful that humanity now has something it’s never had before: the oldest population. Ever. In the history of the world. Let your brain wrap around that.

However, this major success is not immune to a host of challenges. Like caring for people into extended old age, especially those with more chronic, complex conditions. Like helping people maintain their autonomy as long as possible. Like dealing with a dearth of gerontologists while demand for them continues to increase. Like designing homes and cities to accommodate an older population. The solution to our technologically induced problems? More technology. 

For Medicare insurers, technology could improve efficiencies and lead to better member outcomes. Here’s how.

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

Scaling up

Fun fact: Massachusetts General Hospital pioneered telemedicine using closed circuit television in 1968. So why has it taken so long for it to be adopted en masse? Sure, we’re creatures of habit and medicine often requires the laying of hands. The status quo compels us in powerful ways. It’s not until necessity dictates a change in perspective and habits that we even consider doing things differently. 

All along we could have avoided the hassle of getting to the doctor’s office and waiting and then waiting some more for non-urgent health issues. We could have saved those with mobility or transportation issues from spending so much time and money getting to and from the doctor. 

Now, more and more seniors are discovering there’s a faster, easier way to connect with a medical professional and—surprise!—it’s not so bad after all. 

Until recently, consumers, payers and governments saw telemedicine as the red headed step child of healthcare. Medicare, for example, only paid for telehealth on a limited basis: in designated rural areas or if it originated at a medical facility. Medicare made permanent changes to its telehealth policies to expand care access. While these changes have been critical in expanding reach and access, they can also help control healthcare costs for payers as well as patients, especially those patients without reliable or affordable transportation. 

But government support through policy and regulation solves just one part of the equation. Medicare insurance companies and providers must work together with technology companies to expand reach, capability and sophistication, especially for seniors to maintain continuity of care with their primary doctors. 

Organizations like One Medical and Oak Street Health rapidly expanded their telehealth services. Medicare insurers must also lead the way and not simply follow. They must work with providers, especially those in primary care, to deliver exceptional not just necessary care while also maintaining continuity. 

Photo by Lazar Gugleta on Unsplash

It’s personal

How do you scale care while maintaining what seniors value about great providers, that personal touch? Keep the human element in the forefront. Seeing a medical professional’s face via video certainly helps. Personalized email or text messages put human connections at the center of technology. 

Voice assistants like Alexa and Amazon Echo issue friendly reminders about medication adherence. Chatbots with human names like Felix and Florence continue to proliferate. Artificial intelligence (AI) could help improve efficiencies and even interpersonal connections. Social robots could offer another solution. A group in Scotland wants to determine whether robots can support elderly patients at home or in the hospital. 

Whatever the technology, the method of design should focus on the end user and be rooted in empathy and understanding. Don’t assume what seniors want. Ask them. Loop them into the process. Learn from their insights. Listen to them. Watch how they interact with the technology. And then adjust it to make it more intuitive, more inclusive, more human.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Work smarter

It’s not just consumers who need better healthcare technology. Providers and Medicare insurers do, too. 

The HITECH Act of 2009 paved the way for electronic health records (EHR). What was meant to be a time saver ended up being a huge time suck due to coding complexities, inconsistencies and poor design/user interface, which has led to more physician burnout according to numerous studies. 

Some have described the current state as spaghetti code or, in other words, a hot mess. Providers need a standardized, simplified reporting tool instead, one that allows a wide array of data to be extrapolated and analyzed.

Medicare insurers, especially during critical and peak usage times, need to be more agile and streamlined when it comes to pre-authorizations. They need a better way to expedite the process rather than bottleneck it. Insurance companies could develop better systems which integrate algorithms and AI to speed up the pre-authorization and keep the overarching health system moving as fast as it can.

Everything is connected

Interoperability, the ability of health information systems to work together across organizational boundaries, will only increase in importance. Interoperability has the capability to help improve health outcomes, increase efficiency and improve profitability. 

Interoperability could expand to include data outside a typical medical record such as travel history as well as socioeconomic and geographic context. The internet of things and smart devices such as thermometers may be able to spot infectious diseases in advance. 

With more companies gathering real-time health data outside the doctor’s office, the possibility for big data to transform healthcare hovers on the horizon. Medicare insurers could partner with these outside companies and leverage the data to help members and providers make more informed and healthier choices.

Photo by Dayne Topkin on Unsplash

Privacy and policy

Whether you attribute the idea to Voltaire or Uncle Ben in Spider Man, the sentiment remains: “With great power comes great responsibility.” One could argue information is the new power. Yet too often in recent history data have been breached, hacked or downright hijacked. 

Privacy and security remain as tantamount for healthcare information as they do for financial data. With the ability of consumers to now obtain their health records through consumer apps, the possibilities for data abuse run even more rampant. Apps could license data for marketing purposes or lease, lend or sell personal information to third parties. 

Right now, it’s up to individual consumers to protect and secure their privacy once records leave the provider. The country needs policies that protect consumer privacy while allowing business to flourish. 

But rather than leave the policies up to the politicians, Medicare insurers as well as other American businesses should not only address but embrace consumer privacy. Rather than make policies full of legalese, Medicare insurers should make them simple and easy to understand. They should be transparent. They should invite customers to opt in rather than out. 

Think for the future

If technology has taught us anything, it’s that we should take a long term approach instead of a short term one. As Plato said, “The beginning is the most important part of the work.” 

Solving problems isn’t just about fixing the immediate need but understanding how that solution could cause issues down the line. Medicare insurers need to think for the long term not just quarter by quarter. To do that takes imagination, critical thinking, empathy, compassion, humility and the willingness to fail better. 

Attention and action are what every advertisement hopes to achieve. Brands must constantly evolve to be successful, and tweaking their approaches requires in-depth evaluation. Along the way, it’s vital to weigh how much you’re teaching and informing versus how much you’re appealing to emotions with the tap dance of marketing. Finding the right inform/entertain balance is remarkably valuable because the process of getting you there helps to refine your understanding of the audience. 

The Balancing Act 

When advertising content teaches, it’s informative, providing offers, features and the nitty-gritty elements of what you’re selling. Content that leans toward the entertaining approach focuses on emotions like thought-provoking taglines or visceral imagery. 

There aren’t evergreen rules for when a painting needs a brushstroke, and the art of advertising is also caveated with “it depends.” Advertisements can fall into both categories. It’s rarely an either/or decision when it comes to informing and entertaining your audience. To find an equilibrium and keep your brand authentic, you’ll want brainstorming to be highly collaborative. 

Timing is Everything 

We’ve all seen ads that left us thinking, “ugh, so salesy,” when it’s over –the top with offers, or “I don’t even know what they’re selling,” if it leans overly avant-garde. When the inform/entertain balance is off kilter, you ostracize would-be buyers. It would be comically suspicious to walk up to someone you were interested in being friends with and greet them with your phone number and address. 

That’s what it’s like when you hit a potential customer with too much information, too early. And on the other side of the spectrum, if you were to repeatedly try a back flip on a crowded dance floor, you could be in danger of coming off as desperate to entertain. 

To get advertising content choreography in step with audiences’ needs, reflect on how often they see offers and prices. Some industries are highly regulated, so people need a lot of information up front—there can be a stress on information, but emotional appeal shouldn’t be entirely forgotten. If your product is the first of its kind, education messaging is invaluable. Help your audience understand products so that they have what they need to take action and embrace your brand with a click or buy.  

Name It, Talk About It 

It’s healthy to facilitate discussions that specifically analyze the inform/entertain balance with all involved teams. Naming it (inform/entertain balance) and spending time discussing it openly ensures that your content direction is planned and not just happening by default. Collective assumptions about creative work lead to stale outputs. 

Creatives do their best work when they look at every piece with a sense of wonder. Remind everyone that there’s no such thing as “just another touchpoint.” Think about what your audience saw in the last touchpoint and what they will see next time. Understanding content from an analytical perspective like this is wildly important because it provides a reflection of the overall sensation that a brand radiates. We are more likely to remember how people make us feel, and less likely to remember the specific things they say. 

Brands, like friends, are remembered fondly because they make us feel good. As advertisers and marketers, no matter how large or small a project is, nothing is truly “stand-alone” when it comes to brand messaging. Like a good song or delightful conversation, the ebbs and flows give us the variety we need to stay engaged. Give them a mix. Don’t be too predictable.  

Stepping on Toes  

Differing opinions surrounding the inform/entertain balance might be department based—sales might love those prices, while creatives want to enchant with witticism. Many writers and designers especially want to entertain while other departments feel that there’s more to offer on the informing side of the spectrum. It’s in their word choices—creatives call people “the audience” while sales executives refer to them as “customers” or “clients.” 

These differences can manifest in many rounds of edits and departmental tug-of-war games, with well-meaning people caught in the middle. But when you give everyone the chance to openly discuss this messaging balancing act, you reduce extraneous rounds of edits and avoidable clashes of personalities. Fundamental differences in how everyone sees the messaging hierarchy are best explored, rather than argued over. 

Disagreements over approach are common in our industry, and that’s okay, it’s part of the job. Making space for diverse perspectives to come to life fosters an atmosphere of trust where creativity can thrive.   

Find a Tutor 

If you’re curious to learn more about where your brand is on the inform/entertain spectrum, hire an agency. Creative ad agencies come with a wealth of experience along with fresh perspectives. Heinrich can support your brand and show you how to teach and tap dance into the hearts of audiences no matter the industry—we have over four decades of experience tutoring brands to be their best. 

Key takeaways 

• Use AI for research, thought partnership and editing, but don’t rely on it for writing. 

• Writing is the best way to distill and clarify thoughts. 

• Writing makes concepts more concrete and helps improve strategy. 

• The hard work of writing is its own reward and gives meaning to the practice. 

• History proves the lasting power of human-made creations even during technological change. 

I remember the first time I used ChatGPT. I had this weird sensation—a cross between seeing a ghost and free falling—as words magically appeared on the screen in response to my question. I imagine this is what it was like to see a light bulb turn on or hear a voice emerge from a telephone for the first time. Part unnatural, part amazing, part terrifying. 

I wondered if, as a writer, I am the 21^st century version of a lamp lighter: soon to be displaced. But the more I use AI, the less I use it for writing. Call me a Luddite, stubborn, or inefficient. I don’t care. I know that writing is one of the best avenues for thinking, and nothing can replace that—especially not AI. 

Photo by Sincerely Media on Unsplash 

How I use AI 

I use Perplexity AI to help me research, ChatGPT and Claude as a thought partner, and Notebook LM to help me collate documents, organize notes, and audit content. I use AI as a first editor when I’m feeling uncertain or know I’ll get a lot of client feedback on something. I use it as an internal creative reviewer to poke holes and point out areas of opportunity. But I hardly ever use it to outline or draft my writing assignments because I prefer to do the work myself, which helps me do better work in the future. 

Why I don’t use AI to write 

When I applied to MFA programs, I had to explain why I write. It was such a basic question, yet it plagued me in its profundity. At first, I thought, “Well, I love books.” I wanted to do what the authors who wrote my favorite books did. I wanted to make people feel and think new things. It sounded trite. I couldn’t submit an essay about aspiring to be a copycat. 

The more I thought about it and tried to write about it—tried being the operative word—the more I landed on the truth. I wrote to discover. To discover what I thought, of course, but more so to discover the world around me. What made people tick. Why they said what they said. Why things happened. How they could be different.  

There is nothing more clarifying than attempting to write. I say this after 10+ years in therapy and practicing meditation. This is why journaling is such a powerful practice for writers and non-writers alike. If you really want to know what you think about something, write it out. I dare you. 

I’m a better content strategist because I also write the content I propose. I can see where my strategy faltered or where it was short-sighted once I get into the meat of a project. I can reorganize the outline for a better flow or cut a section because I unearthed something more important through an interview or in an early draft. 

Being a writer creates an inherent intimacy with the subject matter. It’s more concrete, less theoretical. It’s the difference between your idea of the project and the actual project.  

Your idea is always perfect because it’s only half-formed. Once you hit the hard reality of putting pen to paper or fingers on the keyboard, things inevitably change. That finished product isn’t perfect, but it’s more honest because you had to grapple with time, words, and the blinking cursor mocking your every letter. 

Maybe it’s naive on my part to want to hold on to the often-painful process of writing. I am, after all, a writer who loves having written (in the past tense). Often, I feel physically pained writing. My back aches, there’s little space between my ears and shoulders, my butt’s gone numb. There’s nothing more I want in that moment than to jump out of my skin. 

Yet I know the post-writing high that awaits. That weightless, anything-is-possible feeling of joy mixed with pride. My favorite thing is looking back at something I’ve written and not recognizing it as my own. “Oh wow,” I think, “I wrote that!”  

Photo by RDNE on Pexels 

Human creativity in the age of technology 

The more our tech-enabled world seems hellbent on eradicating friction, the more I want to double down on the hard things. Like relationships in all the ways: family, work, friends, romance. Like working out until there’s so much sweat dripping down my face, I can’t see anything. Like sewing by hand until my fingers cramp. Like writing. 

For now, I’m a better writer than AI (at least I think so 😬). It might not stay that way much longer, but there’s so much actual human writers bring to the table that AI doesn’t: lived experience, a distinct point of view, personal taste, idiosyncrasies. If everyone uses AI, we risk creating the language equivalent of oatmeal. And you can only ingest so much oatmeal. 

Doing my own writing helps me to better understand our clients’ businesses and their audiences. It gives me a chance to put myself in their shoes. My favorite part of my job is interviewing subject-matter experts to get information that’s only in their heads. (Until we all get Neuralink implants, it’s important to remember that the vast quantity of life hasn’t been digitized.)  

Often, interacting with experts and diving deep into projects sparks innovation. This is how I realized Medicare sales agents needed a better tool to match beneficiaries to the right plans for them. And how I realized agents with an average book of business of 500 don’t have enough hours in a week to onboard clients one on one; they need to onboard members at scale. 
 
I’m a firm believer that no creative work is ever wasted. It always leads you to the next draft or next project. All of the time and effort of research, interviews, and outlining goes back into the final deliverable. It’s like an iceberg; you only see the top 10%.

I’m dedicated to my craft. Maybe there will be a slow-writing movement in the future for marketing like the slow-food movement for agriculture. I’ve said before that I think human-made creations will be more valuable than AI-generated ones. That could turn out to be totally cringe and 100% wrong. 

But history proves the staying power of human-made creations in the face of technological change. People still weave by hand, still throw pots, still go to the theater. Yes, the number of people practicing these traditions and the audience for those creations might be smaller, but it’s less transactional and stickier. It’s more about connection. I’ll gamble on connection over speed every time. 

