Creative Excellence in Healthcare: Strategies for Meaningful and Relevant Marketing

Sara Payne [00:00:10]:

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence. I'm your host, Sara Payne, and I'm bringing you fascinating conversations with some of the industry's top marketing minds. The topic of today's episode is how to stay relevant and create meaningful connections with our audience. I would argue this is more critical than ever, but how do we craft campaigns that truly resonate and drive impact? Joining me in the conversation today is a creative powerhouse from a leading branding agency who will share insights on how health marketing teams can achieve creative excellence. Our guest is Matt Sauter. Matt is a group creative director at Avalere Health. He leads agency teams that serve the health and pharmaceutical industries. He's passionate about drawing out the best in people and teams.

Sara Payne [00:01:01]:

His goal is to be the spark in someone's day every day and to help others do the same. How wonderful is that? Matt, thanks for being here.

Matt Sauter [00:01:10]:

Thanks for having me.

Sara Payne [00:01:12]:

Yeah. Absolutely. I'm really passionate about this topic because creative excellence is just so central to health marketing success today. And there's been a real explosion of audio visual storytelling the past couple of years. And let's be honest, effective creative execution is so critical to making those stories really stick and get noticed by your audience. And I know, Matt, from our past conversations that while you are creative, you strongly believe that creativity should not be done for the sake of creativity, and we also shouldn't get too hung up on the big idea.

Matt Sauter [00:01:50]:

Yeah. Yeah.

Sara Payne [00:01:51]:

So we're, yeah, we're gonna focus our conversation on these points today, and let's let's start by talking about how we create meaningful connections with our audience. So how do you, Matt, define meaningful creativity in the context of health marketing?

Matt Sauter [00:02:08]:

Yeah. I I at first, I think, I should say I'm, I'm not opposed to big or the big idea, and I think we should have big ideas. Yes. I do wanna start with meaningful every time, and we can think of this as sort of significance instead of grandeur. So this is this is the idea that something is impactful to an individual. It doesn't just make a splash. It makes a difference. It creates value.

Matt Sauter [00:02:35]:

It might remove a barrier or enable an outcome. It may help someone to feel seen. You often know this when you see it. There's certainly we could try to define these things. We try to pin it down to really concise statement, but there is some element of you see this thing in the world. You oh, oh, they cared enough to really create something meaningful there. There's this x factor to it sometimes.

Sara Payne [00:03:01]:

Oh, for sure. I mean, for me, meaningful ideas are the ones, to your point, that are gonna drive the biggest impact.

Matt Sauter [00:03:08]:

Yeah.

Sara Payne [00:03:08]:

You know, in in health care, there are so many issues that can be solved through greater education, of of different audiences. And choosing to be the brand that's gonna bridge that gap is meaningful. Right? Choosing to lean in on issues based marketing or thought leadership is meaningful and is going to have a bigger impact, I believe, than taking out a bunch of branded ads. And that that might be an uncomfortable truth for some people. But I think it takes courage to really spend your marketing dollars in that way in serving your audience and advancing the industry forward, advancing the conversation versus just just pushing your product.

Matt Sauter [00:03:48]:

Yeah. And I think people expect that more than they used to, don't they? Like Yes. They they it's it's not it's not uncommon to have a brand that cares about a problem, a brand that's here because they're passionate about something. And, yeah, maybe there's this product or service along the way, but, really, they're showing up for a person. There's an audience that they're rallying around, and and folks expect that more now than ever.

Sara Payne [00:04:13]:

And not only do they expect it, but I think we've started to see this get proven out in in surveys and in research that it also is the right thing to do for business. Right? Like, people want to spend their dollars with brands that, you know, are making an impact, are, you know, driving positive momentum, positive change in the industry. So it isn't just because, you know, people people like it. Right? Or they want it. It's their like, their it actually makes an impact on their pocketbook.

Matt Sauter [00:04:46]:

Yeah. I I mean, there's there's some element of authenticity there too where it's like, hey. There are some things I can buy. I don't need a toothbrush brand that's out here to do some bigger thing necessarily. Although may maybe. I guess I don't need to

Sara Payne [00:04:59]:

Maybe. Maybe.

