Inside the Health Insurance Is Broken Campaign: Boldness, Authenticity, and Real Change

I don't want to say much more about it because I've got the perfect guest here to walk us through the strategy and the intent behind the campaign. I'm thrilled to be joined by Nishant Shukla, Chief Marketing Officer at Scan Health Plan. Welcome to the show.

Thank you, Sara. Really appreciate being here. The Health Marketing Collective is powered by Inprela, a communications firm built for health brands. Determined to lead, not follow, we partner with marketing innovators who aren't just chasing attention. They're building movements. Connect with the audiences shaping the future of care and lead the conversations that move your market. Ready to rise above the noise? Visit imprela.com that's I N P R E L A dot com. Let's create something that moves the market.

Yeah. Just really excited to talk to you about this campaign. For anyone who hasn't seen it yet, I really encourage you to check it out on YouTube. But Nishant, explain to folks what the Health Insurance Is Broken campaign is all about.

Yeah. Thank you, Sarah. So, you know, first let me start off by introducing Scan Health Plan. Scan Health Plan is a multi state, not for profit organization focused on senior care. Primarily, we're focused on Medicare Advantage, which is a form of Medicare that is offered to seniors as they age into Medicare. The campaign that we launched this year, the Health Insurance Is Broken campaign, is a bold look at the healthcare experience for seniors. It calls it like it is. It doesn't paint a picture of seniors sailing or, you know, doing.

Doing things that we know may be part of their lives, but isn't necessarily part of their health insurance experience. And so we decided to launch a campaign that really spoke to the the authentic experience that many seniors have when experiencing health insurance.

Yeah, and that's what I really love about it. I think, you know, boldness is refreshing and what's needed so much in health market and, you know, it's very refreshing to a lot of audiences when. When brands and companies are willing to really call it like it is.

And they formed this company because they were frustrated with the state of health insurance at that time and the state of healthcare at that time. So they were activists. They were people that wanted to affect change, and that DNA is still within our blood, and we continue to operate with that mindset with a singular focus of improving care for our members.

Yeah, I love that it's such great context to understand sort of the. The founding and the mission and that really activist voice. It makes a ton of sense that. That you went in this direction. What was the. The single biggest takeaway that you really wanted people to walk away with when. When they saw this campaign?

So I really wanted to make sure that people felt validated, that they felt heard, that they felt seen, that, you know, we're not just, you know, giving them advertising that, you know, paints a rosy picture on life that doesn't acknowledge the struggles that many of them go through in experiencing health insurance. And so, for me, it was really important to let people know that we understand how broken this system can be and how there are many, many different pain points that people experience. We shed light on a few of them. But. But there's so many pain points in. As we think about the experience of health insurance. And so we wanted people to feel heard, we wanted people to feel validated, and we also wanted people to know that there's a better choice out there. Right.

SCAN is a company. We're not perfect by any means. We, you know, we certainly have. Have issues, and we're working hard to fix them. But here's a company that's nonprofit, not for profit, that's aligned with what our seniors want, which is better care and better health outcomes. And that's really what our focus is as well. It's not about the bottom line. It's not about margins.

It's about making sure that, you know, that. That people get the best care that they can get. And we wanted seniors to know that there's an organization out there that, that is focused on that. It's interesting, right? Medicare is something that has, you know, 100% brand awareness, if you will. You know, when you turn 65, you know about Medicare.

Right.

You may not know about Medicare Advantage and then even if you do, you might not know that there's different choices out there. You might not know that there's nonprofit Medicare Advantage out there. And so, you know, bringing that, that, that choice to consumers is important.

So from a, from a business objective perspective with designing this whole campaign, obviously doing so ahead of open enrollment, you're really looking to attract folks to offering and it, and is it part of it, this whole differentiation piece of really wanting to spotlight that experience of a not for profit Medicare Advantage plan can offer them?

Yeah. So I would say that, you know, the primary objective here was, is our members. It's always been our members and it's delivering better care for our members. And so, you know, by launching this campaign and telling this story in the way that we have, it serves as a bit of a clarion call for the industry to recognize that things are broken, to not accept the status quo and to not let things continue as they have been. That's really the goal is better care for seniors.

