Category Archives: health

Ringing out the Old with News from E.B. for 2022

December 30, 2021advertising, business, diversity, Episodes, health, marketingadvertising, brand innovators, brand marketing, branding, business, cause-marketing, Claude Silver, diversity, E.B. Moss, gary vee, Heidi Zak, Joe Jackman, Melissa Grady, mossappeal, purpose, Ruth Stevens, shelly palmer, The Continuum, VaynerMedia, WFHE.B. Moss

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For the past 44 episodes of Insider Interviews I’ve put a lot of well-known media and marketing folks in the hot seat …And today’s guest is … E.B. Moss. Me. Because as we ring out the old and ring in the new I’ve got some news for you.

This nice round number, episode 45, will be temporarily one of the last for Insider Interviews for a while, as I embrace something really new. A fractional (year long) assignment as Senior Vice President of Content and Community at Brand Innovators. They create a community for marketers and and media folks through an incredible number of events and panel discussions, fireside chats, activations, tent poles, content articles, you name it.

In looking back to look forward, as I wrote in The Continuum recently, I had some wonderful conversations. After launching with programming pro, Gary Krantz, talking about audio and the evolution of radio and podcasting my very next episode was in March of 2020 was Shelly Palmer, the pundit, who accurately predicted that we all better have our tech set up well to work from home. Check.

In episode 7, Claude Silver, the Chief Heart Officer of Vayner Media, emphasized the need in our increasingly isolated environment to build relationships. And then Arra Yerganian educated us in episode 22, about the social determinants of health as we’re so impacted by our surroundings. (I hope you’re creating a safe space for yourself and finding ways to bring joy into your world, even as we have to isolate a little bit longer now.)

On the DEI front Robyn Streisand, founder of The Mixx, is doing a terrific job at educating brands on how to embrace diverse communities and market authentically. And then, hats off to KoAnn Skrzyniarz, for building Sustainable Brands and emphasizing brand purpose and the business value of embracing sustainability and purpose-driven messaging.

Talk about influencers.

That’s what Danielle Wiley of Sway did and really informed us about how to manage what’s been influential and what hasn’t. And it all kind comes together with Joe Jackman in episode 37, talking about reinvention. Because that’s what we’re all doing these days. Marc Kidd and Anna Bager each talked about the out of home ad industry and their headaches during a time when nobody was traveling. Captivate, where Marc is CEO, specialized in elevator advertising, and no one was going into office buildings! So they figured out how to pivot — or reinvent — by expanding their signage to places where people play and live like golf courses and apartment buildings. Anna Bager talked about how out of home signage really helped move public service messaging forward, especially with the healthcare messaging that is so important these days.

There were also some really impactful conversations with women in marketing. I want to thank, for example, Melissa Grady, the CMO of Cadillac, as well as Heidi Zak, the co-founder and CEO of third love, as just two examples.

And I was able to do articles on both of them for The Continuum. That’s the publication where I was editor in chief for the past year. We published some excellent articles about the need for both brand and demand marketing. That publication will continue to embrace the future. And it’s a very worthy read.

But I think as I look forward, and look back, some of Ruth Steven’s words were exactly right and underscores why my move to Brand Innovators will be so timely. Ruth is one of the foremost experts in B2B marketing.

And she said in our interview,

“Today, the ability of the salesperson to guide a purchase in the buyer’s direction and really understand the needs of that buyer has been eroded. So the marketer needs to step in and provide the educational content.”

So my friends, I’m going to keep finding lots of ways to help marketers get their message out and to help connect the seller, the buyer, the media organization and the marketer, and I look forward to being able to continue delivering you that insider scoop. Just from a different venue.

With that, I wish you all the very, very best and a happy and especially a healthy 2022, and hope to maintain my relationship with all of you through various forms of content, as well as hopefully at in-person event sooner rather than later.

I thank you so much for listening.

Post Script: If you haven’t heard it yet, I will pick up my “passion podcast” soon – about my “friends in high places” so please subscribe to It’s Quite a Living now to not miss a forthcoming moment when that relaunches in early 2022.

PPS: You can STILL follow me at @mossappeal on social media!