Matt Sauter [00:05:00]:

But but

Sara Payne [00:05:00]:

there are some things that

Matt Sauter [00:05:01]:

this is a transaction. But Sure. In the health industry, like, these there's a real big impact that we can make, and the issues posed to individuals with a variety of conditions or or perhaps procedures they need, whatever it is, these are not small things. This isn't buying a toothbrush. And so it makes sense that within our industry, we would find that folks want to put their dollars and their goodwill behind brands who are gonna do the same for them.

Sara Payne [00:05:35]:

100%. Do you have any examples, Matt, of of some campaigns where you're seeing brands really focusing on this idea of meaning, where we can see what gosh. So look at how successful that campaign was. They chose to focus on meaning and look at look at, you know, how big that that became.

Matt Sauter [00:05:55]:

Yeah. I I I'll share an example that feels big, and I can share a more general sort of example that's just just about me. Awesome. So I mean, the purpose of that on its own. The bigger one, I just learned about this week on the heels of the the Cannes Awards. Like, this thing's won some awards. Like, there that already is kind of like, oh, yeah. Yeah.

Matt Sauter [00:06:14]:

Folks are recognizing this is big. And it was with Siemens Health and Ears where

Sara Payne [00:06:18]:

Oh, yeah.

Matt Sauter [00:06:19]:

Yeah. So you might have heard of this. Like, they recently did something in the MRI space where they looked at their MRI machines, which can make noises louder than a military jet. And they said, like, wow. This is scary for a kid. I mean, for an adult too, but like they said, this is scary for a kid. Think about all the children who need MRIs as part of a variety of treatments, just monitoring, etcetera, like, do they really need the fear layered on top of their treatment? Like, this is a barrier to adherence.

Sara Payne [00:06:52]:

Yeah.

Matt Sauter [00:06:53]:

But the noises made I I guess so sorry about this. The noises made during any specific type of scan is predictable. They know what the machine is going to sound like and when it to the scans performed.

Sara Payne [00:07:12]:

That's so cool.

Matt Sauter [00:07:13]:

The most common pediatric scans, and and so now when a child listens to this audiobook when they're in the machine, a scary noise becomes part of the story.

Sara Payne [00:07:23]:

Chugging soundtrack to your favorite movie.

Matt Sauter [00:07:26]:

Yeah. Chugging becomes a train. There's like an alien outer space noise. I don't remember what all that all of them are, but they took a barrier, and they didn't shy away from it. They made it something special. I think there's even a book that these kids take home so they can read the stories and look for look forward to, returning again. And to me, that's meaningful and big. Like, what a difference for these kids, and what a great example of considering the larger experience and not being constrained by a message map or an existing marketing plan.

Sara Payne [00:08:00]:

I love that. That's such a great example. Thank you for sharing that.

Matt Sauter [00:08:04]:

Response every time. Yeah. You're welcome.

Sara Payne [00:08:07]:

I You said you had another you had another example.

Matt Sauter [00:08:10]:

More more general, not a specific example, but I think, meaningful isn't always big, and sometimes we can forget that. Think for example of, an individual newly diagnosed with some condition. Whether it's rare, whether it's common, whatever. Oftentimes, individuals don't know what they don't know, And discussions with a doctor can be less productive than their potential when these folks don't even know what to ask, when we don't even know what to ask. Something as simple as a printable doctor discussion guide can cover that gap. It's meaningful. It's value for the individual, improves their experience, and I'm not saying we should stop there. You know? We like but sometimes as marketers, we can miss this stuff either because we're focused on big first, or we see these things as an optional box to check even though for a patient in that moment, this is novel and helpful.

Matt Sauter [00:09:09]:

So these are the things I wanna move to to making more of table stakes while we reach for a meaningful plus big.

Sara Payne [00:09:15]:

Yeah. I love that. That's that's a really good reminder for so many of us that do this day in and day out is not to take those things for granted and to really prioritize more bay I'm gonna call it basic. Right? A a a more basic deliverable that can have be very transformative to someone in their journey of receiving health care.