Love that. I'm curious as you were working on the campaign and the boldness behind it, if you did any sort of market testing or gathering consumer insights to really help shape and mold the concept and even the creator native that's found inside of the campaign before it launched? Yeah.

I'll tell you, the short answer is absolutely yes. Right. The, the reason why I believe that this campaign is resonating as well as it is is because it is so grounded in insight and in, in what we feel our members and prospects experience as they, as they approach health insurance and their own health care. You know, we, we talk to our, our members. You know, I've, I've listened to many calls with, and you know, many enrollment calls with our telesales reps. You know, what we're finding is that the healthcare experience is so complex and that it's not, it's rooted in complexity. There's not a, we've forgotten the human nature of healthcare and the human nature of health insurance and what it's intended to do. And so this is rooted in that, it's rooted in that insight that healthcare is so complex.

There's an opportunity to simplify it and there's really an opportunity to focus on the member and bring the attention back to the member and what that member is experiencing.

Love that. What's been the reaction to the campaign in the marketplace so far? Is it resonating in the way that you had hoped?

It's overwhelmingly positive. I'm quite humbled, in fact, by the response that we've gotten.

Amazing.

...that’s unique to Sara and, and, and it’s been just a tremendous, tremendous positive reaction there.

But by and large, I would argue that, you know, many of our competitors are putting their head in the sand. They're denying the nature of what this industry is and what people are experiencing in their day to day care. And we were remiss not acknowledging it, not calling it, not naming it and not working on it as an industry. And so, you know, there has been, you know, a couple of people out there, you know, that are talking about it in that way, but I would say by and large, it's been overwhelmingly positive.

Well, and that, that is typically a reaction you get when something is resonating in a positive way in the marketplace when you're going to have someone feel the need to potentially write counter position against the campaign. So, you know, regardless of what side the fen sit on and what the issue is, that's, that can be right. A great metric in terms of overall campaign performance, achieving what you want it to. When you get that sort of reaction from the other side of the fence.

Oh, that’s absolutely right. Again. At the end of the day, it’s, it’s, this is a story that’s unique to Sara.

And I think that authenticity is really what's, what's Making members and prospective members excited. I will tell you the biggest surprising impact that I've had, and I guess I shouldn't be so surprised by it, is that our very own employees have been so energized by this campaign. It's created a rally cry within our organization. Our member experience team, our member services team, are committed to saying, hey, we don't want our members to have that experience. We want to make sure that they have a very human experience. Our pharmacy team is rallying to make sure that the pharmacy benefits are appropriately accessed and accessible and that, and people are getting the coverage and clarity that they need. So just across the board, I'm hearing tremendous feedback even within our own organization, around how motivating, how exciting this campaign is because it reflects their own work as well, the work that they're doing in their own department. This campaign had an opportunity to kind of shed a light on all of that.

Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to reflect on a couple of things you said that really just resonated with me. The way you were talking about the member reaction. In addition to the employee reaction there, there's a, an expression of pride almost from the members. Like, I, I, I'm proud to already have selected. Right. Like I am. I've already made this choice, which is great.

And then I love the adjectives you use. You know, fresh, different, honest. You know, seems to be that the reaction in the marketplace is exactly as, as you all had designed it to be and as intended. Beyond these an.

You know, pieces of feedback and what, what you're hearing in, in the marketplace.

Are there any other sort of metrics that you're looking at in terms of overall campaign performance? I know we haven't officially closed open enrollment season yet, so it is a bit early, but I am wondering if there are any other specific metrics that you're looking at.

Yeah, so, you know, traditional marketing, you, you look at all of the metrics, right? You look at brand awareness, you look at, you know, call volumes, you know, you're, you're looking at all of those types of things. At the end of the day, it's about, you know, enrollments and our enrollments growing, and we're on track to having our best AEP ever record enrollment. For us, this aep. And so again, that response has been overwhelmingly positive. Now, it's not just the campaign, right. It's a nod to, you know, the strong work that our product team has done, our sales team, across the board, our enrollments team, you know, member services team, you know, the CAT'S out of the bag, if you will, about scan. And I think people are seeing that and people are excited about it.

