mommyjenlin

Once in great a while my blog and my job intersect, and this week is one of those times. I've been helping work on the relaunch of Vidal Sassoon hair care, and one of the ways we're bringing the brand to life is by bringing actual Vidal Sassoon pop-up salons to unexpected places—like your local drug or grocery store—and surprising women with a transformative hair styling experience. We're doubling down on the Chicago event this Thursday to make it extra special, and to help get the word out I was able to engage my friends Sara and Caitlin from 2 Moms Media (both of whom I met through this here blog). They are helping Vidal Sassoon throw a VIP preview party and promote the event. Follow along on Instagram and Twitter with the hashtag #VSChi or better yet, come to the flagship Walgreens at the corner of State & Lake between noon and 7pm this Thursday and get your hair done by a genuine Vidal Sassoon stylist. I'm so excited for this event because I feel passionatel

With 2014 close at hand, and the healthcare consumer taking even more control in their healthcare choices in the rapid evolution of healthcare from a provider-dominated, and directed industry to a consumer-driven industry, significant changes need to take place in how we market and do business. Being responsive, outcome transparent, delivering an exceptionally consistent patient experience from first contact through post purchase, you're finding that meeting individual expectations, and needs is never easy. But as many successful healthcare companies will attest, these are no longer nice to have business requirements, but got to have requirements in order to survive. Not everyone will be in an ACO, Patient Medical Home, Medicare or expanded Medicaid program in 2014. You will still need to compete for that individual patient at some level. Bundled payments are not going to change that. In mean really, how much different will your price be from the competition? Healthcare consumers l

I have been reading and seeing a lot of information lately that consumers will be clueless when entering a Health Insurance Exchange (HIX) to purchase health insurance for the first time. Health insurance companies and governments are gearing up to spend millions in educating the healthcare consumer regarding purchasing health insurance in a HIX. You have a very big stake for participating in this marketing game. But wait this gets even better. These first time buyers are going to include those who are employed, whose companies decided to throw in the towel on a cost basis in favor of a defined contribution benefit, and send their employees on their merry way to buy their own coverage. That is if they don't drop their hours below the threshold for mandated employer insurance first. Or, they could opt to pay a penalty for not providing healthcare coverage which in some cases will be cheaper than providing coverage. So where is the marketing opportunity for you because not everyone w

I've written before about my girls' obsession with musical theatre . It hit fever pitch this year after I took them to see OPRF's 110-person production of Les Miserables  and Fenwick's The Wiz. But after treating myself to  The Book of Mormon  (not for kids!) I wanted to check out more professional family-friendly fare in addition to our steady diet of high school and middle school productions. So last Sunday Ada and I attended Oliver! at the Drury Lane Theatre in Oakbrook Terrance (near the mall). "Why are there so many grandmas and grandpas here?" asked Ada, as we entered the sparkling, Vegas-like lobby. Indeed, the matinee audience was at least three-quarters retirees, with the rest composed of families with elementary-aged children. Within the theatre, we found plush seats, great sight lines and well-calibrated sound. And when the lights went down, we were captivated by a very solid, very professional  production. Oliver!, as you might surmise, is based o

There is no arguments that the cloud software industry is currently top of mind for many, in fact enterprise companies are even receiving their share of  love . While the industry as a whole has our attention, what about marketing departments at these companies.  How are CMOs at these fast growing cloud organizations managing their marketing budget? What are they worried about? and what are their priorities for the rest of the year? Within IDC's 2013 Marketing Barometer survey we received answers from marketing leaders within cloud organizations. In this presentation you will see the high level findings comparing these cloud marketing departments to more traditional  2nd platform  companies. I would love to hear your thoughts on these initial findings and how your marketing organization is working to compete in this fast growing market (whether as a pure play or just one of many product lines).   For an extended deck with further analysis please contact me directly at smelnick (a