Matt Sauter [00:09:39]:

Yeah. We don't don't stop there, but don't skip the basics either, and don't don't count them out. Like, sometimes the basics are the basics for a reason. Like, even when we get tired of these things, we're like, oh, we've done, like, we've done a 1,000 of these. We're right. But this patient could be the first one they've ever seen. It's still Yes.

Sara Payne [00:09:57]:

And I think that's such an important point too, because, you know, to your point, we we we are in this. We've been there. We've done that. But even if so so let's say, you know, you've been working with a brand or you're you're on an agency team supporting a brand for for 5 years plus.

Matt Sauter [00:10:13]:

Yeah.

Sara Payne [00:10:13]:

And but remember, that person just received that diagnosis for the first time today or tomorrow, and their journey just started. So while your journey as a brand leader or creative director might have started 5 years ago and those things seem like old hat, The patient's journey just started at point 0 today. And that's where those same tactics and deliverables are so important not to be pushed aside.

Matt Sauter [00:10:45]:

Yeah. I think the same thing happens with our messaging too. You know, where we can say, we've we've done how much all with this key message or whatever, and and absolutely, we should pivot in pursuit of relevance, but we also the same as what you just described, we have to remember, like, this might be the first time that somebody has seen x message, and we are going to tire of much of this before our audience does.

Sara Payne [00:11:09]:

Yeah. Well, you you brought up relevance, so I wanna go there.

Matt Sauter [00:11:12]:

Sure.

Sara Payne [00:11:13]:

What are some key strategies for ensuring that your health marketing program, your campaign, those efforts remain relevant?

Matt Sauter [00:11:24]:

Yeah. I there I mean, I think there's a lot to dig into here. I mean, a few examples be, don't don't get caught in the sunk cost fallacy. Pivot when you need to. Mhmm. I think we need to be willing to let our plans and our message maps and all of those these very good things be a guide and not a prism. I think staying relevant means that we change when we need to with our audience. But I think on very much the other end of this, the other side of this, also, like, don't get caught in trends.

Matt Sauter [00:12:00]:

I think focus more on what your audience needs than on what others are doing and certainly apply anything relevant. Don't fear trends, but don't chase them. Remember that you don't have to be part of everything. Don't be drawn away by the siren song. Don't lose focus. Remember relevance first. But part of this is about changing with your audience and anticipating them.

Sara Payne [00:12:24]:

Yeah. And how do you do that? How do your teams do that, you know, on behalf of your clients? Things move at a fast pace in this industry, change is perhaps the only constant, right? How do we get really good at anticipating the changing needs and the and the preferences of our audiences?

Matt Sauter [00:12:45]:

Yeah. Research is huge. I also believe big time in listening first in general, not just for this. Like but in general, like, let's seek first to understand. Certainly, let's do that with our audiences. I think there's many ways to do that and an excellent one available to us these days is social listening, keeping a finger on the pulse of an audience, monitoring sentiment, change in sentiment, looking at actual specific posts, thoughts, etcetera, understanding where our audience's heads are at in near real time, like, you can pivot based on that, but I'm also a fan of knowing who your people are and talking to them. Like, let's not just talk about our audiences. Let's let's talk to our audiences.

Matt Sauter [00:13:28]:

Stay in direct, opportunities to cocreate with our audiences nowadays, make things together, engage with communities and advocacy groups. I just think, I think you've got a much better shot at staying relevant if you make the effort to stay connected and engaged with actual people. And I think that through great listening and research and and feedback loops, you can get there. This is this is within reach.

Sara Payne [00:14:06]:

I I agree with you, and I feel like not every unfortunately, not every brand has the luxury of budget to support audience research, very thorough in-depth audience research. Right? But it doesn't mean we can't get scrappy or creative about that. Right? Like, can we bring in a small handful of people, and and do some conversations and and listening there and really understanding what their needs are, what their fears are, what their problems are, and really build our strategy and our messaging around that. Because I think we can fall into this trap of making assumptions. We we we know them. We you know, this is what they feel, think, and do, versus actually asking and listening to that. And I was just sort of curious, Matt, what percentage of campaigns that you work on have the luxury of that, you know, actual dollars line item earmarked for research?

