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Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. I'm your host, Sara Payne, a health marketing strategist at Impella Communications, and I'm bringing you fascinating conversations with some of the industry's top marketing minds. On today's episode, we're gonna talk about content harmony and brand consistency in the rapid content era we're living in. As brand and content leaders, how do we empower our teams to create content quickly across many creators in a way that ensures consistency and long term brand health. To chat with me about this topic, I'm thrilled to welcome Jen Habelsrud, who leads enterprise content marketing and social media for Elavance Health. For those of you who aren't familiar, Elavance Health is a whole health company and the largest licensee of Blue Cross Blue Shield Health Plans. In her role, Jen is passionate about building brands through strategically connected and purpose driven content and communication. She's someone whom I deeply respect and also happens to be one of my favorite people.
Sara Payne [:She's super smart and is an incredible leader who brings so much energy and positivity to her teams.
Jen Hovelsrud [:Welcome, Jen. Thank you so much for having me, Sara. I'm super excited to have this conversation with you, and I would do this just to hear that intro. So I'm I'm gonna play that back for myself later.
Sara Payne [:Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I did wanna say that Jen and I have a special bond because we pandemicked together. We were working together in the early days of COVID, the world was shutting down, adjusting to remote work. Jen and you and I were drafting business continuity plans and crisis messaging plans together. You were on the client side, me on the consultant side.
Sara Payne [:Some days, it felt like we talked to the phone, like, 4 or 5 times a day. So, Jen, you you'll you'll just always have a special place in my heart. So just thanks for thanks for being here and doing this.
Jen Hovelsrud [:You are welcome. I I still remember your laundry room and I hope you remember my card table as we were making the transition from office to home. Okay. I'll be jealous, everyone.
Sara Payne [:I know. Sadly the laundry room does make its appearance on on Zoom calls every once in a while still today. But yes. Yes. I do remember the card table. As as I mentioned we're gonna be focused on on content harmony and brand consistency in this conversation today. Jen, your role at Elavance Health is a big one. You're you lead enterprise content marketing and social media for all of Elavance Health.
Sara Payne [:Tell us a little bit about what you oversee and how content teams are structured.
Jen Hovelsrud [:Yeah. So my role at Elevance Health, I came there with the understanding it was a newly created role that I would help everything in the words of our CEO and CMO, help everyone think fit together better. I think there was a sense that, you woke up in the morning and you went to see everything that had been, you know, put out from the company in the last day last week, and it didn't look like everything stuck together, fit together very well. And so, I crazily enough accepted the job to fix that. What that meant was and the way that we've structured it over time is and and I'm happy to talk about what we put in place to to structure that because that is certainly more, I think, as we all realize more than just a content marketing and thought leadership job. It's the structure that sits around it. But my job was to put a strategy in place that held all of our content and points of view together. I I lead the team that executes content and thought leadership for parent company, Elevance Health, and we felt that a federated model of structuring content across the organization was best, meaning that we all work together in dotted line in, to the same organization, but we have executional teams embedded in each of our lines of business because we felt it was it was best to sit closest to the people that you're serving, solutions that you ultimately need to understand and the problems that they solve.
Jen Hovelsrud [:And so, while we need the strategy that connects all of that, the execution is again in this federated model. Interesting. Yeah. I thank you for sharing that, because I think, a lot of organizations struggle with exactly what you sounds like you were brought in to do, which is
Sara Payne [:to make this all work. Right? Fit it fitted together as you said. And that structure is so incredibly important. Context for folks. So, federated model. You have multiple brands that that sit inside of of, you know, Elavance Health, as as a parent company. So when you say you say Federated, so do you have you have sort of content leads for each of these brands and then they report it to you port into you, but the execution then is underneath them for each of the brands? And how and then how many leaders do you have then?
Jen Hovelsrud [:Yes. Sort of. Thanks yeah. Thanks thanks for giving me a chance to clarify. So, what I mean by Federated is we have a series of teams that work together, forget reporting relationship at this point, we all tap into layers of strategy. So think of it as almost Legos that snap into each other, but are are coordinated fit together, we plan out the colors, we know what shape they're gonna make. But we don't all report into a central team. We've been consolidating our brands from say 30 and ultimately our our desire is to get down to, 4 main brands, our parent company and 3 go to market brands.
