CASE STUDIES
career highlights from the past decade
Re-position the kaiser Permanente BRAND in the mid-atlantic
(2019-Present)
Background
In California, Kaiser Permanente (KP) is the market hegemon, enjoying over 55% market share in most CA markets. In the Mid-Atlantic, KP suffers from low awareness and a 9% market share. The enterprise sought to grow the business by building awareness and preference, recognizing that KP in the Mid-Atlantic is a challenger brand.
Strategy
Promote comprehension of KP’s care model and its functional benefit to the prospect to drive preference.
Activation
Developed positioning based on a survey of the Mid-Atlantic audience’s key value drivers as defined by Jungian archetypes. Determined high-propensity audiences by aligning segments to key KP competencies. Created messaging and media strategies based on audience segments’ motivations and media habits.
Key Executions
Created Medical Excellence campaigns to attract the attention of Sage psychographic segment (see below), who are motivated by the data points that prove competency in care delivery of quality care.
Created the Care on Demand Campaign that focused on flexible access to care and digital innovation through our integrated telehealth capabilities, which attracted the attention of the Explorer and Creator psychographic segments.
Performance
Willingness to consider in the general market increased from 45% to 54% for those that recalled ads from August 2019–March 2021. The Sage segment’s willingness to consider increased among those who recalled an ad from 43% in August 2019 to 60% in March of 2021. A 2020 post-exposure survey showed that 61% of respondents agreed with the phrase “KP has superior telehealth capabilities.” That number now sits at 68%. The national marketing team has tapped me to lead a similar rebranding effort for the GA region, the first effort of its kind, with plans to scale to other markets outside of California (Colorado, Oregon, Washington State).
KPMAS MEDICARE MARKETING (2020)
Background
In the Mid-Atlantic Market, Medicare is a high-value direct-to-consumer play that represents over $1Bn in annual revenue. The pandemic of 2020 caused significant retraction in the commercial line of business, meaning the region would rely even more on the growth of the Medicare line of business to maintain overall financial health. As in the commercial space, Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic States (KPMAS) suffers from low awareness and comprehension of its model, and these headwinds are amplified by the market’s propensity to the PPO model and long-term relationships with their current physicians.
Strategy
Amplify KPMAS’ positive rate position with promotion of the functional benefits of the KP care model and product benefits to drive enrollments.
Activation
Developed positioning based on a survey of the Mid-Atlantic audience’s key value drivers as defined by Jungian archetypes. Determined high-propensity audiences by aligning segments to key KP competencies. Created messaging and media strategies based on audience segments’ motivations and media habits.
Key Executions
Developed the Medicare Special and Annual Enrollment Periods (SEP/AEP) omni-channel campaigns that focused on a digital-first approach. Cross-walked psychographic profiles through audience segmentation platforms to pinpoint prospects at the address level. This allowed for physical and IP address targeting for a variety of digital deployments. Aggregated county-level densities to inform mass-channel media strategies. Leveraged the high-value consumer product consumer journey to provide native ad content topics aligned to our audience segments’ value drivers positioned to satisfy the prospect’s needs to research options.
Performance
Despite the pandemic’s effect on prospect switching, AEP2020 enrollments increased 50% year over year, cost per enrollment declined by 73%, and the campaign created over $600MM in LTV, with an annual ROAS of 36:1.
The Mid-Atlantic was the only of the eight Kaiser Permanente regions to show such growth, and created enough enrollments to offset the losses in other regions, creating a net positive result for the enterprise overall.
CONTENT STRATEGY COURSE DEVELOPMENT(2016-Present)
Background
In 2015, Georgetown University sought to create a course for the Integrated Marketing Communications division that focused on the increasing reliance on content in the marketing community to drive growth.
Strategy
Designed a course that demonstrated how content marketing aligned with the traditional marketing precepts of understanding the audience and enumerating the brand’s attributes that delivered on the market’s value drivers and purchasing motivators.
Activation
Along with modules that focused on building robust personas, I added to this understanding a methodology of storytelling that helped students create consumer-centered stories for deployment. The course allowed students to re-interpret the messaging of well-known brands based on the personas they created.
Key Executions
Students developed personas, value propositions, brand positioning statements, message maps and frameworks, and content prototypes and were evaluated on the logical and strategic cohesiveness of their content marketing plans.
Performance
Consistently high ratings from student feedback, and I received the 2020 Tropaia Award for Best Faculty in the Integrated Marketing Communications division.
MEDICAL EXCELLENCE CAMPAIGNS (2019-2021)
Background
The market perceives the quality of care delivered by Kaiser Permanente of the Mid-Atlantic (KPMAS) as substandard, when in actuality we lead the nation in several quality measures. Similarly, high ratings from third party raters like NCQA and JD Power failed to sway public opinion.
Strategy
Create and deploy campaigns that showcase KPMAS’ national leadership in key care metrics, and our capabilities to address complex specialty care.
Activation
Focusing on the specialty care disciplines that the market recognized as complex care, created and launched campaigns that promoted our cancer, cardiac, and diabetes care.
Key Executions
Campaigns promoting KPMAS' superior cancer and cardiac care capabilities.
Performance
Cancer care performance 6.2MM impressions with an average .66% CTR, well above industry benchmark.
Of those who recalled a related ad, 66% of those surveyed had a more positive opinion of KP’s cancer care.
Willingness to consider KP increased 53% when exposed to an ad.
Cardiac Care performance 9.2MM impressions with average CTR of .09%, at the high end of industry benchmark.
Running the campaign during the height of the COVID crisis negatively impacted performance.
Paid social saw a 1.24% CTR among 65+ audiences.
Of those who recalled a related ad, 51% of those surveyed had a more positive opinion of KP’s cancer care.
Willingness to consider KP increased 33% when exposed to an ad.
CAPITAL ONE HOME LOANS AWARENESS CAMPAIGN (2012)
Overview
Capital One Home Loans sought to increase awareness of its products and services in cities outside of the branch footprint. A $1.7M ad buy in two large markets (Boston and Atlanta) was proposed to test response and awareness over an 8-week campaign.
Strategy
Convince the market that Capital One understood the pain associated with getting a home loan and made the process easier and hassle-free.
Activation
Based on my visual system for Capital One Home Loans, the campaign featured heavy-hitting atmospheric graphics in reds and yellows coupled with emotional headlines and up-front benefits. Layout was clean and simple as a visual representation of an easy mortgage process.
Performance
Significant lift in response from test markets. In the Atlanta market, the response rate beat control by 7-to-1.
BANK OF AMERICA WORLDPOINTs™ SITE (2009)
Overview
Responding to Voice of the Customer data, Bank of America desired a makeover of the WorldPoints™ redemption site. The site, with more than 25MM annual users, was the web portal where users redeemed accumulated loyalty points for merchandise, travel, and more.
Strategy
Mimic the online shopping experience to ease use of the site and increase member point spend.
Activation
The persona of the typical user was web savvy and accustomed to online shopping. Since the target audience had a deep relationship with the brand and fully engaged in the loyalty program, a richer visual environment with a retail feel was implemented.
Results
The revamped portal pushed online points redemptions past those from the print catalogue.The site has been used as a model for other Bank of America Rewards portals.