Matt Sauter [00:15:17]:

I'd say a decent a decent percentage of them, but it often depends obviously on the scale of the thing. But sometimes where where a brand is in its life cycle, oftentimes, they know their audience very well and they've seen perhaps there's not a lot of change in in the space. Sure. For for some clients that I've worked with, certainly, they've been able to observe, like, a whole industry maybe hasn't had a lot of change in belief in in quite a long time. And those are times where we're not going to invest as much in ongoing research. But when you don't know, that's when you need

Sara Payne [00:15:52]:

to. Right.

Matt Sauter [00:15:53]:

And and to your point, we can get scrappy. Like like, it can't it doesn't have to be let's do constant ongoing social listening. It might be let's spend the time, the money, the effort to to identify who are the influential individuals in an area, who's everyone else already listening to, and let's go listen to them too. Why is anyone else's belief shifting? What are those reference points? Can we monitor those even if it's just someone that's already on the team, not building a new function?

Sara Payne [00:16:20]:

Yeah. I I love those examples you give of ways to, you know, be creative inside of what might be a more limited budget. Right? Maybe maybe you don't have that budget available to go truly in-depth, but there are a lot of, methods and opportunities given social media, to get creative. Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about, engineering the environment for great work. I know this is something that you're really passionate about. What do you what do you see as some of the elements that create an environment where creativity and innovation can thrive, whether you're working on an in house brand team or collaborating with with external partners?

Matt Sauter [00:17:08]:

Yeah. I I mean, I I think you do need to engineer it. As you said, You can't just tell people you want this. You have to you have to be a part. You have to make it possible. It's about, in my mind, sort of creating the environment which more naturally produces the outcomes that you desire. And in the examples that we're gonna talk about, it's it's sort of the environment in which great creative work can happen. And I think you have to start fundamentally and foundationally with just all the things you need for any high functioning team.

Matt Sauter [00:17:40]:

Because for creativity and innovation to happen consistently and sustainably, the team does need to be high functioning. Yeah. And so, you know, some of those, there's there's a lot here that folks, folks who've done much more thinking about than I have can can cite, but, you know, items such as psychological safety Yes. Giving folks ownership plus support, developing clear objectives and expectations, both about the task at hand and about the the roles and purposes of individual folks on your team. Like, you need all of this. But then when we think about creativity and innovation, there are a few extra things that I like to focus on. And the the 2 sort of categories that come to mind for me are, 1st, to nurture curiosity and playfulness. We wanna build a place where people ask questions and dig deeper.

Matt Sauter [00:18:40]:

They ask better questions. They ask more of those questions. They're always trying to learn about their audience, about the problem, the objective, about their team, all of this. Curiosity is so important in creativity, and I think we have to model it. But Yes. That that second half, playfulness, we're gonna have to model that too. And there's there's all sorts of thinking about the, the role of the play state in creativity. But even without that, even without the the idea of how much better it can make the work, just think about how much better it can make the team when they can get a little loose, they can get a little weird together.

Matt Sauter [00:19:20]:

If we can set the right tone, like, these teams are they're gonna be more comfortable, coming to the table with what they might otherwise not be comfortable sharing. So that first bucket to me is sort of nurturing curiosity and and playfulness. After that, I think about training others to see, Like and this is, I think this is sort of the task for someone in a a creative career, like, for their whole career. Is just learning more and more how to see. This is, in my mind, practicing the art of deconstruction where we we look at something and we learn to see it for more than the sum or yeah. More than the go again. We can look at something and learn to see it as more than the sum of its parts.

Sara Payne [00:20:09]:

Yes.

Matt Sauter [00:20:10]:

We see what makes it up. And I think when we can pull something apart, when we can see the pieces to it, we don't just we don't just have a a capacity then to better critique the work or better improve it. We can see how each piece of this works, and some of those, we can we when you look at the thing out there in the wild that you love and you start to understand, why do I love it? Why does anyone else love this, and what of it can I apply? So when you're practicing this art of deconstruction, you're learning not just to be inspired by the thing, but educated by it. And if you can if you can train that in your teams, like, you can go a whole

Sara Payne [00:20:55]:

lot. Yeah. Yeah. I we did. This is making me this is really awesome, amazing stuff. And it's making me think of the actual most recent episode that that we went live with. It was all about strategic thinking. So Mary Rapp If you haven't listened to it, Matt, I encourage you to listen to it.