Jen Hovelsrud [:You know, we're we're a health company, so we're made up of primary 2 health plans, 22 different health plan brands, and a health service company. So we have content and thought leadership teams embedded at the brand level on top of each of those brands or we're moving towards that today. We're we're midstream. So we all work together through a council structure, but we decided that those teams needed to report into the comms and marketing teams, that they're working with and and so that content works together. It gets embedded, and you break down a silo. We felt like it was easier for all content functioning functions to work together and collaborate than it was to sit outside of those marketing teams and branded communication that was so important to strategize, plan, and execute together. Does that help?
Sara Payne [:Yes. It does help. Thank you. Yeah. It does. And I'm glad you brought up silos because again, that's something many organizations, struggle with as well. I think we'll get we'll get into that a little bit more in a moment. Jen, what is your philosophy on the role that content plays for your organization? What are the objectives that it helps you achieve?
Jen Hovelsrud [:Yep. Let me start by saying, you know, I think content means something very different now. I think we'd all agree in the digital age than it did before. Number 1, it's allowed companies, organizations to become publishers, where before you largely could purchase an ad or put a brochure together, put a press release out, we have many, many more opportunities to build an audience, build relationships, and not depend on, a salesperson, a press release, and advertising to do that. Well, certainly, all of those things are still viable, I think it just gives us a much richer environment to to build relationships, to help people understand, what our purpose is, what our expertise is, to learn how we think about the things that ultimately turn into solutions, and, you know, to develop brand brand loyalty and understanding of what we do. And I think that's the ultimate opportunity content give gives you is is to tell your own story. The trick is, nobody's interested really in your audience and hearing your story, so you have to figure out what's valuable to them and, do it that way. And I think that's the been the biggest challenge as this function matures in our industry is to learn to think like a publisher and not like an advertiser.
Jen Hovelsrud [:And, I I think that's part of the reason that we even are having this conversation today because I don't think that the way we currently set up our brands and brand infrastructure really completely thinks through in in deep enough ways to to put that infrastructure in place that allows us to be publishers. I think it's great, to set up some of our communication functions and our marketing or advertising functions, but to be publishers, I think, requires a a little bit different, setup and infrastructure which I think we plan on talking about, a little bit more. It also creates many more content creators across your organization, and that's a huge opportunity. It's also a risk to your brand if, you've got many many content creators and they don't have something that holds a point of view and messaging in place at the same time that we know content is a relevance game and it's a speed game in a lot of cases. So the challenge I think is how how do you create that structure that ties you together so you look like 1 company with one point of view and philosophy set of values, but allows everyone to move quickly.
Sara Payne [:Jen, that's such a great point about brands need to think like a publisher and not like an advertiser. I think this is something so many brands and organizations really struggle with. I wanna dive right in on that and get your perspective on what are the changes that you've adopted or that need to be adopted in infrastructure in order to enable that kind of model, in order to enable for a brand to be a publisher?
Jen Hovelsrud [:What I have found I don't think there's any one answer, but what I have found is you you have to put infrastructure in place. Because if you try to achieve it, one team at a time or one article at a time or one piece of content at a time, you you don't get anything done. It's too hard to connect all the ends of the ball of the string after the fact. So I think you have to go up funnel, and you have to get the organization to quit selling first and foremost, which is a really hard thing to do when all of our short term, not all, but most of our short term goals and the ones that most of our organizations care about, are are, you know, all around whatever it is that we're commoditizing, selling, seeking donations around, whatever it is that your organization does and your goals are built around. And then I think you have to put a framework in part, and this is what's worked super well for us, here, and I've seen work really well at organ other organizations I've been at, is, to think about what, you know, why do you exist? If you have a purpose in place, I think you're really nicely set up. It's not the only way to do it. But I think most often, organizations will start by describing what they do and want to create content around that. Now at some point, when you hit that marketing funnel and you've developed the relationship, people hopefully do want to hear from you.