You might be surprised to learn that the U.S. has no official language. While English is the predominantly spoken language, nearly 68 million people (about twice the population of California) spoke a different language at home in 2019. This presents both a challenge and an opportunity, especially when it comes to accessibility, to create more in-language digital experiences. 

Brands can no longer rely on English-only digital channels because too much is at stake. In-language experiences open the door to increasing trust, brand credibility and loyalty, especially if you get the whole process right from the start. They help you stand out from your competition. Senior Digital Strategist Montanna Kehr said, “You can create a level of engagement that’s much richer and deeper.” That increased engagement can lead to increased revenue opportunities. As Montanna said, “You can expand your services, products, or audiences.” 

Crafting authentic and relevant in-language experiences takes time and effort. Here’s how brands can do it right. 

Aim for the Gold Standard from the Start 

Create an integrated, end-to-end experience 

You can’t take a one-and-done approach with in-language marketing. “You need to create in-language deliverables on a high-frequency basis so that you develop a cohesive experience that isn’t disjointed or siloed,” said Montanna. “You want it to feel thoughtful from end to end and part of your overall strategy.”  

Don’t Just Translate, Transcreate 

“Heinrich does transcreation very well—taking a deliverable and customizing it for the audience,” Montanna said. That means adjusting for cultural nuance as Lizzy Cassaro, Associate Director of Digital Strategy, explained, “We really dive into the culture and what the implications are in each language. That creates trust between the consumer and the brand.” You need help from native speakers who can help identify these cultural nuances and sensitivities in both the copy and design. For example, there are differences between U.S. Spanish, Caribbean Spanish and Castilian Spanish. Geography, ethnicity and more play a role. A seemingly innocuous image in one culture can have different meanings in another. Using an image of white flowers has a totally different context for Asian audiences. 

Personalization Means In-language  

Personalization isn’t just about tailoring topics and formats to a particular person. It also means delivering information in the audience’s language of choice. For some, that could be a single language. For others, it means toggling back and forth between two or more languages. When you give audiences a choice of languages, it’s the ultimate personalization. This is especially true with educational content. When people can learn in their preferred language, it’s going to resonate and stick with them better. Montanna said, “In the B2B world, you’ll see performance improve when your audience has in-language education.” 

Where to Start When Creating In-language Digital Experiences 

Audience Understanding 

“You need to understand your audience’s journey and their natural user flow,” Lizzy says. Answer key questions about your audience, as Lizzy detailed, “What’s the size of it? What are their demographics? What are their main interests?” Collate any data you do have, create surveys, do roundtable interviews, leverage outside research. “Gather insights from multiple sources,” Lizzy said. “Think about what you can test and optimize based on your data and previous efforts.” 

Identify Top Priorities and Opportunities 

Identify the core information and what’s most relevant to the audience. If you have multiple in-language audiences, your priorities and opportunities could change for each. You want to figure out where you can have the biggest impact on your audience in your time and budget constraints. 

Test and Learn 

Determine what you want to test and what you want to learn from the test in advance. That could be testing a learning from a roundtable or doing an A/B test on email subject lines. Your tests could be different for different audiences. As Montanna said, “Don’t be afraid to experiment in different ways for different audiences. The strategy doesn’t need to be a one-size-fits-all approach for each audience or language.” 

Connect the Dots Between Languages 

Earmark what only needs to be in English, what needs to only be in-language and what should be available in both English and another language. Ask yourself how everything works together. “There needs to be synergy between general-market materials and in-languages ones,” Montanna said. “You don’t want duplication or inconsistencies.” 

Use plain language as much as possible in English to make the translation process simpler. Remember that translations could be 20% longer or more. Brevity benefits you in another language. 

Where We’ve Seen In-language Success 

Centralized resource hubs 

Many brands have in-language tools and resources already, but their audience might be unaware of them. If you can deliver the entire ecosystem to them in a way that’s easy to digest, you tee them up for success while driving engagement. “We’ve seen in-language audiences have much higher time on page metrics with centralized hubs compared to general market pages,” Montanna said. 

Process is Paramount 

You’ll need to have a clear process with defined roles defined for everyone working on in-language deliverables. Be sure to revisit this process regularly to discuss what can be optimized and what needs to be rethought. You need to be much more dialed in. Pivots that are usually easy in English are harder when you don’t know the language you’re working in. You need all your process ducks in a row. 

Consider QA 

Quality assurance in a language other than your own is difficult. “Recognize you can’t do absolutely everything in another language. Lean into your translation partners and their native speakers,” said Montanna. This is especially true with character-symbol written languages like traditional Chinese or Korean. Responsive window sizes for mobile devices can pose issues with line breaks. Ask your translation partners to review mobile mockups and help identify where the correct line break should be. Don’t forget to proof multiple times. Proof and proof again internally and with your clients. 

Planning Considerations for In-language Digital Experiences 

Scale 

Recognize your in-language audience may be smaller than the general one. You may need to scale slowly over time. “Think about the bigger picture and setting a foundation that can help you in the long run,” said Montanna. “Take a crawl, walk, run approach as you learn what the audience needs.” You’ll also need to temper your expectations with a smaller audience. Montanna said, “Establish clear objectives and understand how your KPIs differ from the general market audience.” 

Complexity 

More languages mean more complexity and more time needed to handle that complexity. That complication can easily spill into the user experience if you aren’t paying attention. “You want to create a better experience for in-language audiences, not a more complicated one,” Montanna said. 

From a technological perspective, you may experience more complexity. You might run into functionality or automation limitations. Don’t just think about the static elements of your web property. Consider the interactive elements too. Have a taxonomy and an organized approach. You’ll want to examine everything from logins to footers, navigation bars to CTA buttons. Existing plugins may not support all languages. “There’s a lot on the backend that may be automated, so work with your developer closely to ensure everything is covered,” said Montanna. 

Ongoing Investment 

Understand that your investment is going to be continuous, and you’ll have to keep updating the information to stay relevant. You don’t want glaring discrepancies between the English experience and the in-language one. As Lizzy said, “Continue to nurture the in-language experience with new content over time.” 

Budget Realities 

Creating in-language experiences requires time and effort. The more languages you add, the more time and money you’ll need. A common pitfall is not accounting for added time in the process as in-language materials take more time to create. You may not be able to provide a one-to-one experience comparable to the English one for some time. Prioritize the essential information and channels and expand over time. “You’ll need to balance budgets with experimentation and continuously learn from the data,” Montanna said. You’ll also need to invest in the right partners. At Heinrich, we lean on our Hispanidad team and our translation partner, Cesco. 

Use AI Wisely 

New generative AI tools promise real-time translation, but the end results often leave much to be desired. Take the Hard Fork podcast. The hosts used Hey Gen, an AI-powered video tool that promises to dub videos using the speaker’s own in any language in minutes. While the results sounded plausible to non-native speakers, native speakers informed the hosts that what they thought was Hindi and German was in fact gobbledygook. “AI is a both/and opportunity. Test out the technology with an expert translator,” Lizzy said. When you use technology, you need to double-check the results with a native speaker. 

Born for Business—In Every Language 

Ready to expand your digital offerings in other languages? Heinrich can help. No matter what language you do business in, we can partner with you to solve today’s challenges so you can be a business hero tomorrow. Get in touch. 

Depending on their age, Millennials have lived through six recessions, most notably the dotcom bubble and the Great Recession, with another potentially on the way. These downturns have left their mark on how many of us spend, save, bank, and plan our finances. Student loan debt, unaffordable housing, and a general lack of financial literacy created not just gaps in our financial success but scar tissue for many. 

Now, as a Millennial, I only bank with names I know I can trust based on their track record. I haven’t stepped foot inside a bank in five years and care most about a financial company’s digital tools. I focus on saving for the short- and long-term.  

I prefer straight-forward financial services marketing free of fluff and focused on functional benefits—credit limits, interest rates, no annual fees, no security deposit required. As our Millennial-aged Associate Creative Director, Copy, Leah Metz said, “For financial projects, trust needs to come from facts, not feelings.” 

Our campaign data shows that financial services audiences like Millennials want the same things I do: Basic facts that are easy to understand, especially when it comes to credit cards. Millennials want to do business with a company who is on the up and up. They want financial services marketing that isn’t about spin but transparency.  

That audience insight drives our messaging as Leah explained, “I would position everything to lead with how the organization is accredited and protected by the FDIC, and explain what that means in a factual, non-salesy way.”  

Consistency is another important feature for financial services, especially when it comes to branding. Consistency shows stability. Stability translates to reliability. Reliability leads to trust. When a financial services brand looks and sounds the same, I’m more likely to believe they’ll act the same at every transaction. 

Millennials are the first generation to grow up with the internet and social media. They’re experts at researching and comparing products and services using trusted sources, whether those sources are a third party like NerdWallet or their peers on Reddit. If your financial product or service isn’t on NerdWallet, it basically doesn’t exist. “Reddit is great for educational stuff. More people trust ‘real people’ vs corporations,” said Leah.  

Financial companies courting Millennials need to create seamless user experiences. Digital tools are table stakes. Here are other ways financial services firms can reduce friction.  

• Use behavior-based personalization. For example, your direct mail piece—yes, Millennials love direct mail—could reference a past credit card or personal loan application and a new interest rate offer. 

• Pre-fill their information. With individualized QR codes and landing pages, you can pre-populate your audience’s contact information to make the credit card or personal loan application faster and more turnkey. 

Financial services companies can add value by leaning into digital learning resources. Help Millennials manage their student loan debt better. Give them strategies to save for their first house. Create tools that make it easy to calculate how much they need to save. Finance is confusing and stressful. The companies who make it simple and clear without coming across as salesy will be the big winners when it comes to a Millennial audience. 

No matter what marketing your financial services firm needs—branding, customer acquisition, and retention—Heinrich can do it. We serve wealth management, personal loan, credit card, and fintech companies. Let’s talk business. 

Media automation isn’t a new topic, but it’s still one of the most powerful levers in modern media planning. As the tech landscape expands exponentially, automation streamlines the complex, repetitive work that bogs teams down and slows workflow. Yet the flood of platform innovations and updates makes it harder than ever to separate true progress from tech hype. Even seasoned media buyers have to constantly recalibrate to know which advancements actually improve performance, which are just industry noise and which will benefit their bottom lines. 

The promise of doing more with less has always fueled business. But in today’s media landscape, automation alone isn’t the edge. The real advantage comes from intelligent orchestration. Using AI to connect data, strategy, creativity, and optimizations in real time. And to expose the blind spots we’ve missed along the way. 

Today’s successful agencies aren’t just adopting the newest or shiniest tools first. We’re shaping how new tech is applied to our work to amplify what our human expertise can output and create. Every platform is evolving at warp speed. The real work is understanding how and when to let automation lead versus when human expertise has to be at the forefront. (Hint: It ALWAYS needs to be at the forefront.) 

Media strategies and automation without past experience or curious minds behind them are mediocre commodities. The future belongs to partners that treat AI not just as an efficiency play, but as an incrementality play to help push us forward faster.  When done right, media automation enables agencies to eliminate tedious tasks, optimize workflows and be more efficient with hours. They can then redirect their human capital to developing strategies and building relationships, ultimately driving richer outcomes for clients.  

Building Your Media Automation Roadmap 

Know Your Starting Place 

Start with your team and technology ecosystem.  

• What are your team’s strongest assets and competencies today? 

• Where are the gaps? 

• What are your day-to-day pain points? 

• What tools are you paying for now?  

• Should anything be sunset for efficiency? 

• Is anything underused or duplicative? 

Pro tip: Know what’s achievable with your current team through smarter training and distinguishing where deeper data expertise is needed. Platforms like Salesforce Marketing Cloud deliver massive potential for our clients, but unlocking it means understanding data architecture, various integrations, and audience intelligence. Current analysts on the team may be able to bridge the gap with upskilling, but more complex modeling or advanced measurements will require analytical engineers or data-science partners in some instances. 

Know Where You Want to Go 

Have your end destination in mind from the start. 

• What are your short- and long-term goals? 

• What should be addressed now, and what can be addressed over time? 

• What is the client hoping to accomplish and how soon? 

• What is worth paying extra for and at what price to achieve your goals? 

• What are your key performance indicators (KPIs)? 

• How complex are the user journeys and what is the anticipated duration? 

• What are the right audience triggers and actions to optimize against? 

Some enterprise tools scale beautifully for broad audiences, but they’re often overkill for niche or B2B marketers. Smaller brands gain more value by staying agile—leaning into modular tools, first-party data, and rapid experimentation they can fine-tune in real time.  

As data and AI become central growth drivers, agencies and clients can reprioritize together. Success depends on teams that can interpret complex data across a high volume of complex platforms and ultimately turn these streams into actionable strategies. 

Start with Day-to-day Automation 

Begin by making easy AI adjustments with machine learning to help you adjust your media costs and determine how much to spend to meet or exceed your KPI goals. AI easily helps you weed out unfavorable inventory and be more relevant for the audience. 

Resist the gamified media-buying mindset—those platform “scores” are designed to optimize for their margins, not your clients’ performance. Meta, Google, and even Amazon ad platforms have turned optimization into a psychological loop similar to gambling mechanics where the dopamine hit of “+10 Optimization Score” or “Ad Strength: Excellent” drives behavior more than strategy. 

Make Performance Reporting Your Cornerstone 

Reports can help you identify what is and isn’t working and adjust as needed. Look for dashboard tools that use AI to help you make more informed decisions. We’ve seen improvements as high as 50–75% with the right dashboard. 

Remember that it takes time for your campaign to come to life. You might not see immediate results. If, over time, the results are still lackluster, it’s time to change strategies. 

Creative Assembly and Testing 

AI has officially moved from being a helpful tool to a collaborative partner. It’s not just testing headlines, copy, and imagery anymore—it’s now playing with ad generation. So many platforms have built-in generative tools that remix your original creative: swapping backgrounds, rewriting copy to match audience tone, or reformatting assets across placements automatically. The result? Less time burned on manual versioning and more time spent on actual creative thinking. 

That said, don’t confuse automation with human intuition. AI still misses the human subtleties that make creative most resonant. You still need human oversight to avoid confusing and misleading audiences instead of being clever or playful. 

We’ve been misunderstood by our platforms too. One summer, we helped a client launch a lighthearted Bigfoot-spotting campaign, only for Meta’s bots to flag it as “misinformation.” Suddenly, a fun camping joke turned into a brand-safety headache. 

Another client’s PSA-style campaign took familiar drinking phrases and flipped them to highlight the dangers of impaired driving. One ad showed a glass of whiskey, pills, and car keys labeled with a skull and crossbones under the line “Killer Combo.” The intent was prevention, but the platforms read it as promotion. 

These stories prove why human oversight is essential. AI can lack common sense and can create a flattening effect, where creativity, humor and cleverness are stripped away. 