Sara Payne [00:21:15]:

But it's all about being very in what you're talking about is being intentional with playfulness and, you know, deconstructing something. And Mary had very similar thoughts about strategic thinking that we we, as a society, as a workplace culture, have become very much about our to do list. Right? I've been told these are the things I need to go do. So we, you know, like, good little worker bees get up and we do the thing. Right? And it's there's it's about efficiency. It's about go from this meeting to that meeting. And if we don't actually reserve the time to think strategically, and in this case, think creatively, it's no wonder it's not happening. Right? Like, our our brains aren't really wired to function tactically and strategically at the same time unless we're very intentional about it.

Sara Payne [00:22:10]:

So I wondered, Matt, if you could give some examples, like, give us a, you know, sneak peek inside of your team. And, like, what are some of those like, how are you doing this? How are you taking these tips and putting them into actual practical application, particularly this this concept of playfulness. Right? Like, are you actually reserving time on people's calendars where you're, you know whatever you're doing? Because I will tell you. Like, I'm just gonna give some examples of of of my world and what works for me, is if I'm trying to do something either strategic or creative or both of those things, frankly, at the same time, Going for a walk is tremendously helpful for me. My brain fires very differently when I'm for walking. There's there's some research out there that indicates that that's actually proven, scientifically proven to produce better results. And then, there's something weird about being on a plane. I don't it's it's I think it's the lack of distraction.

Sara Payne [00:23:05]:

Right? Like, you don't have the constant barrage of email and text messages and, you know, your phone to be distracting you where, like, I can look out the window and literally see blue sky. Right? It said blue sky thinking while you're in the blue sky. I don't know. Like, I'm trapped in this, you know, metal container flying through the air, and I just suddenly, things just feel a lot more clear. So I just wondered

Matt Sauter [00:23:32]:

Yeah.

Sara Payne [00:23:33]:

What you do with your team to be very intentional about this.

Matt Sauter [00:23:37]:

Yeah. So at first, completely agreed with all of that. And it's the shower thing too. Right? As long as it's been in showers, people have been having ideas in them.

Sara Payne [00:23:45]:

I know. And it everyone's always creeped out when you say that. I thought of this when I was in the shower this morning. Right? So sometimes you have to edit yourself out. But I do believe I don't have one. But, boy, would I love to have a whiteboard at the shower.

Matt Sauter [00:23:58]:

I think they make those. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, you sitting there and telling yourself to be creative isn't really gonna get you far. Muscling it doesn't really do it. That's not how the brain works. There's a ton of research as you suggested, about all of this, but, you're talking about building habits. Right? Like, we're teaching people to be creative.

Matt Sauter [00:24:23]:

And I think first, yeah, you do have to make space for these things, and I mean, temporarily. Like, you need to make the time for this. Creativity can and does happen in the margins. But if we want it to thrive, give it more space. Yeah. And and but you have to make venues for it also, platforms and and such. And I think that's more what you're talking about. And, I mean, it can be something as small as creative inspiration channels on Teams or Slack or whatever.

Matt Sauter [00:24:53]:

Just stop start talking about what you see in the world. This is a place for people to take what they saw, put it somewhere, and talk about it. Yes. You can have you can have monthly workshops to take some of that and deconstruct it and dream about how to apply it back to your own business. We we do rapid team exercises. I love these things. Things. It's I mean, I have a whole thing that I start brainstorm sessions with that I call the emoji thunderdome, where it's a bunch of prompts and people can only answer in a series of emojis.

Matt Sauter [00:25:22]:

You're just trying to get people loose. You know? But all sorts there's a ton of different rapid team exercises that are just about getting people thinking in different ways. You you could even you could have a goal to produce x number of ideas quarterly against a defined problem. We're not looking to make busy work, but we are Right. Habits. We're we're trying to get people thinking about this. We're trying to make it part of a culture.