Jen Hovelsrud [:It's not that that never becomes relevant in a content cycle, but it's not the place that you start if you really want to use content for what it's designed best to do, which is educate, build relationships through bringing value. So I think you you have to start by really understanding your audience, the needs, their problem solving, that's nothing new, but you have to look at it in a new way and, do it for free, so to speak. You're not in a selling situation. And then I think you have to decide what your point of view is on that, you know, long before you're ever selling anything. I would point out Allstate, I think, is one of the companies that does this really well in front of a firewall that just meets your needs in a way that, engenders trust in an area that later makes you think of them top of mind for things when it comes to, for example, property casualty insurance. So, why do we exist? What's our point of view on on that? For us, we're here to improve the health of humanity at Elevance Health. The natural place for us to draw that next line is, and then what's our unique role. And so those that's the point of view that we're developing.
Jen Hovelsrud [:You then need that purpose framework that takes you from why you exist, your point of view on it, to to your capabilities and what you sell. When you create that infrastructure, which I know sounds complicated, it really isn't. But what that allows you to do when when you agree to that as an enterprise, and this is not a marketing activity, This is an organizational activity, and it requires, you know, looking 3 to 5 years down the road to this when you put this in place, you know, this isn't something you switch every year, every 6 months. There's there's too much work to it and and it embeds a a digital strategy on on your owned properties that allows you to succeed in SEO, for example, with targeted keywords. It allows you to plan out, but you don't have that flexibility to completely change your platform after the fact. And so once you know what it is you stand for, why you exist, what your point of view on it is that leads to what you sell or offer, you now have this really nice thread that flows from, hi. It's nice to meet you. Hey.
Jen Hovelsrud [:Are you interested in buying this widget from from me? Yeah. He knows something about how we think about it, how we define it, but there has to be that red thread. Then when you look at an organization as large as ours and you've got, you know, different brands, different lines of business, etcetera, Again, it allows that really nice thread of that purpose driven belief in what improves health. You create some messaging around that at various levels, and it is amazing what it sets you up to do, how much faster you can create the content because your point your point of view is approved by the entire organization. There is a ton of work upfront though to get that alignment from your from your leadership, from your product teams, from your executive teams, from your front line. Yes, absolutely. So my guy scared you scared you off, with that. It really does work well.
Sara Payne [:No. I I think actually quite the contrary, Jen. I think everyone out there listening is nodding their head and and yelling, yes. This is the way. This is what we're trying to do. And probably people are gonna record this and play it back for their own leadership team to say this is what we should be doing, right, as an organization. So I think you captured that brilliantly. And and so many people out there are are agreeing with you and nodding their heads.
Sara Payne [:But this to your point, this is hard work. Right? It's easy for us to sit around as marketers and to know that this is what we should be doing. We are not selling. Right? We are talking about our purpose. We're talking about our we're talking about our purpose and our why and the future that we believe in. To connect with people on an emotional level, to inspire them, to engender trust like you talked about. Because when we have that trust, they're more likely to buy from us. Right? We are more likely to get to that next stage.
Sara Payne [:And I think so many organizations want that but don't really know the how. And that's really what I'm trying to do with this podcast too because it isn't just about marketing best practices, this is about leadership. This is about needing to have these conversations, these tough conversations at the right level of the organization. Get everyone to actually agree to this is what we're going to do and this is what it's going to take to do it.
Jen Hovelsrud [:Yes. And it means that there has to be a certain amount of integrity around all of that stuff too because if this is only a marketing play, a content play, a comms play, and it just gets disconnected from the products, the way that your executive leadership team sounds. It it falls apart. This only works when there's integrity and connective tissue to it. If you can do that and your organization is willing to take you on that journey, I can't tell you the payoffs that we've been able to see, and it's amazing to me too. When you can, do we believe is needed today to improve health, put a a simple framework in front of people to say, this can this is what connects our purpose to what we do. It fiddle it fills that middle gap that usually marketing teams have a really hard time filling, and those words start to not only reflect your internal culture, you what you believe, the products you sell, but it starts to influence them because all of a sudden there is this connective tissue that a purpose can create, but not without really defining what it means to your organization, where it starts to show up, in your business strategy in new ways that probably would never have happened before. But the crisp clarity that comes, is pretty amazing.