Stay Adaptable 

Media and technology constantly change. You also need to be flexible to change course, especially when something isn’t panning out. Don’t strive for perfection because nothing is perfect. You want to shoot for good and then optimize for even better. You’ll need to be a constant student as tools evolve. Take the call from a new potential partner, learn the new tool. As in business, you can’t afford to be complacent with media automation. 

Your Media Automation Partner 

Heinrich knows how to help businesses of all sizes automate their media campaigns with the right strategic layers based on each business’ unique goals. Because we’re born for business. That means solving your problems today so you can get where you want to go tomorrow. Let’s get to work, together. 

Key Takeaways

• Trust takes months/years to build but a second to lose. Be transparent. Do what’s right. 

• Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and walk a mile in them. 

• Tell authentic stories that resonate with your audience. 

Sure, your finance brand promises ease, transparency, speed, but is it human? During an unprecedented time of uncertainty, “Effortless, efficient transactional banking is simply table stakes,” as Allison Netzer wrote for Forbes recently. Your brand can no longer rest on data alone. Now is the time for humanity. 

Bank on trust 

As consumers rapidly transition to a digital-first if not digital-only world, their reliance on technology, especially financial technologies, will only grow. It may be tempting to think your finance brand will be able to rest on its laurels in such an environment. But think again.  

Prior to March 2020, the most satisfied banking customers, for example, used both branch and digital services according to J.D. Power & Associates. The least satisfied? Digital-only customers. Moreover, J.D. Power found that just one-third of Americans believe companies genuinely care about their situation. With 40 percent of Americans believing “the worst is yet to come” for their personal finances, a brand steeped in trust has never been more important. 

According to the 2020 Edelman Trust Barometer, 81 percent of consumers “must be able to trust the brand to do what is right.” Consumers want brands who actively solve problems, who collaborate, who make a difference.  

Finance brands should communicate transparently and tactfully, even if the communication is “we don’t know yet.” During times of uncertainty, one thing may be certain: mistakes will be made. Quickly acknowledge them. Apologize, don’t make excuses. Take responsibility. Correct course, multiple times if needed.  

Be an empath 

A recent Harvard Business Review article summed up the new normal in two sentences: “People feel vulnerable right now. Empathy is critical.” Before 2020, a notification of an overdraft could stick to the basic fact: your funds are overdrawn. Now such a notification could seem insensitive if not panic-inducing. Facts must be coupled with empathy and compassion.  

Your brand must be more consumer-centric than ever before with more emotional nuance and delicacy. Notifications in the new normal should aim to help and educate as much as they alert. They should put the person ahead of the product.  

Your empathy will ultimately communicate the value you create for your customers and result in stronger relationships and brand loyalty. While there’s been a veritable “empathy explosion” in tech design in general over the last few years, the current climate ups the ante. A brand’s emotional intelligence must now be as strong if not stronger than its technological intelligence. 

Tell stories 

The brand story and storytelling in general has gotten a lot of play. “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make,” said Seth Godin, “but about the stories you tell.” But as financial marketer Juliet D’Ambrosio said, “This is not the time for chest-beating, celebrating your brand or making strong competitive claims.”  

Now is a time for people. And it’s also a time for their stories. Make your customers your top storytelling priority. What’s the on-the ground story of your products and services in people’s lives? How are they doing? What are you doing to help? What are you doing to improve their story? As with trust, make authenticity your base foundation in your storytelling strategy. 

Personalization has also gained a huge amount of traction lately with increasingly targeted messaging, content, experiences, and generative AI. Here’s the paradoxical thing about stories: the more specific they are, the more universal they end up being.  

One person’s highly specific story ends up appealing to a wider audience. Nonprofits have long leveraged this tactic in their fundraising campaigns, telling the story of a single person or family in order to illustrate the bigger mission.  

Storytelling is, as Margaret Atwood said, “built into the human plan.” Make sure it’s built into your business plan, too. 

• The aging population will drastically change society and business.
• Older people will soon outnumber children for the first time in human history.
• Older Americans have concentrated more wealth than any other generation, and they’re living longer.
• Just as the Baby Boomers changed culture, they will change what it means to age.
• People are working longer but their exit from the workforce leaves huge experience and labor gaps.  
• More single older people will shift the burden of care from families to societies.
• Don’t risk getting hit by the silver tsunami. Plan now to ride the opportunity.

We’re living through one of the greatest revolutions in history, and it’s not about a global pandemic, the internet, technology or globalization. More people will experience what few in human history have: extended old age. 

Getting older may sound banal; it’s anything but. The aging population will impact every aspect of society and business in dramatic and radical ways. Are you ready?

Here’s what you need to know and mull over now to get prepared.

The how: seismic shift

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day. The twentieth century saw exponential growth in the number of people over 65, from 3.1 million in 1900 to 35 million in 2000. The Census Bureau projects that by 2030, older people will outnumber children for the first time in history. Enter silver tsunami and gray wave into the lexicon. 

Photo by Vlada Karpovich via Pexels

The how: a concentration of wealth

The aging population will dominate society not only due to its sheer size but also due to its concentration of wealth. As their major expenses like home, car and student loans decline, that leaves a hefty portion for discretionary spending like travel and entertainment. 

The so-called longevity economy driven by U.S. seniors accounted for $8 trillion worth of economic activity in 2015 alone. By 2030, Americans 55 and older will account for half of all domestic consumer spending growth. The McKinsey Global Institute cites seniors as one of the few engines for economic growth in the coming years.

The how: changing what it means to age

Do Boomers think they’re 20- and 30-somethings? Nope. Do they think they’re old? Definitely not. They’ve got vim, vigor and a whole lotta life yet to live. They know age is just a number, and they won’t take kindly to products and services that tell them they’re irrelevant, a problem to be solved, in decline or without choice and agency.

Photo by cottonbro studio via Pexels

The why: workforce 

The aging workforce: it’s complicated. On the one hand, people are working longer. The U.S. Senate Special Committee of Aging says that by 2026, 42.1 million Americans over 55 will still be in the workforce, whether by choice or necessity. 

However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for older workers to thrive at work due to age discrimination, inadequate training and underemployment. Throw in health issues and caregiving responsibilities for parents living into extended old age, and senior workers get crunched even more. 

What’s more, businesses, governments and nonprofit organizations risk labor gaps as Boomers retire and the replacement pipeline lags. Leadership positions will be especially hard hit. 

The why: less family

A third of seniors live alone according to the Institute on Aging. The term elder orphan describes people living alone with little to no support. One study estimates the prevalence of elder orphans over 65 as high as 22 percent. 

Increased rates of chronic illness in addition to social determinants of health will shift the burden of care to governments, communities and healthcare systems.

Photo by roman raizen on Unsplash

The why: risk + opportunity

The silver tsunami poses serious threats—it takes its name from a natural disaster after all. It’s this big, scary thing that’s already crashing ashore. 

However, it’s also an opportunity for business innovation, cross-sector collaboration, entrepreneurism and disruption. It’s going to take guts and grit to get to glory. And a really big surfboard.

Start by asking these questions about your business:

• Are we ignoring this audience and their purchasing power?
• Are we speaking to them on their terms about what it means to age well?
• What can we learn from older employees and how do we need to plan for their succession?
• Is there an opportunity for us to step into the void to serve elder orphans?
• What products or services make sense for us to provide this audience?

Once you’ve answered these questions, you can then dive into marketing. That’s where we come in with over a decade of senior-marketing experience.

We’re ready to help you build whatever size surfboard you need—metaphorically speaking, of course. Hit us up to chat.

Agencies sell people as much as they sell concepts. As a client, you only see and hear some of those people—your account team, creatives and strategists. You can think of them as the agency’s interface.  

Behind the scenes, there’s a slew of other people making sure the rest of the machine that is the agency works in harmony. The people that keep the agency humming by running the right things through the right pipes at the right time and speed are project managers or PMs. They are your secret to getting your work done on time and on budget without gumming up the system.  

Even if you don’t ever interact with them as a client, you should make sure your agency has a PM team in place. Here’s why. 

Organization and alignment 

Some see “process” as a dirty word, but process is meant to streamline tasks and organize people. Yes, the creative process can be messy, but an agency needs order to deliver an ever-increasing number of deliverables efficiently while keeping the lights on.  

An agency’s PM team helps establish swim lanes for different roles. When an agency has a PM team, everyone benefits internally and externally: 

• Account people can focus more on deepening client relationships and understanding their client’s business.  

• Creatives only need to worry about solving client’s problems rather than trying to juggle too many projects at once or turn work around too fast. 

• Clients get exceptional work done on time and on budget and are confident that their future projects will be completed in the same way. 

A well-oiled machine makes agency work more fun because people get to focus on what they do best rather than try to manage things outside their area of expertise. 

Budget and timeline oversight 

As a client, you want your work done as quickly and cost effectively as possible. PMs are your best ally in this goal. They explain what is feasible rather than over-promise and under-deliver. A PM won’t promise anything the agency can’t deliver.  

Once you communicate your goals, expectations and budgets, the PM team will assess what the agency can reasonably deliver within those parameters. That’s good for you overall because you’ll be less likely to find yourself in a pickle you can’t get out of down the line. PMs ensure your project is well-run by being accountable to you, your timelines and budgets.  

If you ever need something on a different timeline or budget than what a PM proposes, that’s when the negotiation should begin—ideally before any work begins so we can adjust accordingly. After all, we’re all on the same team and want to do right by the work.   

Collaboration and communication 

PMs help various agency teams—account, digital, print, creative, resourcing, studio, leadership—work together as a cohesive unit.  

• Status updates help everyone stay on the same page and know when work will get passed from one team member to another so nothing gets dropped or forgotten. This also prevents those at the end of the project, like production, from getting unfairly squeezed for time.  

• PMs keep tabs on hours, which helps the agency stay on budget for your project. 

PMs must be personable and able to communicate in any situation, even difficult ones. PMs aren’t meant to babysit people or projects but rather to keep them on track, within timelines and on budget.  

To do that, PMs communicate early and often. PMs even communicate after work is done to find out what worked well and what needs to adjust for the next time. It’s an iterative process and one we strive to constantly improve. 

Born for business 

At Heinrich, we create work that gets results for our clients. Our PM team is integral in that effort. We know how each deliverable gets made and what it takes to make it. The hours it takes a copywriter to land on the perfect brand name or the time it takes to develop the right co-branding effort.  

We know how to plan and budget for your top priorities. Contact us to see what we can do for you. 

• America’s healthcare workforce is running on empty—and the provider shortage is about to hit crisis level. 

• Burnout, budget cuts and red tape are draining the talent pool faster than new providers can fill it. 

• Training programs can’t keep up—but creative investments in education, technology non-physician roles and technology could help turn the tide. 

Feeling the squeeze 

On the other hand, my nurse friend was coming home exhausted and overwhelmed every day from picking up slack due to staffing shortages. Then more of her colleagues resigned, and she absorbed their workload too. It wasn’t long before she followed suit. 

A family member started experiencing crippling arthritis in her hands with signs of a possible autoimmune disorder. The first appointment she could get to see a rheumatologist or endocrinologist? Nine months out. There was nothing to do but cope and fume at the healthcare system. 

You probably know someone in a similar situation. The shortage of providers brings enormous pressure and costs to the healthcare system for everyone, including consumers, providers and health insurance carriers. And it’s projected to get worse—alarmingly fast. 

Here’s how to understand the precipitous healthcare workforce challenges we face and some creative ways to get some relief. 

Don’t get caught lying down 

You should be concerned about the current and worsening workforce shortage. What’s coming down the pike isn’t pretty. 

Multiplying healthcare needs 

On the consumer side, we have an aging population. According to the most recent census in 2023, there were 55.8 million Americans aged 65 or older. This is projected to balloon to 82 million by 2050, a 47% increase. And as the senior population grows, the ratio of healthcare workers per senior could decline from four to only 2.9 workers per senior in the next five years. 

Holes in the provider-workforce bucket  

As the healthcare consumer population gets older, so does the provider workforce. Physicians who are currently 65 years or older make up 20% of the clinical physician workforce, while those aged 55–64 comprise 22%—adding up to nearly half of all physicians. Meanwhile, more than one quarter of nurses are expected to retire or otherwise leave the workforce by 2027. 

With attrition putting more pressure on each healthcare worker, burnout is playing a main role in the reason providers of every age are leaving the field. In a vicious cycle, the turnover and shortages put a greater burden on the remaining workers, leading to further workforce departures. Although this trend peaked in 2022 during the pandemic and dropped for the first time since then in 2025, these factors continue to contribute to shortages. 

All of this could hit especially hard in rural areas, which comprise 20% of the U.S. population but where only 10% of physicians practice for a number of reasons, mainly a lack of provider incentives. This is made worse by rural hospital closures, with 50% of rural hospitals operating in the red and potentially on their way to closure. 

The trickling provider pipeline 

In good news, medical school applications are up about 6% over the past five years. The number of newly licensed RNs is up 36%, supported by accelerated nursing programs that have nearly doubled the annual graduates over the past decade. 

However, this represents a fraction of departures from the field and only slows down the worker shortage crisis. This is because significant challenges contribute to bottlenecks in the education and training of new healthcare workers. 

• A shortage of credentialed educators and clinical-training sites 

• Experienced clinical faculty retiring faster than new educators can be recruited 

• Retention hindered by burnout and emotional strain 

• Financial, logistical and emotional barriers for students, especially from lower socioeconomic backgrounds 

• Lack of scalability of apprenticeship-style, hands-on programs 

• Persistent gaps in rural and behavioral health pipelines 

• Investment and training challenges to leveraging outcome-improving technology 

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash 

Coming up on a cliff 

It’s projected that there could be a shortage of up 3.2 million healthcare workers by 2026 and of about 73,000 nursing assistants alone by 2028. This is alarming enough, but these projections were before a raft of potential changes in policy direction in 2025. 

This is just a sampling of recent policy changes and impacts: 

• CMS finalized a roughly 2.8% reduction to the 2025 Physician Fee Schedule conversion factor, potentially affecting Medicare participation and primary care capacity. 

• A new $100,000 H-1B visa fee may affect the recruitment of international physicians, especially for rural and red-state markets that disproportionally rely on H-1B clinicians. 

• Pandemic-era telehealth flexibilities face expiration in late 2025. If not extended, this could worsen access in shortage areas. 

• Reorganization and reduction of the federal workforce by HHS could potentially delay programs and support functions that underpin workforce pipelines. 

• States facing budget stress have begun cutting Medicaid provider payments even before federal budget changes take full effect, potentially limiting treatments and causing provider exits and service cutbacks in low-income and rural areas. 

These policies could push shortages into an even steeper decline. Proactively preparing for the effects of these policies to be felt could save you from labor supply shock later. 