Sara Payne [00:25:48]:

Yeah. We do we do some of this too where we will, you know, make it because if you don't set a goal around it and you don't create milestones, it's not gonna happen. Right? So we do set some of those goals. It's like, okay. For every client, you know, we have to have x number of new ideas in this given period of time. Not to, as you said earlier, force it because that's not you can't just, like, oh, sit down and be creative. That's not gonna work. But to encourage the habit building around it and to encourage people to set aside the time for it.

Sara Payne [00:26:23]:

I'm gonna make you, make a promise to me today. I I need to get invited to this emoji thunder dome experience. Either if I could just be a fly on the wall for that, I or or actually participate, I don't care. I would like I just need to see this.

Matt Sauter [00:26:39]:

It's a good sign.

Sara Payne [00:26:40]:

Yeah. So I just I I love this idea of rapid team exercises too, because I do think we are in a world now with with AI, let's be real, where the push for speed in thinking, ideas, and actual work is going to accelerate. And while we cannot force ourselves to just be creative at the drop of a hat, I think we have to kind of train our brains to be able to produce good faster. And it it and what it really is about is the psychological things that hold us back from doing that, to your earlier point. If you don't have psychological safety, you have fear of a dumb idea, or fear of looking ridiculous in front of your colleagues, or, like, we have to get over that. We have to be willing to jump right into the messy middle and throw a bunch of things up and say, there's gotta be something good here. What's gonna rise above? Let's take that thing. Let's go make it.

Sara Payne [00:27:46]:

Let's go let's go just spend 45 minutes making that good, and then, you know, put it in front of a client. And if they say no, we only spent 45 minutes. Right? Like, what what's the big deal? At least we're wouldn't the client appreciate the fact that we're coming up with new ideas and presenting them with things on the fly versus needing to get 20 people in a room 2 weeks from now to have a 4 hour like, there's value in that. Don't get me wrong. But I do think we're entering this era where, consciously or not, the, the drive and and and and expectation for good work fast, Fast, good, and cheap is going to AI is going to drive that. Right? And so it's like, buckle up. Right? We're we're going to have to unbundle some of that psychological stuff that might hold us back from the the the willingness to sort of jump in with both feet.

Matt Sauter [00:28:42]:

Yeah. And and I think, part of what that requires is is, thoughtfulness in the hiring process. Because all of these exercises with the team we already have, we're building new new neuro pathways and and trying to deeply carve the ones we already have, the good ones we already have. Like, that's that's with the people we have, but, like, the hiring process is so important too. Like like, this is an opportunity for us to choose great people who care about the work and the folks around them who can get so weird together, who contribute to the psychological safety. It's not it's not like the most creative people at any cost. Like, you're building a team and an experience. And if folks are gonna feel safe and empowered to do everything we're talking about, we do have to be thoughtful about who we're throwing together and the environment that develops.

Matt Sauter [00:29:35]:

And I feel like it's it's important to remember that day by day, this is people's lives.

Sara Payne [00:29:43]:

Yes.

Matt Sauter [00:29:44]:

So let's make a place and a crew that they wanna spend it with and trust that that good stuff can come as we shape and hold an environment for these lovely people where they can get loose and creative together and just move with the times.

Sara Payne [00:29:58]:

Yeah. And to your point, a part of that is is hiring and being very clear about the culture, right, that of the team that they're joining so they can self select in or out of that, right, and and sort of know what they're walking into. But then it's also that living up to that experience when they come in and making sure we're surrounding them with the right support where they do you know, it takes time. It takes time when you're new to that team, and everybody else already has sort of that social bond and that, like, we've done this together before. We've done the emoji thunder door dome. We know what we're doing. Right? But to support them and allow them to, you know because because I see people that enter a high performance culture, you know, like like ours quickly, their their, imposter syndrome can these are really talented people that we hire to join our team, and very quickly confidence levels can drop and imposter syndrome can come up for everybody. It's about how does the team that they're stepping into rally alongside of them and say, we hired you for a reason.