Jen Hovelsrud [:It's also amazing how it can align people behind your your number one priorities and, I think really motivate your employees. Not not only those outside that you're trying to build a relationship with, but there's a whole lot of research in terms of the types of organizations that we want to work from for and buy from. And when you can demonstrate that that purpose, it not only supports your content, but there's a whole lot of other, exponential impacts that that come from that. It just happens to be one of the things that I think you need in place for content and a content program to succeed.
Sara Payne [:Yes. Absolutely. So, tell us more about the how. Right? We Yeah. We know, we understand what needs to be done, and this is elevate this really is about elevating marketing to, you know, a strategic driver of the business, and getting everybody aligned around that. And it sounds like you've got some some great leadership that that already believed this, right? Because they created your role, they hired you to do this, and so you you had some wins going for you. But I have to imagine there were skeptics. Right? That not everybody was was green light on on this whole thing.
Sara Payne [:So walk us through, you know, what you learned in trying to to bring this forward and make this happen for your organization because others are gonna face similar challenges, and I wanna just, you know, get really candid about that.
Jen Hovelsrud [:Let me say 2 things first that I think will be tangential to your question but, relevant. Number 1, I think that organizations are still struggling to even explain the value of brand, and and this is certainly a related conversation. So there are plenty of there are plenty of, skeptics. There are plenty of people that said to me, Jen, you're trying to boil the ocean. And now you look at AI content generation, and now you have more people creating more content faster, and you're trying to break through, and you're trying to stand out. Without this, companies that do this and invest in it early are the ones that are gonna have the the strongest brands, in my opinion, as we move through the next few years and experience the real impact of of AI on our organizations. So if that's the, you know, yes, there are skeptics. Here's why I think that companies, just one of the reasons you should be motivated.
Jen Hovelsrud [:The how is, I think the biggest mistake that you can do here is, to to sort of go in a back corner with your marketing partners and say, you know, here's what we think our purpose is and how everything we do is connected to purpose, and then launch it to the organization. Even if you get it right, and I think it would be, you know, difficult to to do it in that silo of thinking. But even if you did, nobody else feels like they own it. And I think this is one of those things that you have you can't let everyone touch it, but the more people that you can appropriately identify that really need to believe in this and, advocate for it, Those those people that you know, if they're not standing up and saying it in their staff meetings and your CEO isn't standing up and saying it in her, in our case, her all employee meeting or an investor day, it really doesn't matter. So you have to make sure that you're collecting ideas from all of those people and then aggregating it. What is our purpose? What do we stand for? What is our point of view on all of these things? And be able to crisply layer that in a purpose framework, a thought leadership framework, call it whatever you want, but it sits above what you sell, and it answers the why. You said why. Why do we do what we do, and how does that lead to everything else? How does that lead to our belief in the products we create? How does that believe believe how does that lead to how we create a customer journey? How we create customers, how we treat our employees? There should be a red lot red thread through through all of that.
Jen Hovelsrud [:And so, we started by by interviewing and listening to a whole lot of people, and, continuing to refine and refine and refine and get down to that level of truth. Like, this is as simple as we can make this, and we've created a a level that, everything else can connect. And, you then can find your way to every other line of business, everything you sell, and you've created this framework where it's like Legos that that fit together. And I can give you a more detailed explanation using our company as an example if that feels too esoteric.
Sara Payne [:No. I I'd love to hear the example.
Jen Hovelsrud [:You know, as a health company again our purpose is improving the health of humanity. So the largest, or the highest level purpose platform that we put together was, okay, what what do we believe before we get to our role, our company, our products? What do we as experts in the space? Because this is where content performs so well. When you are offering expertise free of charge with without, you know, the deal that you're selling something truly. You're offering your perspective. What do we think it takes to improve health? Okay. Great. If if we think it's a, b, and c, we laid that out first and foremost. There are 3 things we think are most needed to improve health today in our society with the system that we have.
Jen Hovelsrud [:2, what is our role in it? What is our unique role based on our expertise, you know, capabilities placed in the system? What do we believe that is? And then next come, okay. As a result, what are we offering and doing? And that set us up to explain and rationalize the businesses that our parent company decided to invest in and the products that we sell. And so at the highest level, we're talking about our approach to health. That's the other thing that I think comes as a result of this. We are no longer starting the conversation around this is how we make money, this is these are the products we sell. You can have a conversation around we're a health company, and this is our approach to health. Here's what we believe. It changes your language almost instantly to become more purpose led and engender trust.