So I have to say, you know, you talked about sort of the founding of SCAN health plan and 50 years, nearly 50 years. Wow, that's incredible. It makes me wonder, though, why, you know.

That's a great question, Sara, and I want to thank you for it. I will say there's a couple of things that come to mind as I think about this one. This has been always in our DNA, and so we have constantly been fighting to make things better. You know, as we look at Inprela's reputation, right, in terms of how it's performed, strong member satisfaction scores for multiple years, strong star ratings, which is a rating system that members can use to rate their plan. And so, you know, this work has been underway for quite some time and ongoing, and I think the results have been there for Inprela. We felt, you know, this was a unique time for us to tell our story because, you know, in recent years, we've expanded into new markets. You know, historically, we've been in Southern California for quite some time. We've expanded into new markets, you know, a few years ago and entered even a new market this year with the state of Washington.

And as we continue to expand, not everybody is as familiar with who SCAN is as some of our members and prospective members in Southern California. And so we felt it was the right opportunity to make sure everybody kind of understood and knew who we were and what we stood for. Whether it's an established market or a new market, we wanted people to understand, you know, exactly who we are. And I'll also just say that times are quite turbulent right now. Right. And. And people are experiencing, you know, a lot of. A lot of strain as they think about their health insurance.

And so we thought it was an opportune time to. To. To present this. This campaign.

Yeah, agreed. I see. I have a lot of respect for not only marketing leaders, but executive leaders that see that sort of right. Cultural alignment, you know, in terms of the readiness for a campaign and choose to lean in, as you all have done here. So. So kudos to you for that. I also really appreciate the other messaging within the campaign when you said it earlier. You know, you're like, we're not, we're not perfect either.

Right. Like, we're, we're, we're fighting to change the experiences as well and we're not going to claim to be perfect. But you know, we see it, we own it and we're gonna, we're gonna try really hard to, to make this the best possible experience for people. And that, that feels really real too. Right. That balances the realness that's coming from the, the rest of the campaign is, you know, versus trying to sit over there on a pedestal and, and say, you know, ours is, ours is perfect. Right. That.

I don't think it would land in the same way.

No. And, and we're not, we're not pretending to be perfect. That's not, that's really not the point of this. Right. It's, it's that people need to understand and hear and see that we're fighting, we're in this battle. We're fighting for our members and they can believe us because we're not for profit. We have no other ulterior motive or no other incentive besides the well being of our members.

I love that, love that you said it earlier and I want to dig in on this a little bit further. You talked about how this kind of boldness in a campaign can make some brands nervous. And they would never choose to go down this pathway either because. And I've seen it a lot too, either because it's perceived to be too negative. Right. Because we're talking about something that doesn't work or because it challenges an industry that they still have to work within. Right. So healthcare is one of those sort of incestuous. I love that, love that you said it earlier and I want to dig in on this a little bit further. You talked about how this kind of boldness in a campaign can make some brands nervous. And they would never choose to go down this pathway either because. And I've seen it a lot too, either because it's perceived to be too negative. Right. Because we're talking about something that doesn't work or because it challenges an industry that they still have to work within. Right. So healthcare is one of those sort of incestuous.

Right. Like sometimes it's both your customer and a competitor at the same time or a partner and a competitor at the same time. And so sometimes corporations or brands might want to say it, but they can't because they don't want to necessarily, you know, make one group of stakeholders look bad when, you know, we, we are all kind of in this together from, from a stakeholder perspective. So we, what advice would you give to marketing leaders who might be listening to this, who are, might be a little fearful to take a stand, but are looking at what you've done here and are like clearly nodding their head and saying, this is brilliant. You know, I want to be able to do this too.