Either ride the bike or fall off it 

Healthcare as an industry faces a stark choice: address the provider shortage or spiral deeper into crisis. This calls for proactive, bold, coordinated and creative solutions. 

Address the education and training bottlenecks 

Training capacity is one of the biggest barriers to getting providers into the workforce. The industry will need to shift their perspective to long-term investment in more workforce entrants. 

• Create funds to support and incentivize instructor and student recruitment and retention. 

• Sponsor a faculty member, student cohort or apprenticeship program. 

• Reduce the administrative burden of training center faculty and staff. 

• Actively recruit, fund and provide emotional support programs for students with a lower socioeconomic background. 

• Ramp up training in technologies that automate or improve education and training or create specialized technical support positions. 

• Update regulations limiting the number of, or funding for, medical and nursing school residency slots. 

• Provide programs for tuition forgiveness or scholarships. 

• Expand training tracks from college to rural and underserved areas and specialties with workforce gaps. 

Proactive support for these initiatives may need to expand from schools to clinics and hospitals to support their own future pipelines; meanwhile, local and state governments may need to step in to fill the gap not covered by the federal government. 

Empower non-physician providers 

Non-physician providers can help reduce administrative and care burdens for physicians, broadening access to care and freeing physicians up for the tasks requiring more training. 

• Create more and accelerated training opportunities for non-physician practitioners. 

• Adopt team-based care models where physicians supervise or collaborate. 

• Expand scope-of-practice laws for nurse practitioners, physician assistants, pharmacists and midwives, especially in primary care and behavioral health. 

These initiatives will require action by larger organizations and coalitions, either to reorganize training and care models or to lobby for policy change. 

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash 

Shift the burden to technology 

As technology, especially AI, advances in huge strides, shifting tasks from the pressured workforce to technology is vital. This is also one of the areas that providers have the most control over, whether you’re a large health system or an independent practice. Some of the many ways technology can bring relief: 

• Administrative automation, intelligent staffing and scheduling: Relieve the administrative burdens that are a major factor in worker burnout. 

• Recruitment support: Streamline finding, screening, interviewing, hiring and onboarding for hard-to-staff roles. 

• Virtual assistants and chatbots: Handle patient intake, appointment scheduling and routine patient questions. 

• Telehealth appointments and remote monitoring: Increase care capacity, especially in rural and underserved areas. 

• Health, fitness, care and rewards programs: Provide free or low-cost support through phone apps or rewarding healthy activities monitored by smart wearables to help reduce the demand for care from healthcare workers. 

These are just some of the ways technology is already helping workers improve outcomes more efficiently. Are you using them yet? 

In the near future, AI will also likely be able to automate repetitive clinical tasks, support diagnosis, identify skill gaps, personalize training and forecast patient surges and supply bottlenecks. Staying at the forefront of technological advances may be one of the most accessible ways to start supporting the workforce now. 

The highest-hanging fruit: policy reform 

Many of the most impactful solutions require policy reform, which is frustratingly out of our control. However, if there’s any hope of influencing policy, proactively organizing today is the key to laying the foundation for policy reform tomorrow. For those changes that do require policy reform, different parties in the industry may need continue to form broad coalitions to lobby for policy measures that benefit providers, carriers and consumers alike. 

Make the pivot 

This isn’t just a staffing issue. It’s a turning point for the entire healthcare system. The organizations that move first—automating where they can, investing in people where they must and reimagining care delivery—will define the next era of healthcare. The question isn’t whether the shortage will shape your business. It’s whether you’ll shape what comes next. 

Have you felt the impacts of the provider shortage yet? What do you see as the way forward? We’re here to help you transition to new ways of managing workforce and access to care. Get in touch today. 

Key takeaways: 

• Bundling insurance products has evolved from a nice-to-have add-on to a must-have strategy for staying competitive. 

• Consumers now expect bundles that simplify their coverage, save money and fill protection gaps. 

• Agents who tailor bundles to client priorities—convenience, cost or peace of mind—see stronger retention. 

Photo by Robin Stickel on Unsplash 

Burger? Yes, please. 

Fries with that? Why not! 

How about a drink? It might be nice to have something to wash down the burger and fries, but I really just came for the burger. 

What if it was all 15% off if you buy them as a combo? 

Sold. 

Just as with fast food, cross-selling and bundling insurance products has always been a smart move for sales agents. Just like that burger-fries-soda combo, it gives you more opportunities to sell, helps you become a one-stop shop and supports retention, repeat customers and referrals. 

But in today’s market, bundling isn’t just good strategy. It’s a necessity. 

Consumers now demand more value, more convenience and more personalization than ever before. Insurers have responded by using combinations of standalone plans or bundles as a core strategy for retention and cross-selling. If you aren’t doing the same, you risk getting left behind like a burger stand with no fries. 

Consumer demand for bundled products climbs 

Insurance bundling is common practice for homeowners’, auto and life insurances. Here’s why you might want to take a page from their book, no matter the type of insurance you sell. 

A July 2024 Comscore study found that nearly half of homeowners’ insurance quote initiations and more than half of quote submissions in Q4 2023 were for bundled policies. Consumers want the simplicity and perceived savings of having their policies in one place. 

Meanwhile, the 2025 J.D. Power Insurance Shopping Study showed an all-time high in shopping activity, with 33% of shoppers looking to combine auto and homeowners policies. And about one third of all shoppers explicitly sought out bundle deals. 

The trend is clear: consumers expect bundle options, and they actively seek them out. You might be wise to not just offer bundle deals, but to lead with them. 

Why consumers prefer bundled insurance plans 

Bundling isn’t just a gimmick. It directly addresses customer pain points in ways that are meaningful and lasting. 

Remember when bundling was just a nice upsell? Those days are gone. 

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash 

Filling coverage gaps 

Individual supplemental health insurance can include a wide range of coverage: 

• Dental 

• Vision 

• Hearing 

• Hospital indemnity 

• Critical illness 

• Accident 

• Cancer 

• Short-term disability 

• Long-term care 

• Gap (medical gap or supplemental hospital insurance) 

• Telehealth or virtual care add-ons 

The individual supplemental health insurance market continues steady growth, closing in on $10 billion in premiums for 2024. Much of that growth comes from Medicare expansion and consumer demand for products like dental, hospital indemnity and critical-illness coverage.  

Meanwhile, the broader U.S. supplemental health insurance market has grown from $38.58 billion in 2024 and is expected to keep expanding as consumers look for solutions that close gaps in their protection. 

These supplemental products are often sold alongside health plans to address needs that standard coverage doesn’t fill, and, as healthcare costs rise, consumers don’t want to get hit with bills without coverage. If that doesn’t ring a bell with your clients, ask them how much their last surprise dental bill was and watch them cringe. 

Convenience and simplicity 

Bundling can help give consumers the convenient shopping experience they’ve come to expect from companies like Amazon or Uber. For example, Medicare Supplement (Medigap) products are increasingly bundled with dental and vision, especially in rural areas where access to multiple insurers may be limited. 

Bundles can allow for streamlined policy management, simplified claims, improved customer service and even loyalty rewards programs, and they deliver the “one-stop-shop” experience consumers want. Like finding The One that finally got them to close down their dating app account for good, your clients want you to be the whole package. 

Savings and value 

Consumers can be budget-conscious, especially in an era of rising premiums. They’re conditioned to expect discounts when they bring more business to one provider. Bundling discounts remains one of the surest ways to appeal to value-seeking or price-sensitive clients. 

Why insurance agents need to offer bundle options 

For years, customers who purchased bundled coverage were considered “sticky.” They were more loyal and less likely to shop around. But in today’s environment of premium hikes and market volatility, even these loyal customers are comparing deals and switching at higher rates.  

Your solitary plan, sold all by its lonesome self? It’s probably going to remain like that sad pet at the pet store that nobody adopts. Just like people, products are better when they stand together. It will be hard enough for you to compete with a competitive bundle much less no bundle, so you’d best get bundling. 

How to start putting your products together 

The good news is that there are clear strategies you can use to meet demand and strengthen client loyalty. 

Photo by Vardan Papikyan on Unsplash 

1. Discover coverage gaps and needs 

Start with listening. Ask your customers about their coverage gaps and life changes. Use digital tools, customer surveys or face-to-face conversations to discover unmet needs. What combinations of plans would fill those gaps or offer flexible options? 

2. Offer a diverse portfolio of products—or partner up to provide them 

Present products that complement each other, like health insurance plus dental, hospital indemnity or critical illness. You can bundle them for added convenience and consider offering a discount for the bundle. 

When selecting a carrier to work with, pay attention: Do they offer a variety of plans that work well together for the needs of your clients? Do they offer any extra benefits or discounts for clients who enroll in a bundle? 

If you don’t offer a full array of products yourself, partner up to offer complementary products. Customers value convenience, but not necessarily who carries the policy as long as you have their trust. 

3. Get your messaging right 

When recommending combinations of plans, understand what matters most to your customers. And don’t make them dizzy with insurance-speak; instead, put things in terms they understand so they can focus on weighing their options. 

As you narrow down the right plan combination to bundle together, let your clients’ priorities guide what you offer and how you frame the products. 

• Is budget their top concern? 

• Are they worried about risk exposure and unexpected expenses? 

• Do they crave simplicity—everything in one place with one point of contact? 

• Or do they value peace of mind above all else? 

Your messaging should address these core motivations, not just the generic promise of “savings.” 

4. Make it easy 

Convenience can be as valuable as cost savings. In fact, many people would take getting everything they need in one place over shaving a little off the price tag any day. 

• Clearly explain how bundled policies work and why they’re beneficial. 

• Provide easy enrollment options, with the ability to add policies later as needs evolve. 

• Ensure customers can manage all policies, file claims, and get service through a streamlined process. 

5. Offer discounts and loyalty rewards 

Multi-policy discounts are a strong motivator, but don’t stop there. Loyalty rewards—such as premium credits, wellness perks or even customer-appreciation programs—can deepen long-term engagement. Help your clients understand how to make the most of these to help them get invested long-term in their plans and in you. 

When bundling isn’t the answer, try unbundling or more targeted bundling 

Customers don’t want a bundle full of products they’ll never use. Nor does every bundle satisfies every customer. In addition, rising rates for individual policies sometimes erode the cost advantage of bundling, prompting shoppers to reevaluate. In those cases, consider: 

Unbundling: What’s more fun than wrapping a gift? Unwrapping it! Allow customers to mix and match standalone products. Flexibility may be the deciding factor, plus people love building their own, custom sandwich or pizza pie. 

Re-bundling: Create smaller, more targeted bundles that align better with specific customer needs, like pairing hospital indemnity with critical-illness coverage or dental with vision. 

The point isn’t to force every customer into a one-size-fits-all bundle, but to give them options that feel tailored. 

The bottom line 

Bundling has moved from a nice-to-have to a must-have. Consumers actively seek bundles, competitors promote them and the market rewards insurers who deliver it well. 

Insurance agents who adapt now—by identifying gaps, offering complementary products, crafting the right messaging, making it easy for customers and rewarding loyalty—will be better positioned to retain and grow their customer base in a competitive market. 

Those who don’t may find themselves left behind as customers choose agents who make insurance simpler, more affordable and more complete. 

Ready to explore how to bring your products and marketing together into the perfect package? We’ve learned a thing or two that could help you get started. Get in touch. 

 Survey says: it’s grievance time.

According to the 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer Global Report, we’re in a global grievance crisis. Heightened emotions and increased scrutiny have led to low levels of trust for health plans. 

Here’s why: 

• The national average satisfaction score for commercial health plans is 563 on a 1,000-point scale. If plans were graded in school, they’d earn a meager 56.3% score.  

• Only 56% of consumers trust their health insurer to act in their best interests, which means 44% of consumers don’t trust them. Another failing grade. 

• This dissatisfaction and distrust have now boiled over into grievance. As Ranjay Gulati and Alison Beard wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “We have slowly moved from a world of ‘I don’t trust you’ to ‘I hate you.’” 

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash 

The immediate future doesn’t look good for health plans. The federal government has pulled the rug out from under them regarding Affordable Care Act subsidies, Medicaid cuts and Medicare. Carriers also face unprecedented pressure from providers, a rapidly aging population and a strained economy, to name a few challenges—all things outside their control. 
 
In the squeeze from all sides, carriers must now make tradeoffs to remain afloat by revising pricing, cutting benefits, increasing cost-sharing and exiting markets. All these changes are only likely to inflame consumers’ disdain and distrust. Being open and honest about these challenges can help give consumers more context. 

We’re stuck in a battle of consumers vs. carriers 

Esther Perel, my personal relationship goddess, says all relationships have a cycle of connection, disconnection and reconnection. Right now, consumers and carriers are stuck in the disconnection phase. Both consumers and carriers are asking themselves, in the words of Esther, “HOW could they possibly be doing this AGAIN when they know how much it UPSETS me?” 

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash 

Our sense of community has fallen apart 

There’s a lot carriers can do to increase trust and satisfaction with members. McKinsey and other consultants have plenty of ideas about that. But one-to-one and even one-to-many efforts can only get them so far. 

My solution centers around community, which we’re in sore need of as a society still grappling with post-pandemic fallout, loneliness and isolation and remote work. Too few of us mix and mingle with people in general, let alone those outside our bubbles. Retreating from society is bad for our biological wiring.  

Back in our hunter/gatherer days, being excommunicated from the tribe meant sure death. That’s why loneliness is as dangerous to your health as smoking. While technology has made it possible to never leave your house to grocery shop, exercise or work, our brains haven’t caught up with this god-like technology and neither has society. There’s so much change happening at once while the amount of uncertainty and disconnection increases.  

Collective experiences hold the answer

As Bréné Brown says, collective experiences—events shared by a group at the same time—are sacred because “they are so deeply human that they cut through our differences and tap into our hardwired nature…Not only do moments of collective emotion remind us of what is possible between people, but they also remind us what is true about the human spirit: We are wired for connection.” If carriers can create collective experiences that share joy, hope and pain, they can, as Bréné explains, “start to heal the wounds of a traumatized community.” 

Photo by Nicholas Green on Unsplash 

Ways for carriers to create community 

If other downtowns are like Denver, empty storefronts and commercial spaces abound. Carriers can team up with commercial real estate developers and property managers to activate these dead spaces for the community with health and well-being experiences. Of course, carriers need to involve local communities to see what kinds of third spaces they most want and need. 

Here are some thought starters: 

• Convert industrial or large retail spaces into pickleball courts. 

• Create indoor playgrounds and parks for communities to escape the heat or cold. 

• Develop game clubs for puzzles, cards, board games or bingo. 

• Hold free concert series in parks and community areas. 

• Host community dances for families and adults. 

• Offer group therapy or art-making classes to help people process emotions. 