Well, I don't know about you, but it's just a matter of time before the evolving healthcare consumer lets lose the barrage. It can be patients, doctors, employers, payers. Really anyone that has Internet access can participate in Customer Generated Media (CGM). It can be a great unknown. It can be helpful. It can be harmful. It can be your best friend, or your worse nightmare. It has the power to influence thousands, if not millions in this mobile social media aware society we live in. CGM can make your brand the greatest on the earth. It can send you to the ash heap of history. Anybody can blog. Anybody can do a video. Anybody can start an email campaign. Anybody can create a facebook page, web site or tweet. And anything they say or do has the chance to go viral. Sorry to say this, but not everyone thinks you doing the great job that you think you are. If your marketing department is not monitoring CGM and your patient experience from a brand perspective, then you and your ho

The stigma of social media is something I have been fighting for years. As someone whose education and career has mirrored Mark Zuckerberg's ( minus the dropping out of an ivy league school to build a multibillion dollar company and taking it public…so really when I say "mirrored", I mean we are approximately the same age ), I feel an affinity to the social networks that have matured as my own career has moved forward. Because of this I have found myself defending the merits of different social networks' "tangible" value to relatives, colleagues, and random people on the subway. So, when I received an email stating I had $100 free Twitter ad credits, I jumped at the chance to see where Twitter has taken their ad platform. While that $100 was great to boost my twitter followers ( speaking of which follow me here ), retweets, and ego it didn't really answer my questions around how creative B2B marketers are utilizing social networks. To dive in deeper I ta

As the pace of the evolving healthcare industry continues to accelerate, I was thinking the other day about what lessons in patient engagement from other healthcare industry segments could improve hospital patient engagement?  I define that as meaningful patent engagement for managing population health, changing health behaviors, keeping members in network in risk sharing agreements and improving the patient experience for value-based agreements seem to me to be mission critical business issues. It occurred to me that specialty pharmacies have been engaging patients for a long time now, and there are lessons that could be applied to hospitals, and other healthcare providers as they learn how to meaningfully engage patients. Special pharmacy by its very nature requires them to be highly engaged with the patients due to the nature of the drugs, dosage side effects, back box warnings, limited distribution, FDA adverse event reporting etc., but that doesn't mean that there are no lesso

This isn't a post about Roger Ebert, may his memory be a blessing. One of Ada's Montessori classmates--the younger sister of one of her best friends--has leukemia. She was diagnosed a month ago and the chemo is already working . It's not my daughter, but it hit so close to home. To know she's virtually guaranteed to recover--something we learned yesterday--I can finally exhale. Mostly. Because one of the risks of getting older is that mortality sneaks up around every corner. I've had 3 friends experience stillbirth. Another one's baby died of SIDS. Brain cancer claimed a colleague. And a heart attack took my dad at 55. And while Aria is going to kick cancer's butt, I have another friend whose child's brain cancer may prove incurable. It's awful and terrifying and heartbreaking, and all I know how to do is send food and the occasional awkward message of support. Ada, Grandpa and his beloved cat And then there's my father-in-law. He's been diag

Companies simply cannot excel at modern marketing without strong Marketing Operations.  These professionals reinforce high performance by strengthening processes, technology, metrics, and best practices.  A recent study by IDC CMO Advisory Service , in conjunction with MOCCA , found that the Marketing Operations function is flourishing and expanding beyond its original charter.   Marketing Operations has been a rising star from its inception. I like to compare Marketing Operations to the structural frame of building. Try to scale without steel girders and you get a weak and wobbly high-rise.  Your marketing will also be weak and wobbly without Marketing Operations.  IDC first recognized Marketing Operations in 2005 in its annual Tech Marketing Benchmarks study.  Then, Marketing Operations represented 2.5% of the total marketing staff. The team became a fast-rising star – driven by the need for marketing accountability and the addition of marketing automation.  In 2012, tech companie

As Henry Ford said, "Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently". However, how many of us actually take the time to learn from our mistakes as part of continuous improvement in our customer creation process? No doubt it can be difficult to admit where we have made mistakes, especially if we've lost money in the process! In fact, based upon a recent IDC survey, only 55% of large BtoB organizations have a formal sales win-loss analysis program in place. You may be thinking that you're one of the lucky companies in that list, feeling comfy with the fact that your sales reps are required to check a box in your sales force automation( SFA ) system when they lose a deal to indicate the reason for that loss. Best-in-class players in this space will tell you that you're only kidding yourself into believing whatever the sales reps input into the SFA, if they even use your SFA. If you're in sales operations, then you're in an