Sara Payne [00:30:58]:

We want you and your unique experience.

Matt Sauter [00:31:00]:

Yeah.

Sara Payne [00:31:01]:

Come in with us. It's safe here. Like, literally, you know, literally having that conversation in some instances and inviting them into that. Yeah. I I I agree so much with with everything, that you just said. And, I I think you might have just come up with the episode or the title for this episode. Would you say, let's let's get weird together?

Matt Sauter [00:31:24]:

Oh, man. The I use that word so much. People always know. They're like, Matt wants us to get weird together.

Sara Payne [00:31:29]:

Let's get weird together. I love that.

Matt Sauter [00:31:31]:

And that's to everything you just said, like, I think that's such a powerful thing. We don't we don't get weird enough

Sara Payne [00:31:39]:

Let's not take ourselves too seriously. Like, this is important stuff. This is health care. Right? This is literally people's lives in many instances day in and day out, But the work that we're doing in marketing doesn't have to be taken that seriously because we have to be able to let the guard down. We have to be able to, you know, not get too rigid with regulatory. Obviously, regulatory compliance is important, but let's not start with that. Right? Like, let's start with with creativity and the what seems to be right for the audience, what's meaningful for the audience, and then and then back into filtering out, you know, for all of the the important regulatory filters later. Well, Matt, I feel like we could we could keep getting weird together for a really long time here, but I I'd like to switch gears for a quick fire segment.

Matt Sauter [00:32:25]:

Sure.

Sara Payne [00:32:25]:

I've got 5 questions for you. How do you stay inspired and motivated in your creative work?

Matt Sauter [00:32:32]:

I am not one of those people that goes and does the same thing outside of work. I I wanna be a rounder person. I want more reference points. And so for me, so I'm a big reader. My wife used to be a children's librarian. My kids like to read. Like, we are we are book people. So for me, I'm I'm not just exposing myself to other reference points.

Matt Sauter [00:32:50]:

I'm exposing myself to other worlds and other ways of thinking, but, you know, it's also it's also about hobbies. It's about all of these other things, and you start to, you start to think in different ways by doing different things. So part of part of it, I think, is what are the things I see that I can deconstruct, that I can be inspired by? But there's also what are the things I can do that will cause me to think differently and to have experiences I otherwise would not, which I can apply back? When it comes to inspiration more specifically, I am that person that looks at everything around them and picks it apart. Not not to, you know, drag it through the mud or anything, but just because I'm curious. I'm very curious, and I wanna see how everything works. And so it's literally everything around me. And, also, you know, there are things I follow on Instagram and YouTube and this and that, where it's just these people are doing great work and I love seeing what they do and how they think. I am more attracted to to sources that let me see the thinking, where it's not, hey.

Matt Sauter [00:33:57]:

Here's a roundup of the 10 best x y z. Those things have their place. Mhmm. But I I love I love to watch somebody figure it out Yeah. And scale a little along the way and get somewhere incredible because it teaches me more how I can do the same. Maybe I missed the sale part. Well, if, if I saw them do it, we'll see.

Sara Payne [00:34:17]:

Love that. What's your favorite brainstorming technique? I know you you you already shared 1, the emoji thunder dome approach. But what do you what else do you have in terms of brainstorming techniques that work really well?

Matt Sauter [00:34:30]:

I think moves such as that as the icebreaker, which partly is to get people to open up, partly is to get them to to think different, but I also I think that's important because it helps us to set tone. When we when we make our icebreaker, you know, insert whatever adjective weird or whatever it is, you know, we're we're essentially saying in this space, here's where we can go together. So that's very important, but the bulk of the time together always plan ahead. Never show up and be like, hey. What ideas do people have? I am big on structured brainstorming, and I I meet with my folks. I I lead other leaders, and so they're leading brainstorming efforts and and all sorts of things. And we will sometimes meet together ahead of work that they are facilitating. Mhmm.