• Create community gardens in areas designated as food deserts or swamps. 

Carriers would ideally offer these activities for free or at an extremely low cost. Lincolns, a hidden speakeasy in Denver, sells everything for $5. In today’s world, where the cost of living continues to skyrocket, $5 for anything, especially anything health and wellness related, feels like a steal. 

The spaces themselves could be a give back to the community so nonprofits could use them for free or capture a portion of the entry fee as a donation for designated days or times. 

Once carriers have re-established a positive reputation in the community, they could gradually introduce educational events around shopping for insurance, understanding how insurance works, learning about Medicare or Medicaid and meeting insurance sales agents. This should be done later so the community investment feels more authentic and less transactional. 

Photo by CDC on Unsplash 

How health insurance companies can give back 

As the number of under- and uninsured Americans climbs, emergency rooms are expected to be hit hard, which will drive costs up in a vicious cycle. Carriers, especially payviders, payers who are also providers, have an opportunity to fill the gap. 

Carriers like UnitedHealthcare, Humana, CVS Health, Elevance and Cigna each own hundreds of provider facilities across the nation via Optum, CenterWell, Oak Street, Carelon and MDLIVE. Here’s how they could use them: 

• Offer a limited number of free virtual visits to uninsured people once a month. 

• Turn their primary care facilities into free community clinics for one day a month or quarter. 

• Host a biannual health fair offering free screenings and vaccines once or twice a year. 

If providers have medical buses or vans, they could offer pop-up screenings for the most at-risk populations in rural areas and for the counties with the highest Social Vulnerability Index scores to provide the most critical screenings like cholesterol, colorectal cancer, diabetes and breast cancer.

You can’t do the same thing expecting different results 

It’s time to take a different approach rooted in shared humanity—the heart of great healthcare. Putting not just members but also communities at the center of their efforts can help carriers lower the temperature, regain trust and improve satisfaction with members and consumers at large. 

It won’t be easy, but worthwhile things never are. That’s why we’re here to help get the hard things done right. Let’s connect on branding and marketing community spaces. 

Key takeaways: 

• Companies, including Amazon, Him & Hers, Google and Apple, are entering the $5 trillion healthcare market. 

• These companies are disrupting the way healthcare works, with same-day virtual appointments, upfront pricing and using the latest AI technology. 

• Traditional healthcare can keep up by creating convenience, leaning into AI and focusing on what makes it unique.  

Are companies like Amazon going to make healthcare as easy as ordering same-day delivery? It’s no surprise that retailers including Amazon, CVS Health, Walgreens and even tech firms like Google and Apple are breaking into the healthcare market to try and get a piece of the $5 trillion healthcare pie.  

Amazon has jumped into the healthcare industry with both feet by purchasing One Medical for $4 billion. Now Prime members can subscribe to the service to chat or have a video appointment with a doctor for health issues like the cold and flu, UTIs, diabetes, skin conditions and more. They can also visit a clinic in person if they live in a major metropolitan area.  

It’s not just the heavy hitters getting in the healthcare game. New companies, including Hims & Hers and Ro, have apps that offer quick solutions to things like weight loss, ED treatment, birth control, anxiety issues, hair loss and more.  

I went to one of these sites, answered a few questions online and had it sent off for a doctor to review so I could get a prescription for a popular weight-loss drug right in my inbox. Was I bitter that they told me I could lose up to 32 pounds even though I’m technically within the normal weight range? Yes. Did I love the convenience of being able to get a prescription without stepping into a doctor’s office? Also yes.  

These new healthcare models are disrupting how healthcare works. What could that mean for the old guard of healthcare companies and providers?  

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash 

How new healthcare companies are changing healthcare 

1. It’s all about convenience

Online healthcare is changing what consumers consider to be convenient. Virtual visits, 24/7 access, home pre scription delivery and upfront pricing are setting new expectations. Now we don’t have to wait to get what we want. Patients used to one-click shopping online expect the same ease when booking an appointment or filling a prescription. 

2. Price is no longer a guessing game 

One major issue with healthcare right now is there’s no clear pricing. Is that primary care visit going to be $15 or $150? Who knows? How much will that X-ray cost? Your guess is as good as mine.  

Many of these new healthcare startups are charging a flat fee up front, with the price listed on their website. With transparent and often lower pricing, many people would rather pay a $50 fee online than risk a surprise $180 bill from a primary care visit their insurance didn’t cover. 

3. New tech and AI are changing the game  

Amazon’s massive logistics network, Ro’s digital-first approach and Hims & Hers’ direct-to-consumer model all show what technology can do at scale. These companies lean on data and AI to make the entire experience simpler and more personalized. 

Ro and Hims & Hers use algorithms to match patients with the right providers, medications or wellness plans, so, despite the easy digital experience, care still feels personalized.  

Amazon is using data and AI to: 

• Streamline prescription refills 

• Anticipate patient needs 

• Speed up scheduling and triage 

• Automate medical-record processing so doctors spend less time on paperwork 

On top of that, AI-powered chat gives patients quick answers to common health questions, cutting down on wait times and letting providers handle the tough cases.  

Leaning too far into AI can have its drawbacks. We’ve all been stuck in an online chat with an AI machine that doesn’t provide answers and is doing everything in its robot power to keep you from talking to a real person. Ever try talking to an actual customer representative at Amazon? Not going to happen.  

While AI is far from perfect, and many tech companies lean too hard on robots to interact with customers, it is constantly adapting. And companies who start out tech friendly or have a tech-based approach will have the advantage when it comes to optimizing AI and data to level up their process.  

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash 

What does this mean for traditional healthcare? 

Obviously, these healthcare solutions can only go so far. Until these new companies can figure out how to take your gallbladder out online, there’s still a need for conventional healthcare models. But with the changing healthcare tide, providers, pharmacies and insurance companies will need to prove they can adapt or possibly be swept out to sea. Here’s how they can keep from going underwater.  

1. Lean into creating convenience 

People like things to be easy and sometimes visiting the doctor can be anything but. Booking an appointment, getting in to see the doctor on time and not waiting forever once you arrive can all be frustrating. These inconveniences are what drive people to easier options or cause them to skip visiting the doctor altogether.  

Healthcare companies can stay competitive by making care feel as seamless as other everyday services, with services like:  

• Automatic scheduling: If the provider wants to do a follow up, they should work to book that for the patient automatically. This is where tech can come in handy, use scheduling data to provide options and have a patient choose one that works for them.   

• Virtual visits and home based screenings: Up the convenience factor by allowing patients to enjoy visits from the comfort of their own home for easy to diagnosis issues. They can also do screenings at home for things like colon screenings, perimenopause, STIs and more.  

• Shorter wait times: When patients do need to come in, building in time buffers and automating paperwork to finetune the schedule so there are shorter wait times can help make the process easier when people do need to visit the doctor.  

The more providers simplify the experience, the easier it is to keep patients from turning to digital-first newcomers. 

2. Pick up the digital pace  

There’s been a lot of talk about AI in healthcare but what does that mean? Traditional healthcare can take a page from the new disrupters and use AI to work better.  

AI isn’t just hype—it’s changing how healthcare works. As a traditional provider, you can get a peek at what disruptors and other healthcare companies are doing with AI and copy what works.  

Personalized treatment plans. AI can analyze a patient’s full history, genetics, lifestyle and socioeconomic issues so their doctor can see their whole healthcare picture and pick the treatments that work for them. Here’s a few ways AI can help: 

• Providers can see data from wearables like the Apple watch or Fitbits and use a patient’s data to track their progress.  

• They can use AI predictive models to focus on patients who may be more at-risk. 

• They can also use social care coordination to connect patients to the resources they need. 

24/7 virtual assistants. Patients can get questions answered or schedule visits anytime, reducing wait times and making care more convenient. 

Balance automation with real people. Don’t allow the new AI gods to take over, patients still need access to real people when the situation calls for it. For every internet visit or automated call, ensure you provide info on how patients can talk to a real person if they need to.  

3. Be clear about costs  

Other businesses understand that people want to know how much something costs before they use it. For some reason, healthcare has been able to ignore that. Consumers may be reluctant to visit their doctor or use their healthcare because they don’t want to be slapped with a big old bill after the fact.  

Take a note from the digital healthcare leaders by being clear about costs upfront. Patients are tired of surprise bills and confusing pricing. This is where AI could be beneficial, when someone schedules a visit, you could use AI to estimate costs upfront, based on the person’s insurance and run down costs if additional bloodwork or screens are needed. Clear, simple explanations of what care will cost, not after the fact, but before, will build trust and make people less bitter when it comes time to pay. 

4. Understand what makes you stand out  

Not all doctors are created equal, and finding a doctor you like creates loyalty. Much like getting the perfect hairdresser, people are willing to go out of their way when they have a doctor they trust.  

Bedside manner plays a big part in how much people like and trust their doctors. Over half of patients are looking for qualities like compassion and patience in their doctor. Over 59% of people consider personality and a good doctor-patient relationship to be the most important factor in their doctor.  

Traditional providers bring something to the table that disruptors can’t match: a local presence, trusted expertise and long-standing patient relationships. By focusing on personalized, in-person care and joining the community, they have that personal, local advantage compared to the cold impersonality of the digital model.  

Creating a sense of community with in-person events and local outreach can go a long way in establishing yourself as the more community friendly option.  

Are you ready for the future of healthcare?  

The future of healthcare probably won’t be all digital or all traditional—it’s going to be a mix of both. Patients will want the convenience of online care for things like prescriptions, check-ins and minor issues, but they’ll still turn to hospitals, specialists and in-person providers for their big needs.  

For traditional healthcare companies, the real opportunity is blending the best of both worlds: making digital access easier, pricing clearer and logistics better, while holding on to the human touch and community trust that new players can’t replace.  

As always, being able to communicate what sets you apart and how your healthcare is adapting to fit your patients’ needs is important. Luckily, that’s what we do best. Contact us to learn how.  

When you think of video production, you probably imagine Hollywood or Times Square. It’s only natural to see Los Angeles and New York City as go-to video production hubs. L.A.’s where I got my start in video production. Over nine years of working as production assistant to production manager to producer. It’s where I learned the ropes. But I found my community in Colorado. It’s smaller and more niche and why I’ve fallen in love with the family-feel of local production. I hope you will too. 

Why You Should Shoot Your Next Video Locally

Heinrich’s clients span the country, but we’re based in Denver. If we’re able to shoot and edit your video here, we can save you time and money, two things marketing executives never have enough of. The in-person interaction of being on location and even side-by-side with an editor in the edit bay cannot be replicated virtually.  

We can also take a hybrid approach to save on time or costs. For example, we could work with a crew who is local to your business, fly out for the shoot and then complete the post-production here in Colorado. This helps us maximize your dollars by keeping the heart of the production local. We adapt based on your needs and what’s best for your project.  

Why You Should Consider Colorado for Your Next Video Production

As I said earlier, Colorado’s video production community is like a family. It’s collaborative and generous, full of camaraderie you won’t find in larger production hubs where individuals and production companies can come across as cutthroat. In Colorado, we realize that there’s plenty of work to go around and someone else’s success isn’t our failure. The talent here is top notch and full of people who came from larger hub cities like me. We’ve only continued to enhance our skills and capabilities, and we’re helping each other to do that. 

Because Colorado is such a beautiful state, we have so many shooting potentials, whether in nature or in the cities. Our climate means we can shoot in all four seasons, which opens even more creative avenues for storytelling. Our square state means exponential possibility for your video’s visuals.   

Last, Colorado sits practically in the exact middle between four production hubs: L.A. on the West Coast to New York on the East Coast; Vancouver in the north and Louisiana in the south. That’s why so much talent has moved here and why we have state-of-the-art studios for green-screen production and animation. 

Colorado-based Production Partners We Love

Our creative team has dreamed up just about every kind of video that can possibly be made whether it’s two- or three-dimensional animation or a documentary-style profile and everything in between. We collaborate with local production partners to bring our ideas to life. Here are some of the local talents we work with and why we love them. 

• Lumenati: The cool kids on the block who rock it every single time. Their in-house team of producers, editors, directors, and cinematographers are experienced, organized and a blast to work with. You can also get a custom tattoo from a licensed artist the next time you’re at their studio reviewing a video cut. 

• Postmodern Company: Theproduction company who feels like family. They’re your one-stop shop made up of professionals who know the business inside and out. Their studio in RiNo is outfitted with an audio recording studio so you can bring your VO and SFX dreams to life with some of the best audio engineers in Denver.   

• Friends of Mine: These guys are pros in the field of motion of design. Jeremy and Adam are simultaneously hardworking and easy going. They helped bring our 2023 video campaign, One for the Road, to life for Wyoming Department of Transportation. 

• Flying Giant Productions: A husband-and-wife team who learned production in New York City. Mel is a female director and director of photography who is well respected and singular in everything she does.  

• Honest Films: A long-time video partner of Heinrich thanks to their kindness coupled with creativity. They help us to bring many of our animations to life. 

Best Practices for Local Video Production

First, having a working knowledge of video production is critical. Inside major hubs, video production is just part of that city’s culture—people just know more, even those who don’t directly work in the video industry. Outside those hubs, however, the working knowledge is much lower, and that’s OK. That’s what your agency is for. When you get into video projects for the first time, there’s a steep learning curve. There’s so much that goes into making even a 15-second video: storyboards, talent, music, locations, heavy machinery, multiple crews. There’s a lot to be mindful of—it’s not as simple as using your phone—which is why having the right agency partner is so important. As the director of video production, it’s my job to ensure clients know how video works, and video production is like a four-dimensional puzzle in space and time. 

Next, do what’s right for your specific video project. At Heinrich that means doing what’s in the best interest of our clients and the creative approach. Every video is different. Maybe that means filming on a smartphone. The cameras and capabilities get better all the time. Still, a great video producer will take it to the next level and make sure the subject is mic’d properly to capture the best sound. Maybe we’re shooting something original or creating animated illustrations with recorded audio. We always come back to what’s best for the client and the work. 

Something that’s easy to overlook is safety, but it’s essential. Video production can be a dangerous job— there’s heavy machinery, electricity, cords everywhere, long hours, back-to-back days—it’s all too easy to get hurt when people get sleepy or hot or an accident happens. Producers keep everyone safe, well fed and rested. It’s a key part of setting up the production right from the start. 

Heinrich’s Approach

We believe in supporting our local talent and economy. It’s why we continue to advocate for state film tax incentives to both support our local production companies and freelance filmmakers and spur economic activity. Film production doesn’t just support the film industry, it supports caterers, drivers, construction, you name it. These film projects can generate millions of dollars in revenue for the state and create jobs too. We’ve lost out on major projects to neighboring states like Arizona, Utah and Wyoming because our incentives as so small. That’s why I’ve picketed at the state capitol and why I’ll continue to keep this goal close to my heart. 

