Category: Show Notes

Lamenting the fact that the healthcare industry “says the same thing and blends into this mush,” Arra Yerganian is “working to change the conversation” about Sutter Health. To achieve this goal, Yerganian is “leaning in when others lean away” and seeks to “embrace the digital experience and create one-to-one relationships for the 3.5 million people that we serve.” Believing that this promise needs to go deeper than marketing, Yerganian works in “really close partnership with Sutter’s patient experience folks, executive leadership and operations” to “lay the foundation for a new [customer] experience.”

With over 70% share of the premium tequila market, it would be easy for Patrón’s CMO to rationalize a conservative marketing approach. Instead, Lee Applbaum believes that success can only be found by “challenging long-standing norms in luxury and in spirits marketing,” and by “always staying ahead of the curve.” To these ends, Applbaum is focused on showcasing Patron’s authenticity as a handcrafted tequila via advertising, influencer programs, social media and an innovative Oculus VR experience.

As a long time financial services marketer, you would expect Dan Marks to have the science of marketing down pat. And indeed he does, having built a predictive marketing spend model at First Tennessee Bank (see The CMO’s Periodic Table!) and the marketing tech infrastructure in his current role. But Marks sees the trend towards data-driven marketing going too far, explaining that, “Just doing the science without starting with the purpose is a recipe for failure.” Embracing the art-side of his job, he encourages his team to “remember that we are ultimately serving people” and to look at what’s happening with people in other categories.”

Packaged goods companies are well known for their marketing discipline and not the place you’d expect to hear a CMO express the need for “tolerating a lot more chaos and ambiguity in the culture and the way we work in order to get to the good stuff.” But that’s just the starting point with Eric Reynolds, who among other things advises against using influencers on a broad scale and believes that unless your brand gets talked about via the “holy trinity of the brand story, the message, and the content” then the idea isn’t big enough to cut through.