Jen Hovelsrud [:It then allows you to take each of your companies to the extent this makes sense for the way that your business comes together. It did for ours. We have assembled a set of businesses and capabilities that we believe delivers on this approach to health. And so you can say in your health services business, what is your role in delivering on this approach to health? And then in your health plans, you can say, what is the role of a health plan in improving health? And that's the highest level of your thought leadership platform and where you begin to put your content strategy and your thought leadership messaging together. And then you can see how I can have a content program at the parent company level that automatically fits with our health plan content strategy, and we don't need to meet weekly or even approve each other's content because not that there aren't times where you would, but you've agreed on the core tenants and the point of view and the messaging on on key things. The other thing, if I can just add one more thing, you also has have to have some tough conversations with leadership and say, this is a really strong strategy if we mean it and if we can stick to this. We know that these are the areas that we are investing in over the next 3 to 5 years. You know, this isn't something you do fly by night, and again, change 3 months later because you're you're not gonna do your brand any favors, by by putting a purpose driven connected strategy out there and changing it 3 months later.
Jen Hovelsrud [:So Many organizations
Sara Payne [:change is frequent. Right? Until this this happens. This is some of the challenges marketing deals with. And, you know, I think you're absolutely right. If you're gonna go all in on purpose driven, the organization needs to understand that that means we're we're committed. This is a 3 to 5 year or, you know, whatever that that, length of time is. Couple things you touched on there, I wanna just follow-up on. What you're talking about is is evangelism.
Sara Payne [:Right? Yes. You you are evangelizing this whole purpose driven approach to business, to sales, to everything. Right? This is this is not just marketing. This is, again, elevating marketing to a strategic driver of the business and saying, we're gonna go all in on having people understand what our why is because they're more likely to buy from us as a result result of it. I talked about this actually in in one of, the very first episode to kick this off. But I wanna know, Jen, inside of a very large organization like Elevance Health, how long did this evangelism take to get around all all the different stakeholders, Right? And get everyone bought in and and agreeing to row in in the same direction.
Jen Hovelsrud [:I started three and a half years ago, and I will tell you we are still working through it. But before you say, oh, no way. I'm not even gonna touch this. You know, we have a 100000 employees, all these brands, and we are now just touching sort of the last pieces of this. Because when you have different brands and they need to be connected, you have to do this as a in a layered approach starting at the highest level which is your parent company brand. So it took us, about 9 months once we had convinced the organization that this is what we needed to do to to interview stakeholders, put the initial framework in place. So, you know, that's great. This is what we stand for and here is that platform where you can draw a line from purpose to everything that we offer at the highest level.
Jen Hovelsrud [:Then it took us another, I would say, 4 to 6 months to develop the toolkits around that. And now you have the parent company level level done, and you're all of a sudden your content councils start operating very differently. You start creating more meaningful content at a higher quality faster. But it it was too much of a disconnect to go from parent company level to health plan member. You just couldn't be relevant enough, and so now we are doing the work at the brand level for each of our health plans. We've got one done and we have 2 to go, and we're about halfway through that process. So, you know, I think if you were in a much smaller and simpler organization, but you have, something that people are committed to like a purpose or a central idea, you know, I think it's it's, I can't see doing it in less than 6 months.
Sara Payne [:Oh, yes. Heaven heavens no. But I I I appreciate you being very candid about how long it has taken. And I know I know you went through sort of a rebrand at the beginning of your tenure Yep. That also took a lot of time and and energy and effort, that sort of kicked off all of this work, in a very big way. But I appreciate you being very honest about that because I think people need to go into this eyes wide open and understand the the the patience that it takes. Because to your earlier point, the organization is looking for short term results. Absolutely.
Sara Payne [:Right? The organization is looking for short term results, but this is a long term commitment. This is a long term investment in building a brand around purpose driven storytelling. And not everyone has the guts for that. Not everyone has the tolerance for it because it's weeding sales tomorrow. So how I wanna ask, how do you manage expectations around that reality? And and again, I know I know part of it is part of the evangelism process and getting everybody on the same page and getting alignment, executive alignment around this. But I still think that it you know, you could agree to something in a room together. Yes. This is a long term thing and we're absolutely committed and on it.