We’re also a kind and collaborative partner to our clients and our production vendors. For example, I worked in video production as a freelancer, so I understand where our freelancers come from. Our agency treats people with fairness and kindness while keeping our clients’ best interests in mind. Another example of our kindness in action was during the pandemic, which suddenly halted a majority local video production. We signed the Creator Alliance, a statewide initiative to keep agency and brand video production local. It meant a lot to the community and to me personally. 

See It to Believe It

This reel gives you a quick round up of our projects overall in healthcare, finance, retail, government and more. We have so many amazing video projects I could talk about, so I’ll just mention a few of my recent favorites and give you a deeper dive.  

Humana Alliance Partnership 

We worked with Humana and our production partner Lumenati to feature the stories of three members: Linda, Georgette and Margo. We pulled back the curtain on the production at the beginning of the video, which added an extra layer of intimacy with the viewer. You see the crew adjusting mics and helping the members get settled. Then we get to know these women and how Humana and their agents helped connect them to doctors who really understand, listen and care for them as people—not just as patients.  

Kroger holiday gift card spots 

I love how fun these holiday spots are with their word play and animations. Our creative director, Rob McPhee, creates the majority of the visuals and illustrations himself. “Smokin’ hot” with a smoker grill for Father’s Day. With heart-shaped drones and hot air balloons, love is literally in the air for Valentine’s Day. Steaming cups of cocoa, coffee, cider and the notorious pumpkin spice latte make fall feel cozy. 

Wyoming Governor’s Council on Impaired Driving (GCID) 

Our creative team came up a campaign for the Wyoming GCID this summer built around double meanings of familiar phrases often associated with drinking and drugs like One for the Road, Killer Combo and Bottoms Up. The ads feature three-dimensional animation by Friends of Mine that puts the viewer in the driver’s seat to show the natural consequences of driving impaired—blurred vision, swerving on the road, red and blue flashing police lights, a rollover crash. We designed this show-don’t-tell approach for the strong-willed, independent thinkers of Wyoming instead of finger wagging them.  

Whether you’re trying to tell individual stories, spread some cheer or save lives, we’ll help you craft a video that packs a punch creatively and commercially. We don’t just make cool videos; we make videos that advance your goals and objectives. Because we’re born for business. 

What was old has a way of becoming new again. The oldest form of mass media communication—audio—continues to resurge through music streaming and podcasting. More on-demand audio content than ever before also means more advertising opportunities for brands to be in audiences’ ears and on their minds. 

Why Audio is Having a Moment

The rise of technology has breathed new life into audio. Better, less expensive recording equipment has democratized the broadcasting experience. What used to take full-fledged production teams now can be done in a living room. On the audience side, smartphones mean virtually endless content options for any type of music or podcast on demand, on the go and for free. The ultimate time hack, audio makes it possible for audiences to do two things at once: exercise and listen, do chores and listen, drive and listen. 

So many options mean there’s something for everyone, whether you’re into history, economics, wellness or dating podcasts or jazz, Afro futurism, folktronica or musical theater. That competitive landscape for audiences’ attention demands higher quality content that stands out.  

The overall experience of streaming music and podcasts is better too. Gone are the days of 5-minute radio ad breaks. With only one or two ads per break now, they aren’t so painful, which means audiences listen. And because they’re more relevant to the content and/or the audience, the audience is more likely to listen as I’ll explain next. 

Why Audio Advertising Works

Today’s audio occurs mostly through headphones whether audiences are listening at home or on the go. That’s just about as intimate an experience as you can have with advertising: the sound isn’t just in your ears, it’s in your head. This intimacy makes it feel less like mass communication and more like one-to-one communication. It’s highly personal, like the message is only for you and you alone. That kind of emotional connection packs a powerful punch.  

Let’s talk numbers next.  

• Audio boasts 56% higher attentiveness and 8% higher brand recall than video.  

• According to Pandora, only 23% of listeners skip through ads on their platform. 

• Host-read ads in a podcast environment create, on average, a 50% uptick in purchases and recommendations. The added trust factor of a host makes the ad experience more seamless, trustworthy and, ultimately, more impactful. 

• Podcasts are cost effective with an average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) around $23 for a 60-second spot. Compare that to broadcast television that starts at $25 and could be as high as $45. 

Like other digital media channels, streaming apps and podcasts offer advertisers multiple targeting options from demographics and geographies to language targeting, consumer behaviors and mindsets and lookalike and predictive audiences. The rich first-party data of in-app listening enables advertisers to layer campaigns with relevance. If cookies ever go away, this first-party data will become increasingly important. With audio advertising, you have a chance to get the right message in front of the right audience effectively at a low cost. 

How to Make Your Audio Ads Stand Out

Knowing your audience is king in advertising, whether you’re creating video or audio spots. If you can’t appeal to your audience, you can’t get your message across. Because audio is an especially intimate medium, it’s vital to make those ads personal (for example, referencing local landmarks or cultural events.)  

But don’t think audio is sound only. Many apps offer the option of display banners or full video interstitials that run when a user interacts with their device. Compelling visuals can help tell your brand story while capturing the eyes and imaginations of your listeners. An immersive brand experience can also help you differentiate your brand from other audio advertisers. 

Finally, get creative with how you tell audio stories. You don’t always need a host to read a spot or to hire a voice actor. For example, Heinrich worked with the Wyoming Department of Transportation and the Wyoming Governor’s Council on Impaired Driving for a summer 2023 campaign to end impaired driving called One for the Road. The campaign turns common drinking phrases on their head to show the perils of driving while impaired. 

Rather than lecture listeners about drinking and driving dangers, our creative team put listeners directly into a real-life story told through sound effects: a bartender’s last call, the clinking of glasses, a key fob unlocking a car, the engine’s turnover, radio playing country music and, finally, a crash. With hardly any words, we conveyed the negative, natural consequences of impaired driving. And it worked. The ads garnered 1.5 million completed listens, that’s the number of times the ad played from start to finish, not just a partial play. That campaign was born for business—in this case, the business of changing minds and saving lives. It shows the power of rethinking a legacy medium for today’s technologies and audiences. 

American sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson said, “The real problem with humanity is the following: we have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and god-like technology.” Perhaps nothing encapsulates this theory more than generative AI, a technology likened in power to fire, electricity and the Internet. Yet, for all AI’s promise, it seems the tech giants are determined to, once again, optimize the wrong things.

Dubious Optimization #1: Speedy Communication

It’s tempting to think communication is simple—I mean, two-year-olds can do it—but it’s also insanely complex, especially under challenging circumstances. Getting communication right when so much is a stake is like trying to land a jumbo jet on an islet.

Our sentences and paragraphs, no matter their length, are icebergs—much of the subtext and context is underwater. Listen to an episode of Esther Perel’s incredible podcast, Where Should We Begin?, and you will, in minutes, understand the value of slowing down and unpacking words and phrases to uncover their hidden meanings.

We’ve already accelerated communication with the advent of the Internet, social media and mobile technology. We’re never not connected, and yet hate crimes are on the rise and we’re more divided as a country. Generative AI makes it possible to hurl words and images at each other faster than ever before. How is that going to impact our amygdalas?

What we need instead is to better see, hear and understand each other. That takes more dialogue, more patience and, more than anything, more time. From a marketing perspective, it takes getting to know the deep and complex histories, values and aspirations of our audiences rather than merely chucking the products and services at them we want them to buy. We can’t condescend to them or merely inundate them with more content at ever increasing speeds.

Dubious Optimization #2: Personalized Echo Chambers

Personalization isn’t a new feature of AI, but the stakes have dramatically increased. AI promises to unlock personalization in ways that wouldn’t have been imaginable before, whether that’s translating in real time or creating bespoke content experiences for a single person in seconds.

Our echo chambers have already been reduced, thanks to algorithms that get better and better at curating our searches and feeds. What happens when the size of that echo chamber gets reduced to one?

Belonging is a fundamental human need. In prehistoric times, getting excommunicated from the tribe meant assured death, which is why we are hard-wired to belong. Even though contemporary society makes living solo easier than ever, we still need community. We are a social species. But technology continues to threaten our pro-social tendencies, keeping us parked at home in front of our screens with a false sense of connection and community.

As an English major, one of my favorite things about college was the ability to talk to my professors and peers about books and our writing. It turned what were previously solo activities into group activities. Those discussions created a level of depth, excitement and nuance I never could have gotten alone. That’s what Èmile Durkheim called collective effervescence.

As a society, we are starved for shared joy. That’s one reason Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has been such a box office success. Viewers aren’t just going to the movies, they’re ritualizing a collective experience. Decked out in head-to-toe pink, they create “communal delight and catharsis” as the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg explained.

Marketers should think about how to bring people together to create a shared sense of belonging. We should aim to make the sum of our campaigns greater than the individual parts. We should make work that connects and grows rather than isolates and shrinks.

Dubious Optimization #3: Removing Friction

Most of us—except for Buddhists—see struggle and pain as things we can and should avoid. Many technological advancements are rooted in trying to eradicate friction. Dating apps remove the fear and uncertainty of dating. Amazon makes shopping as simple as “add to cart.” Google Maps makes it possible to never learn your city’s layout.

But friction is essential to doing our best work, living our most meaningful lives and making the most impact on the world around us. This is what licensed marriage and family therapist and author Vienna Pharaon calls constructive conflict.

Tension makes things interesting. This is why Kara Swisher’s and Scott Galloway’s hit podcast Pivot works so well. They see things differently, argue and, on occasion, see eye to eye. They challenge each other and within that tension, we as listeners get to make up our own minds. There’s space to hold complexity and contradiction, which allows us to see how two things can be true at the same time. It enables a both/and point of view instead of forcing an either/or binary.

The creative process is historically filled with friction, which means it’s slow and inefficient. Agonizing over concepts and forms and details keep creators up at night or lost in thought in the shower. Generative AI promises to fast track the creative process, but a key question remains: does it? What does creativity without pressure look like?

It’s easy to forget that challenges are often critical to success. Where would Michael Jordan be if he wasn’t considered too short to play for his high school varsity team? What would have happened to Steve Jobs if he hadn’t been forced out of Apple in the mid-1980s? What would Taylor Swift sing about if her relationships were all perfect? Intense heat and pressure create diamonds, literally and figuratively.

Big tech needs to better embrace friction, and marketers can help lead the way. We can help reframe friction as a positive. We can help big tech be more comfortable with being uncomfortable, grappling with ambiguity in a way that walks the tightrope with grace and humanity to produce better work.

There’s a Better Way Forward

Big tech should focus on what people can’t do at all or well, especially when it comes to the most pressing issues of our time: climate change, mass extinction, energy scarcity, inequality, preventable death. To be fair, Google’s DeepMind developed AlphaFold, which can accurately predict three-dimensional protein structures. This matters because, as the building blocks of life, the way proteins are structured dictates how they function. Take the coronavirus spike protein, for example. The spikes allow the virus to attach to and then infect other cells. If we can accurately predict the structure of proteins, we can better fight disease and develop new medications more efficiently.

But that’s just one project even if it is an astonishing one. Maybe the tech companies and governments realize they need to tackle bigger, more pressing issues and be more responsible. The recent voluntary commitments are a start to managing AI risks. Still, we can’t afford to cause more problems than we solve with AI. It’s time big tech takes a moment to reassess what is easy to optimize and, instead, asks what it needs to optimize.

As marketers, we have an unprecedented opportunity to influence big tech because we’ve been marrying human insight with data for decades. We know how to go beyond the screen to gather qualitative data. We understand what makes people tick and what resonates with them. We know how to craft stories that bring people together. Now more than ever, what we do matters.

#generativeAI #bigtech #optimization #marketing

The novelist Milan Kundera said, “Business has only two functions—marketing and innovation.” With the rise of generative AI, those two functions might seem more like one. There’s overlap to be sure, but my three decades at Heinrich have taught me that you can’t drive growth without deepening customer relationships.

The numbers people might be tempted to scale growth only with AI. The hype says generative AI can make marketing faster and easier than ever before thanks to tools like ChatGPT or DALL-E that can create content in seconds. Marketers will, in theory, be freed from the blocking and tackling of making and promoting things.

But a key question remains: is it possible to fast-track customer relationships with AI? We’re about to find out. I’m a numbers guy by training, but I worry about the people side of the business. That’s why Heinrich takes a measured approach, balancing growth and humanity through smart optimization.

Smart optimization means efficiency rooted in strategy

The number of new generative AI tools shows no signs of stopping, but brands need to be disciplined when it comes to testing and implementing new AI tools. Otherwise, you’re just throwing away your precious marketing dollars.

Before you start using AI, establish clear objectives by asking these questions:

• What are you trying to accomplish and why?
• What’s working well with your current marketing strategy and tactics and why?
• What’s not working well, and how might it be fixed?
• Where can automation or AI support your goals?
• Will you be able to test and measure it?
• What safety, copyright and compliance risks might AI pose to your brand or business model?
• Can you learn from others’ wins and fails?

You’ve got to start with strategy to know why, how and when you can leverage AI.

Start with data analytics and research

Great marketing is rooted in understanding. Agencies need to know their clients’ business as well as their clients’ customers.

Research and data can give you valuable information about both, but only if you know how to translate it into a cohesive story. Many brands have a ton of data they can’t make sense of because it’s in disconnected platforms and formats. AI can help you cut and slice your data in new ways so you can discover new connections and insights.

AI can help you make predictions when it comes to customer behavior. If you’re a retail brand, you can track which transactions happen when and where. This helps you anticipate trends and shifts in buying behavior before they occur. You’ll shorten the data-analytics cycle and go to market faster with new marketing campaigns and efforts. When you know the why behind the data, you can optimize your marketing plans.

Find the right personalization balance

According to a Salesforce report, 66% of customers expect companies to understand their unique needs and expectations while 52% expect offers to always be personalized. McKinsey promises personalization as one of the great advancements of AI on marketing to enhance unique language, imagery and messaging at scale instantly. AI developers need to balance the kind of personalization that drives results against the level of personalization consumers want. Where on the spectrum from empathetic to creepy will AI-driven personalization fall?

Snapchat’s new My AI raised concern around both safety and user privacy, resulting in 75% one-star reviews from users who called it scary and wanted it gone. AI might not be the growth driver big tech thought it would be. What matters now and moving forward is how consumers react to it. In Snapchat’s case, AI personalization was a brand detractor. If you don’t understand the emotional connections you have with consumers, you risk losing those same connections you spent time and dollars to build.

It comes down to people

Last year seems like the old days now, but brands can’t take a freewheeling, anything-goes attitude toward AI. Smart optimizations focused on incremental improvements can help you navigate changes without wasting time and money. You’ll be able to truly measure which tools get you the most performance improvement. Your customers won’t feel blindsided with new features that feel invasive or off-putting. You’ll have the insight you need to shift gears efficiently.