Matt Sauter [00:35:17]:

Say, okay. What do you want out of this? What are you trying to get to? Okay. Let's break that down and figure out what are some questions we can ask and not even direct spend some time on together before we move on to something else? And then in the virtual whiteboard session, you know, these folks have a whole plan that they could step the team through and we're tightly controlling. I don't wanna go too wide. I wanna Yeah. Focus. That's part of how we get to meaningful before we go big. So you don't

Sara Payne [00:35:52]:

want one

Matt Sauter [00:35:53]:

at a time. Structure it for sure.

Sara Payne [00:35:54]:

Earlier, the deconstruction element. Right?

Matt Sauter [00:35:57]:

Part of

Sara Payne [00:35:57]:

what you're doing in that brainstorm is you're being like, well, let's just talk about this, like, sort of subsegment of the issue where the audience or whatever. Really dive deep on that versus trying to solve at the highest, you know, level of of the

Matt Sauter [00:36:11]:

100%. Yeah.

Sara Payne [00:36:12]:

Approach. What's your go to tool or software for creative work?

Matt Sauter [00:36:17]:

It's it really is. It's like the virtual whiteboard, whether that be, you know, freehand, Mural, Miro, whatever. There's a bunch of them out there. I I love how unstructured you can be and then how structured you can get. It's it's very helpful, and we use those to generate ideas. We also use those to document and to we for all sorts of stuff. But I I'm also a plain text document person. Like, not even Microsoft Word.

Matt Sauter [00:36:49]:

Like, give me the little the little text edit app on my computer and I turn off the the rich text formatting. It's just plain text. So I can just get stuff out there, and it's impossible for me to format it, to add anything just like getting something out there in its most raw state.

Sara Payne [00:37:08]:

I That's great.

Matt Sauter [00:37:09]:

I I like the constraints that we can place upon ourselves with various tools to force ourselves only to go to the piece we're trying to get to.

Sara Payne [00:37:19]:

Yeah. What's one common mistake you see in health care marketing campaigns?

Matt Sauter [00:37:25]:

Trying to be like other health care marketing campaigns. I think that the entire industry has been working very hard to escape a past. Sure. We certainly, there have been no shortage of amazing breakthroughs and treatments and all these ways for us to service patients, but on the marketing side, like, let's be honest, like, we're we're a lot better right now than than as an industry we used to be and, I I love when any brand in health care says, hey. What great thing do we wanna do? And not what great thing do we wanna do in health care? Like, remove that from your criteria. Obviously, like you said earlier, obviously, we're gonna get in front of regulatory bodies and and everything, but, like, just focus on focus on excellent visual design. Focus on content that is completely breakthrough. Focus on marketing that that is, like, just actually actually the best there is.

Matt Sauter [00:38:28]:

And, hey, by the way, we happen to be doing it in health care, pharma, whatever.

Sara Payne [00:38:33]:

Yeah. Amen to that. What's your favorite way to unwind after a long day?

Matt Sauter [00:38:37]:

So I recently took up crosswords. That that's I I enjoy it as long as they're the easy ones because I'm not working with the challenge at that point. I'm trying to unwind. I I like when you get into a rhythm with it. But, again, I'm I'm very much of a reader. I'm a I'm a walker too. I I love to escape to the outside alone. Yeah.

Matt Sauter [00:38:59]:

I don't I don't even wanna walk through the woods. I wanna walk to the woods and then sit there and just kinda listen and be and and observe. I think, I I think we'd all be better off if we spent more time just being and not as much time doing.

Sara Payne [00:39:14]:

Yeah. Yeah. That's well, that's a great place to end things. I think, Matt, this was a real pleasure. I had a blast, talking with you today. Thank you so much for being here. How can our listeners get in

Matt Sauter [00:39:28]:

touch with you? I think LinkedIn is probably the best. I think you'll you'll probably link that in the show notes. Folks can follow the link, send me a message. I'm happy to field questions or congratulations or whatever you have for me.

Sara Payne [00:39:41]:

Awesome. So be sure to follow Matt on LinkedIn. If you enjoyed the conversation today, do us a favor and subscribe wherever you get the podcast. That's it for today. Thanks to all of you for being a part of the Health Marketing Collective, where strong leadership meets marketing excellence because the future of health care depends on it. We'll see you next time.