RPA’s Joe Baratelli on Doing Good (Marketing) to Do Well

January 28, 2021advertising, business, Episodes, health, marketing, Uncategorizedadvertising, brand marketing, branding, cause-marketing, COVID-19, data, Digital Media, E.B. Moss, Farmers, Honda, insider interviews, Joe Baratelli, marketing, mossappeal, podcasting, research, RPA, targeting, The Continuum, UNICEFE.B. Moss

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Thanks to Los Angeles-based agency RPA, “We Are Farmers, buh bi dum dum dum dum dum” has become a bit of a jingle earworm. Great awareness and brand recognition for the insurance company. Joe Baratelli, EVP and Chief Creative Officer of the agency that’s been his home for almost 35 years, walked me through that and other creative concepts and their business results. It starts, he suggests, with the mantra of the organization: People, Relationships and Results.

(Note: You can also read a summary of this conversation in the new publication, The Continuum.)

Now, in an era of ubiquitous focus on health, though, the AOR of Farmers and Honda wants to expand its portfolio to include more healthcare clientele. Joe also explained how RPA has started to accomplish that — and did well by doing good for UNICEF and the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation. It’s heartwarming work and their pillars of focusing on people and relationships definitely shine through.

Sample of UNICEF #VaccinesWork art

If you’re in advertising or #marketing, this is one to save as a download.
Joe and I talk about:

How respecting your co-workers AND the audience for the campaigns yields results
How they applied that to the UNICEF #VaccinesWork campaign and leveraged our inclination to protect our kids from danger to drive inoculations that protect them from dangers we can’t see. Brilliant!
The elements that went into a worldwide campaign and its efficacy in changing minds
How marketing #vaccines is similar to…or different from… marketing other clients like Apartments.com, Honda, or Farmers, for example.
How DID they evolve their Farmers campaign as times have changed over 10 years on the account?
What behavioral scientists can tell you about human nature…to inform creative campaigns
How pro bono work, such as for PBTF and the stunning collection of compelling animations they did to ease kids into understanding their diagnosis led to a healthy set of new clients…

Oh, and yes, I managed to sing the Farmers jingle.

Standing Up for Better Healthcare Marketing – with CMO Arra Yerganian

January 7, 2021business, Episodes, health, marketingArra Yerganian, brand marketing, branding, business, cause-marketing, COVID-19, data, diversity, doctors, E.B. Moss, healthcare, insider interviews, marketing, measurement, performance marketing, pro-social, research, SDOH, Sutter Health, The Continuum, WFHE.B. Moss

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Arra Yerganian thinks healthcare has always been a little upside down, controlled by physicians instead of the the patients. Ya think? But I misspeak – at least while speaking with Yerganian: he actually banned the word “patients” when he was CMO at both Sutter Health and One Medical. He explained that the word comes from Latin for “‘a place of suffering’ and that should be a temporary state at best.” Instead, he said, “We used the person’s name, so it wasn’t a dehumanizing experience to come into the doctor’s office.”

I liked this guy immediately. But there’s more to marketing healthcare than nomenclature. Yerganian is on a mission to raise awareness of the biggest issues impacting health for all of us: our Social Determinants of Health — or SDOH. Basically, if my zip code is wealthier than yours the overall population is likely healthier. I likely am more informed about and have better access to healthier foods or fitness facilities, I might have access to more parks for fresh air, and of course the income to afford anything from childcare to catch up on sleep and even infant mortality rates and so on. So how can we democratize health? For Yerganian, it’s awareness, it’s education, it’s communication. He also notes that, apropos our recent civic dis-ease and disease, “beyond the pandemic, the great challenge that we’ll have is the behavioral health crisis that’s affecting our country.”

He shares the details of best practices and how to get on a healthier collective path overall in this Episode 22 of Insider Interviews. (Hint: stand up more for healthy behavior in every sense of the meaning.)

NOTE: I’m proud to be Editor in Chief of The Continuum, about awareness and performance marketing. In Issue 2 posting in late January you can also read this interview along with the POVs and suggestions from other notables in the health and wellness marketing space. But, dear listeners, you get the advance insights here when you catch the full conversation with Arra Yerganian.

He and I discuss:

Discussing standing up for the Social Determinants of Health

What are the social determinants of health, and how do they fit this into the world of marketing?
How can we track and thus help modify the exposure to environmental ills
What are some new approaches in brand marketing and health and wellness, such as driving uptake of tele-health?
How can promoting value-based programs reward healthcare providers with incentive payments?
How can products or brands, like a sleep aid or gym facility or a yoga mat or bicycle manufacturer, leverage some healthcare data and apply that to their marketing
How do you market against patients deferring to Google for diagnosing themselves?
And how do you conduct business meetings standing up?!

Here’s to a happier, HEALTHIER New Year to you all, with my sincere appreciation for listening, sharing and subscribing wherever you like to listen to Podcasts.