You can’t care only about the numbers. At Heinrich, we gut-check our data-based assumptions. We ensure people remain part of the equation at the beginning, middle and end. Because we’re not trying to market to algorithms—we’re marketing to people.

#AI #marketing #brand

The proliferation of digital-communications channels means more inundation for today’s consumers. As brands have increased the quantity of their messages, consumers have gotten more adept at ignoring them, especially those they find irrelevant and inauthentic.

I like to think about brand marketing like fly fishing. As a brand, you’re casting your fly into the river, hoping to interest a fish. As a consumer, you’re a smart fish. You’re not going to get fooled by just any fly. It’s got to look, feel and smell like a real insect. The brands that offer the truly irresistible fly will catch the most fish.

The brands that effectively communicate their humanity stand out. Here’s why.

Understand Brand Humanity

Consumers are just people. This goes for individual consumers as well as business consumers. While it’s obvious, it’s also easy to forget, especially when operational efficiency, profits, data and technology are thrown into the mix. All that matters to be sure, but when you lose sight of your audience, your brand’s humanity falters.

People want to do business with people who know, understand and respect them. They don’t want to feel crushed by processes, sucked dry by bureaucratic policies or pummeled by robotic messages. To truly empathize with your audience, you need to understand what they care most about, how they want to be interacted with and how they want to be seen, understood and respected. That takes time, and it takes doing your homework continually. It’s not a one-and-done situation because people change.

Today’s digital world—and sometimes even the analog one—feels more and more inauthentic and robotic. Often, we see only curated views. While that can be attractive at first glance, it’s like being on a perpetual first date. It’s not real enough. It doesn’t ring true to our daily experiences that showcase the range of human emotions and ideas.

On the flip side, when a brand is unapologetically human, we can’t help but notice. Take REI’s commitment to the environment. Obviously, the outdoors are essential to its business. People can’t buy hiking boots or kayaks if there isn’t a natural environment in which to enjoy those items. Their mission—that a life outdoors is a life well lived—is bigger than boots and boats. It’s a message about the transformational power of nature that’s resonated with consumers since 1938. They don’t just sell things, they sell meaning. That’s as human as it gets.

Bringing Your Brand’s Humanity to Life

Think about your favorite hotel and why you love it. Chances are, it’s not for the technology, it’s for the people and the experience they give you. They are emotionally intelligent. The front-desk attendant can tell if you’ve had a rough journey to get there. The concierge can suss out if you want a night out on the town or an intimate romantic dinner. They’re curious about you. They bring some originality and maybe even some humor to the conversation to keep it interesting and build a relationship.

Great brands do the same thing. They aim to get to the essence of their consumers’ emotions. They tap into deeper insights to articulate what was previously unarticulated in a way that resonates most. Then they check in to see if they got it right and adjust as needed.

Humor and stories are two areas to focus on as well. A new study by Cornell shows that humans outperform AI when it comes to humor two to one. Humor can be many things: subversive, surprising, delightful, illuminating, profound. What it is most is human.

The same goes with stories. We learn best through story. That’s why myth, allegory, fairy tales, novels and films are so powerful. We do better with small, concrete moments vs. huge abstractions and numbers because details are more relatable to us. Brands that lean into story give consumers an easy point of connection. That could be the story behind a product or service, of your employees or of your customers.

Speaking of story, Storytellers is one of my all-time favorite Heinrich projects. It features video testimonials of four different Medicare Advantage members: Van, Georgette and Judy and Duane (who are married). Viewers get their personal histories and experiences as Medicare Advantage members and patients. Van talks about his past as a long-haul trucker, how bad knees took him off the road but how he’s reclaimed his identity as a school bus driver thanks to his healthcare plan and providers. Georgette’s vivaciousness comes through in her bold fashion choices and Zumba moves. Judy and Duane’s marriage, full of sweetness and humor, is made better by better health. I can’t say how many times I’ve watched them, and they still bring tears to my eyes every time.

Don’t Outsource Humanity to Artificial Intelligence

Silicon Valley might be touting the promises of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI), but brands need to be cautious, especially when it comes to messaging. Right now, gen AI is like generic verbal oatmeal—bland and a minimally viable product. A flattening or deadening effect happens to the language. It lacks nuance. Prompting hacks like “in the style of” might work well for famous authors, but they probably won’t work as well for brands.

Brands that do decide to outsource their creative to gen AI risk devaluing and dehumanizing their brands. I see a parallel between gen AI and direct mail marketing a couple of decades ago. It used to be about quantity and frequency, basically just blanketing geographies and hoping for the best. Today, it’s an ineffective and ill-informed strategy. You might also risk getting key information wrong, infringing on others’ copyrights or perpetuating bias.

Great Brands—and Agencies—Put Their People First

People are a company’s greatest capital resource. Today’s business leaders need to understand what people do well and what technology does well. The goal shouldn’t be to replace people but to create a complementary relationship. Technology helps automate repetitive tasks, support research and analyze data. People bring their emotional intelligence, originality and sense of humor. The rapid pace of change demands transparency, especially around strategy and process as well as empathy and foresight. At Heinrich, we believe in teeing up our staff for future success, whether that future is with us or another company, because we believe in honing our skills. That dedication shows our respect for our craft and it’s how we celebrate it. Every. Day. Creative.

Marketing efforts are more scrutinized today than ever. There are also more channels than ever before. There’s a paradox at play: more risk, but more opportunity too. Brands need to know how to build the right strategy to meet consumers in the right places at the right times to move the needle. To do that as effectively and efficiently as possible, brands need an agency partner with omnichannel expertise.

What Omnichannel Marketing is and Why it Matters to Your Brand

Omnichannel marketing makes the best use of all available channels to connect with consumers on their journeys. It combines traditional and digital marketing into a holistic approach based on consumer needs and business objectives. It examines which channels are best at different points in the consumer journey for an integrated campaign. With an integrated campaign, each channel and consumer touchpoint reinforce the others so you can maximize your efforts, budget and results.

Today’s channel landscape is constantly changing, especially on the digital side. There’s always a new platform to join or features to explore. Brands can’t take a one-size-fits-all or check-the-box approach to channels. Each campaign needs to start with the consumer journey, data and business objectives. Once you have these outlined, you can build a custom omnichannel strategy that elevates your brand and your products or services.

Why Brands Need Agencies with Omnichannel Expertise

As the marketing channel ecosystem continues to fragment, it can be tempting to piecemeal campaigns across different channel-specific agencies. However, that can create a fragmented, inconsistent consumer experience with different agencies working in silos or even at cross purposes. The best way to maintain brand and messaging consistency is with a single agency who has deep omnichannel knowledge and proven results.

With a holistic plan under a single agency, brands get a global view of their efforts and are better positioned to connect the dots on their campaign and customer data. They can better optimize the entire plan instead of just its legs. Rather than start from a channel point of view, brands can start from the consumer’s point of view to create an overarching strategy. It’s about giving consumers what they need and want, which creates better relationships, while achieving business objectives.

What to Look for in an Omnichannel Agency Partner

It goes without saying that an omnichannel agency partner needs to be an expert in both traditional and digital channels. They need to have the diversity of expertise and experience to pull the campaign off. Here’s what to look for.

Data Expertise and Insights

Without insights or cohesive narrative, data is just a bunch of numbers. Brands have more data than ever at their fingertips, yet most don’t know how to unlock the narratives buried inside it, whether that’s demographic, financial or engagement data. Your omnichannel agency partner should be able to examine all the data you have and provide even more context and understanding with third-party data-service providers. They should be able to humanize the data to uncover consumer mindsets and behavior patterns. How do they feel? What makes them tick? How do they shop? Brands need an agency partner who can help them think through their data and bring an outside perspective to it too.

Rooted in Strategy

It’s easy to just start making and deploying things. With an omnichannel approach, you first need to step back to move forward. Omnichannel agencies should be experts at marrying consumer needs with business goals. They should take deep, ongoing dives into the industry category, business model, specific brand and consumers. From here, they can develop a solid strategic framework that ties everything together. This level of deep understanding is like a tree’s taproot. The campaign strategy becomes the tree trunk, and the channels the branches. Without deep roots, the whole tree crashes to the ground.

Measurement, Attribution, Evaluation and Testing Capabilities

Omnichannel agency partners must be able to prove their effectiveness. They need to know how they will measure the plan’s objectives and which metrics are the best to do so. They need to be able to successfully attribute increases in reach and revenue to their efforts. They need to know not only what’s working or not but why and how to optimize moving forward. They need to be able to effectively test which elements of a plan work best.

Born for Business in Theory and Practice

It’s one thing to talk about omnichannel strategy and another to execute it. At Heinrich, we do both. We’re passionate students of our clients’ businesses and dedicated to building relationships that last. We take the time to dig in to understand our clients, their goals and their consumers’ needs. We have the processes and tools to bring everything together, from strategy to execution, deployment to evaluation. We lead our clients with an eye toward the future. At Heinrich, we don’t just do work that’s creative; we do work that gets results. That’s why we’re born for business—your business.

#marketingstrategy #marketingagency

Uncertainty, it’s the ever-present excuse to shy away from trying something new with your brand and marketing. Whether it’s global current affairs or internal company concerns, the lack of predictability in the world makes it intimidating to try novel creative concepts. But uncertainty should drive creative exploration rather than limit it. Keeping your marketing team ready to try new things, think on their feet, and move forward with well-planned ideas keeps your brand adaptable so that it can thrive in a world of constant change. The process that’s required to discover bold ideas not only ignites intelligent thinking, but it pushes your team’s collective creativity as well.

At first, telling leadership they should or need to take risks with creative output might appear mockingly heroic. Whether it’s revamping your website, playing with new taglines, or incorporating different design elements, all of it can sound costly and time-consuming. But does your brand have the time and money to be irrelevant and boring?

Creative risk-taking isn’t as hedonistic as it first appears when it’s calculated risk-taking. We can’t scrap brand guidelines or forget where we came from. Calculated risk-takingis about maintaining authenticity and relevance while forging new paths to your audiences’ hearts. The benefit for clients is that it distills what’s most captivating about their brands while igniting the kinetic energy that keeps audiences intrigued.

Finding the Time

Fostering a healthy process for ideation is a good place to begin taking calculated risks. Actively seek opportunities for your creative team to branch out of their comfort zones. Advertising, marketing, and branding teams intrinsically want to create—they feel rewarded and invigorated when you unleash their minds to discover. Brilliant ideas need a place to exercise so that they can grow. Opportunities for these brainstorming endeavors won’t pop up on their own. Set aside time to explore those concepts that you’ve been kicking around.

A space free of breakneck deadlines is ideal. The goal of these brainstorming sessions might be more analytical than a lot of the daily tasks you ask of your team. Style guides have some good avenues to go down if you’re stumped on topics to focus on. Perhaps there’s a brand pillar that everyone in the company seems to interpret differently—use that as a topic and spend a meeting mapping it out. This could lead you to questions that your audience has been wondering about too. Team building and growing trust are two biproducts of these types of brainstorming meetings that can help you justify the time and resources necessary for creative play time.

Keep it Fun

People need to feel comfortable to get wild, and the best ideas fall somewhere between the absurd and the obvious—to get there, make your team feel like they can voice anything and everything. Some argue for shelving every idea (even the really bad ones), no matter how off-the-wall they might seem initially. Best of all, you’re elevating trust through these processes when you let people get weird with ideas. Humans want to feel like they’re discovering and not just going through the motions. A culture of trust makes it easier for people to share, and this allows decision-makers to have the information they need to operate with an analytical perspective, keeping risks calculated and not a guessing game.

If you need help creating an ideation process for your brand’s creative concepting and execution, hire an agency. Find one that’s been around for a while. Older agencies have weathered more changes than the younger ones and have seen what works and what doesn’t. You might also find that they care more about client success than winning awards for themselves.

Listen to Creatives

Whether you’ve hired an agency or have a robust in-house creative team, listen to your expert writers and designers with patience and an open mind. It’s easy to fall into the same thought patterns in creative reviews. Hiring intelligent people and not listening to them isn’t the best use of your time. It’s like buying an expensive candy bar, then taking the time to dissect all the peanuts out, when all you originally wanted was a few peanuts.

Are You Playing it too Safe?

There’s no definitive checklist for knowing if you’re playing it too safe with creative output, but a positive place to begin is asking yourself, “Are we doing the same thing and hoping for different results?” This notion is raised in famous quotes and countless motivational talks, but it’s rarely embraced with sincerity. Posing this question productively is challenging because identifying what “doing the same thing” looks like can feel subjective. The purpose of cultivating a culture where ideas have room to play, creatives are listened to, and ideation is fun, supports fearless conversations. And this sense of fearlessness is essential for healthy discussions that lead you to the exploratory creative work that your brand’s audience is looking for.

New ideas can be scary and, at times, even sound foolish. The creators of one of the most successful video games of all time had to go to their boss and say: I have an idea for a game where mustachioed, Italian plumbers hunt down mushrooms in plumbing while fending off turtles in hopes of finding a princess in the piping. Super Mario Brothers is now a household name despite how absurd that idea sounds. Learn to see creatives’ new ideas as opportunities to explore more and dig deeper. Stay fearless while brainstorming. Grow trust with your creative team through team-building ideation time and, most importantly, don’t take the risk of playing it safe.

These days, change feels like it happens at an exponential quantity and pace. It’s no secret that this puts brands in a tough spot. Brands, after all, are supposed to stand for something, but they also need to evolve with the rest of the world. That’s where agencies come in.

A Paradox at Play

When uncertainty abounds, there’s a tendency to flee to certainty. A boon on the one hand, brands can act as sanctuaries of consistency and reliability in times of uncertainty. Go to any Marriott in the world, and you know exactly what to expect. On the other hand, tastes and expectations evolve. Brands can’t be complacent or dig in their heels against change. They must embrace it.

Take Nike. Their “Just do it” slogan continues to resonate since it was rolled out in the late 1980s. Nick DePaula, an NBA feature writer, explained to NPR, “Not only was the slogan great, and also approachable and vague enough that anybody could apply it to whatever it was they were trying to aspire to do.” They’ve used it to inspire more empowerment and social progress for gender and racial equity, among other causes.

Nike managed to walk the tightrope of staying consistent to their brand while morphing it at the same time. You can bet their agency of record played an essential role in helping them navigate that paradoxical truth.

How Agencies Help Brands Navigate Waves of Change

An Objective, Knowledgeable Voice

Agencies have the unique position of being simultaneous insiders and outsiders. They can see from the inside: they understand the business and the brand, they understand the risks and the opportunities. And they see the brand from the outside: as consumers see it, as competitors see it. As a result, they’re able to stay more objective and clearer headed, seeing facts through an empathetic lens from the points of view of both the business and the consumers.