Sara Payne [:But then, you know, the end of the quarter rolls around, and where are the results? Right? And those questions are gonna crop up. So how do you and the organization, the marketing organization, manage those expectations?
Jen Hovelsrud [:Yep. It's a great question. And I think if you started this process out by by making big promises, with inflated timelines, It, you know, people people really do need to know what they're in for. This is a this is a shift. I was always very clear what the potential was on the other side, but very realistic with people to say that this is worth it, but this is a very slow build. This is something that you will begin to see see pay off. Like, I mean, honestly, like any content program. Right? It it takes time to, to build and pay off.
Jen Hovelsrud [:And then once it does begin to do that, and there are certainly many layers and there are many factors, I try to always be very good about, going back to those stakeholders and having regular touch points and saying, here here is the payoff of this work. You know, here is where we need need may need to make some tweaks. And when I say tweaks, like you said, they're, you know, business changes so fast. We all know that organizations change. You have leadership changes that, you know, toss some of this up in the air. But if you really can, commit to this purpose driven alignment to what you do, it rationalizes every change you make thereafter and makes communication of those changes and alignment even with internal audiences so much easier. Yeah. You know, Jen, we're, unfortunately coming up on on the end of our time, but
Sara Payne [:what I'm what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to, I think we need a part 2 on this conversation because we've only we've only but scratched the surface, I think, on on very important topic for many brands and many leaders. And so I'd love to have you come back for for another episode. But before before we end today, I would like to, switch gears for for a quick segment that I call the collective quick fire. It's a fun way to get some valuable nuggets of marketing insight from you. Before we end the episode, it's 5 questions. And the first one is, what topic is overhyped in health marketing?
Jen Hovelsrud [:I think what's overhyped, maybe not within marketing but certainly on the our leadership, is the results that you can get from organic social.
Sara Payne [:Good one. Good one. I'm curious what do you outsource versus keep in house at Elevance Health?
Jen Hovelsrud [:We don't outsource a lot of this program. We do not outsource the writing. We do not outsource the strategy, but we do have writing partners, and we do have agency partners that are sort of embedded as a part of our our team. And I wouldn't say that we're wholesale outsourcing anything to them, but it is a flexible extension of our team that, allows this outside perspective. Love that. Love that. Leads or awareness which reigns supreme for you. I'm I'm an awareness girl, I like the upper funnel, but, I know that those two things absolutely left to right hand, we need we need them both.
Jen Hovelsrud [:One's long term, one's short term, so, I can't pick. I just know Right. Which is
Sara Payne [:It is. Yeah. Thinking about the answer to this one. What's more important to you, short term results or long term investment in building the brand? For me, long term.
Jen Hovelsrud [:I think there are a number of businesses out there yelling for short term. I don't think that we we lack any any pressure for short term, so I'm gonna I'm gonna take the lot road less traveled, so to speaking, go long term.
Sara Payne [:Yes. Yes. I'm with you. Last question. What's the best podcast episode or book on leadership or marketing that you've consumed recently?
Jen Hovelsrud [:You know, the one that I think this you would say this falls into this category, but, maybe you can tell from this podcast I sometimes can be rather verbose for a communicator and a marketer. Smart Brevity from Axios was, like, just, yeah, mind blowing for me because it gave me a structure to try to think about how to, you know, keep a keep a rich dialogue going or, you know, rich, summary going, but keep it short.
Sara Payne [:Love that. I love that. I have that one too, and and I love it. Well, Jen, this has been really fun. Thanks for doing this with me today. How can listeners get in touch with you?
Jen Hovelsrud [:LinkedIn, Jennifer Hovelsrud, h o v e l s r u d. I'm in Minneapolis. This is my favorite subject. So if you wanna talk about it too, look me up.
Sara Payne [:Awesome. Love it. Well, as usual, the collective dished out some pretty great insights today. If you are feeling expired, please do us a favor and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Thanks for being part of the Health Marketing Collective where strong leadership meets marketing excellence because the future of health care depends on it. See you next time.