Uncover Insights and Stories within the Data

Data drives much decision-making today. As helpful as it is, it’s only part of the story, especially because much data is historical and lacks context. The numbers and charts can’t help if you can’t glean the narratives within them. An agency can help you take your data and turn it into a cohesive story with the development of personas, competitive analyses and trend reports. This helps you make your data actionable. The closer your predictive data can be to real time, the more empowered you’ll be to make impactful decisions.

A Flexible, Opportunistic Mindset

Most agencies are like speed boats to a brand’s tanker. They’re able to turn more quickly, speed ahead, do reconnaissance and zip back to the tanker. They can spot a competitor’s misstep and explain how the brand can take advantage of it. They can encourage more innovation and nudge brands to push the envelope in both small and big ways. They help the brand avoid falling into autopilot mode, coasting on its size, by pushing it to new horizons. Agencies help free up brands to focus on what they do best—run their business—by taking on the marketing.

What Brands Should Look for in an Agency

Agencies are people, so brands need to find one with the right talent that’s forward-thinking, nimble and integrated. Here’s why.

With unprecedented change afoot, challenging the status quo needs to happen more rapidly and frequently than ever before. To do that, brands need to work with agencies who are focused on the future. Looking ahead means being curious in the here and now by devouring information, connecting dots in new and unusual ways and seeking out opportunity at every possible turn.

Next, agencies need to be both nimble and level-headed. It’s not enough to simply respond; they also need to sift through mountains of information to separate what’s important from what isn’t. Without clarity and purpose, nimbleness can quickly devolve into chaos. For example, Heinrich strategists know how to keep their eyes on the destination and that there are any number of ways to get there.

Last, look for an integrated agency. While it’s tempting to piecemeal your marketing efforts across specialty agencies—paid media here, social there—an integrated agency can connect dots across your entire marketing ecosystem. Writer David Epstein argues that generalists can perform better in uncertainty, saying, “The more varied your training is, the better able you’ll be to apply your skills flexibility to situations you haven’t seen.” An agency with both depth and breadth of in-house talent, like Heinrich has, is the same. Brands can tap into that diverse, coordinated skills set to better ride the waves of uncertainty as they occur.

The right agency partner awaits, one that’s born for business and can lead your brand from where it is today to where it needs to be tomorrow. That’s how Heinrich shows up—every single day.

Most creatives agree that a naming project is one of the best—yet most challenging—parts of the branding process. And, while it is extremely fun and satisfying, naming can also be slightly nerve-wracking. Why? Think of it this way—it’s the first step in taking your client’s brand off the page and into the world, the first thing people see when they interact with it, and the maker (or breaker) of first impressions. That’s a lot of firsts and a lot of pressure. 

Luckily, Heinrich has a trusted naming process that combines a ton of insights and strategy, a bunch of research, and a healthy dose of branding expertise.  

Step 1: Discovery and Strategy 

Know who the brand is before you name it. 

The first step in any successful naming project is to not start with naming at all. You’re probably sitting there thinking, “Wait, I came here to learn about how to name a brand and now you’re telling me I can’t?” Here’s the thing. You can’t name a brand if you don’t know who the brand is. So, if you don’t have a brand strategy yet, you need to back up and start at step one of the overall branding process: the client discovery session.  

During this session, you’ll sit down with your client and get to know everything about their brand—from the nitty-gritty details to their preferences and vision. These are the learnings that will influence how your brand strategy is created and, in turn, how that strategy influences the name. 

Hot tip: Be sure to reserve time during this conversation to ask specific naming questions. This will help you determine what kind of name your clients are drawn to and why. To get the conversation going, come prepared with a list of different naming styles and structures (like the ones below) and see what piques their interest. 

Types of Naming 

When you look up different types of brand names, you’ll find that there are many opinions on how to categorize them. But when you get down to it, most names can be put into the following structures and styles. With that, there is bound to be some overlap. For example, PayPal is a descriptive name that uses both an alliteration and a compound structure. Whereas Mailchimp is a playful name using a compound noun of real words. Keep in mind that your names do not have to fall neatly into one of these buckets, but getting input from your clients can help add some spark and guideposts to your brainstorming process. 

 

Name-Structure Examples 

• Alliterative: American Airlines, Best Buy 

• Acronym: IBM, AT&T 

• Compound: PayPal, Coinbase 

• Real Word(s): Dove, Target 

• Misspelled: Froot Loops, Lyft 
   

Name-Style Examples 

• Playful: Mailchimp, Tushy  

• Metaphoric: Amazon, Tinder  

• Historical/Origin: Saks Fifth Avenue, Dairy Block  

• Founder: Disney, Ben & Jerry’s  

• Geographical/Location-Based: Cisco, Florida’s Natural  

• Coined: Verizon, Pantone  

• Descriptive: Whole Foods, Comedy Central   

• Invented: Kodak, Häagen-Dazs  

• Combined: Fabletics, Pinterest 
   

Step 2: Research and Write 

Turn your strategy into a creative distinction. 

Taking everything you learned during the discovery session, it’s time to get to work. To start, consider which types of names your client is interested in, consult the brand strategy for insights and themes, and use all this information to create some naming buckets for yourself.  

Then, dive in.  
Go down the research rabbit hole.  
See what competitors are doing and why.  
Search for interesting nuggets and good stories. For rich histories and curious details that will make the brand stand out.  
Leave no Internet stone unturned.  
Looking for a name with a geographical tie? What about something metaphorical that connects the brand ethos to its vision? See where those roads lead.  
Use your research to write 10 names. Then 10 more. 
Think of ways to modify, combine, and invent.  
Keep writing, and keep going back to the strategy. 
Continue pushing until you have a handful of names that you’re confident fit with who the brand is and what it stands for.  

Here are some examples of names Heinrich has developed for our various real estate branding clients. Watch for them around the Denver Metro in the coming year. 

Step 3: Narrow and Vet

Lots of names are good. Instead, let’s be smart. 

After you’ve organized your massive list of name options and why they make sense for the brand, it’s time to narrow down to your top five best options. 

Before you begin, let’s define what makes a “good” brand name. Like most artistic endeavors, this can be a bit subjective. But if you ask us (and you should since we have lots of experience), it isn’t just about coming up with a “good” name, it’s about coming up with a smart one.  

Here are nine things Heinrich considers when deciding which names to present to our clients:  

1. It’s memorable. 

2. It’s distinct and not being used within the competitive landscape. 

3. It has meaning, or meaning can be created around it. 

4. It fits your strategy and embodies your brand positioning and personality. 

5. It’s accessible; your customers can easily learn to say it, spell it, interpret it, or Google it. 

6. It’s appealing and resonates with your target audience. 

7. It’s appropriate, not appropriating, and avoids negative concepts. 

8. It sounds good. 

9. It looks good. 

Obviously, a few items on this list are, as previously mentioned, subjective. So how do you avoid having you or your client choose a name based on your personal preference? You vet. If you don’t have the budget or resources to hold an official focus group, create an informal one on your own. Find people in your social circle who fit the target audience of this brand and ask them what they think. Take notes, be honest with yourself, and kill your darlings. That super-cool name with a great rationale that, deep down, you know is way too complicated or hard to pronounce? Nix it.  

For a real-world example, consider Heinrich’s recent real estate branding project for a Trammel Crow and Greystar apartment complex in Denver’s Central Park neighborhood. For this name, we were inspired by a few things:  

1. The neighborhood where the property lives was once home to Denver’s Stapleton International Airport.  

2. Our strategy informed us that this brand’s audience was looking to enter a new chapter of life filled with movement, growth, and discovery.  

The result? Elevon. Originally a term for aircraft surfaces that combine the functions of two instruments for pitch and roll control, the name Elevon was clearly inspired by the geographical history of the area as well as encouraging residents to live a life in motion they so desire. 

Step 4: Present and Select  

Sell the story and the strategy. 

Now that you’ve narrowed down your favorites, it’s time to share with the client. One of the best ways to get your client excited and on board with what you’re proposing is to put together a well-crafted presentation. Don’t just email your hard work to them and hope for the best. Instead, start by reviewing the approved brand strategy as a refresher, and then move into sharing each name. Be sure each option is presented with a strong rationale and background so the client can understand the story and meaning.  

Hopefully, the client will love what you’ve come up with and immediately select a name. But if they don’t, you can either head back to your original list to see if there are any other options that align with their feedback or go back to step two and give the whole thing another go.  

So how do you make a name for yourself?  

First and foremost, know that a brand name is much more than words on a page or logo on a website. Ultimately, a name needs to embody the essence of the brand and resonate with its target audience in a way that makes them want to be a part of the story. It’s a daunting task, no doubt, but Heinrich is clearly passionate about the process and ready to help. To get started, send us a message, or give our branding team a shout at hello@heinrich.com.  

Let’s face it: traditional advertising can only take your healthcare brand so far. At some point, you need to go beyond advertising to build a local reputation—to see and be seen. This is what brands like Monster and Red Bull understand so well. They’ve got two concepts down to a science: 1. bringing positive associations; and 2. encouraging trial and affinity with their brand. That science is called grassroots marketing, and it’s about developing personal connections with potential audiences in the local community.
 

Where Healthcare Gets Grassroots Marketing Wrong

Too many healthcare organizations think grassroots marketing is about writing sponsorship checks or throwing together last-minute activations. But you can’t just provide a logo or a stack of brochures and call it good. Or scramble to gather some giveaway items together for an event that weekend. Either approach is a waste of time and money.

Just as dangerous for healthcare brands is ignoring and devaluing grassroots marketing all together. The lure of “tangible” results from traditional marketing and advertising channels can be seductive in contrast to measuring grassroots. Figuring out full-funnel attribution and whether leads converted into patients, members or customers can be difficult, but what your brand risks by not doing grassroots marketing is even more important: conveying your values and story. The best way to do that isn’t through tactics like ads or emails alone but also up close, person to person. Nothing beats that one-to-one connection, especially in healthcare where trust and relationships are paramount.

What Healthcare Can Do to Increase Grassroots Marketing Scale and Effectiveness

Create a Strategy
Healthcare brands need to be intentional with their grassroots marketing efforts, starting with key questions of why, where, when and how:

• Why are you doing grassroots marketing? To announce a new location, to grow our patient panel or membership size, to deepen connections in the community?
• Where will your target audience be, and which events make the most sense for you to have a presence at?
• When will you focus on grassroots marketing? Leading up to and during an opening? As an ongoing effort?
• How will you ensure brand consistency and maximum efficiency? How will you empower local markets, especially in rural areas? How will you compliantly track leads?

Here are some tried-and-true tips:

1. Develop criteria that establish which types of events you do and do not want your brand associated with.
2. Ensure events are close enough to your location/market that they make sense, and they are something your target audience will attend. Let’s say your practice is located about 20 miles south of a large metro area, and most patients live within 3–5 miles of the clinic. While a large festival downtown is a large draw for those who live throughout the area, chances are you’ll meet more people who live further from your clinic than those who do. You may have more luck with a smaller, but more local event instead.
3. Consider whether owned events, events you host yourself, make sense for you or not. For a provider with a community space, you could leverage health and wellness talks from providers as a regular, ongoing series.
4. Develop event kits, programs in a box and other templates for turnkey, grab-and-go activations. Your materials (signage, collateral and giveaways) should be simple and sturdy enough for a wide range of activations. Be sure your collateral will work for the event location. For example, digital activations may not make sense for daytime outdoor events where sun and glare can defeat the purpose.
5. Be sure to think through what types of activities and giveaways will most attract visitors. Freebies are a must. Try to think beyond the usual lip balm and pens that everyone else is giving out. Think about the locals and what they do and love. For example, Denverites are all about their dogs, so dog-themed items that also relate to your brand can help you stand out.
6. Think long-term versus one and done. Be willing to tweak and re-evaluate your efforts as things change.

Examples of Success

Clinics Designed with Community Rooms

Grassroots marketing can’t be an afterthought for healthcare providers. Hospitals and clinics aren’t always places people go to casually, but, if you design the space to have a community room that’s welcoming and comfortable, attendees see how nice the space is and how friendly the staff is firsthand. Those positive interactions elevate the provider in the minds of the community. In a time where loneliness has become an epidemic, these communal spaces are more and more important. The provider’s location then isn’t just for medical care but for overall well-being, too. These spaces can be used for those owned doctor-talk events, social activities or third-party activations like Medicare 101 educational events for insurance agents. Many senior-focused primary care clinics Heinrich works with not only have such spaces but also see the value they bring to their patient panels and community reputations.

Retail Collaborations

Health happens everywhere, every day, not just in the exam room. That’s why it’s important for healthcare organizations to be front and center where people make decisions about their everyday health and well-being. There’s perhaps no better place than a grocery store. Heinrich has helped Medicare insurance agents nationwide host tabling events in store and we’re also helping to connect the dots between Medicare Advantage spending allowances and local retail chains. We’ve developed messaging to help eligible shoppers better understand how to use the spending allowance in store but also generate increased interest in the carrier, simultaneously boosting the store’s basket ring, average ticket, and overall incremental revenue.

Leaders Deeply Engaged with the Community

Before Heinrich, I worked with a large academic healthcare system on the Front Range. When opening locations in new markets, the leadership team’s involvement in the community through local events as well as nonprofit boards was a huge arbiter of success. That kind of work helps build leaders’ personal reputations and the organization’s as well as one that is invested in giving back to the local community.

Why You Should Work with an Agency

Working with an agency partner can help you establish the strategy, align key stakeholders and not only develop the creative, but help you execute it. Agencies can leverage their experience in other industries to help influence external stakeholders and position the grassroots marketing effort as a win-win. For example, Heinrich works with both a Medicare Advantage carrier and a national grocery retailer, which means we can help position in-store tabling events to both brands.

A fully integrated agency is especially helpful when it comes to in-house print production. Your creative team may come up with the best event activation idea in the world, but when it comes time to think about fulfillment, it’s over budget or items are backordered for weeks. With an in-house print production team, creative and print can work together to come up with the most creative, realistic solution in line with current trends that also arrives on time and on budget. Heinrich’s print department, for example, is deeply involved in the creative process, bringing innovative solutions from print vendors to the creative team.

It’s Time for Healthcare to Embrace Grassroots Marketing

Healthcare is on the precipice of massive change, thanks to technological and scientific breakthroughs and a shift to true prevention at a population health level. Grassroots marketing can be the conduit for these changes to be shared with the community and to re-build the trust the pandemic broke. Now’s the time for healthcare to take the grassroots marketing spotlight from sugary, unhealthy drink brands that claim to support health and fitness but actually undermine it. Now is the time for healthcare to lead, not follow.