Yeah. I'll say a couple of things on that. First and foremost, what I would say is that this, this campaign is not bold because there's a tremendous amount of shock value or, you know, trying to, you know, trying to just be over the top or anything like that. It's bold because it's so authentic.

Yeah.

And it's so clear in its voice and its purpose. And so one of the things I'd say is be very clear. Have the courage to be authentic to your audience base and have the courage to tell your story. You know, it's often that we feel that we think the member needs to hear this or we think the member wants this. But I think it goes back to understanding what do they really want, what is the true insight, what is the real unmet need? And be honest and authentic about it and be willing to tell that story and meet the member where they are. I would also say, right. If you're in an organization that has such a lofty mission as ours, make sure that your message is tied to that mission. Make sure it's connected to that mission. And then you're not worried so much about whether, you know, you're, you're. You're being too bold or whether you'll alienate people or whether people will be upset. At the end of the day, you're being true to your mission and you're telling your narrative in a way that's clear and honest. And I think you can't go wrong with that recipe.

And then you're not worried so much about whether, you know, you're, you're. You're being too bold or whether you'll alienate people or whether people will be upset. At the end of the day, you're being true to your mission and you're telling your narrative in a way that's clear and honest. And I think you can't go wrong with. With that recipe.

Yeah. Great advice of mission driven, for sure. Right. Do not lose sight of who you are and what your voice is as a brand. Like, lean into that. Stay true to that. But also the other part of it, which is don't be afraid to tell that story or shape that campaign from the outside in, meaning the customer reality. Right.

Let that inform the voice and the tone. Like so often, that experience is the thing that needs to be put into the spotlight because it's the thing that's going to get ahead. To turn right when your TV's on or you're driving down the freeway and you see a billboard is like, that person gets me. Because these are the exact pain points, fears, whatever it is that I deal with in my life. You get me. You must have the solutions that I need. Right.

Right. That's right. I'll say. So many times, brands spend so much time and energy talking about themselves.

Yeah.

Rather than listening. Right. And listening to. To, to the member and listening to the pain points. And so one of the things that this campaign does is it spends a lot of time talking about the member experience. It's not spending as much time talking about scan. Certainly we turn to scan towards the end. End of it.

But, but we focus on the member and, and you know, I'm talking specifically about the TV spot, but as you look at our print media, our billboards, our social media, all of it is member focused and, and members can see themselves in the Inprela campaign which is I think part of, part of that authenticity.

Love that. Do you all have a methodology or an approach whereby you have like continual customer consumer insights into your marketing or do you tend to do it more seasonally? I'm just curious around sort of these bigger campaign moments as they're rolling out or as you're developing them.

Yeah, I would say it's continuous and it starts at the top. Our, our CEO, Dr. Sachin Jain puts his, his email address on every single member newsletter that goes out. He is very accessible.

Oh wow.

All of our members have his email address and oftentimes members will email him and those emails will come to the right department and we'll address the members' issues. And so you know, that's just one source of information. We're listening to member services calls both positive and negative, you know, on a regular basis. I'm listening to telesales calls. These aren't even our members, these are prospective members. But hearing, you know, what they have to say. And then certainly like everybody else, we're looking at industry research and things like that as well. But, but meeting with your members, being present with them, talking to them, being in a room with them, it's just such rich information and such a rewarding experience at the end of the day because it reminds you who you're serving at the end of the day.

Right. It reminds you this is what I'm doing all of this for. It's to improve their lives and that just. Yes, it's research, yes, it's insights, but it's so rewarding and fulfilling to be with them and to hear their stories and to hear their struggles, but also to hear what they're loving and what's working well.

Yeah. And it takes time. So kudos to you all for doing that. I mean, I think that's where some of the best inspiration to your point can come from, frankly, even in some of the less.

You know, more of the feet, the constructive feedback. Right. I mean those are, those are opportunities to lead in as you talked about, improve the experience as, as sounds like you all are very, very serious and very committed to that. In addition to really listening to that voice of that customer and thinking about that from a marketing perspective. I'm curious, how has this campaign changed how you think or has it how you think about boldness and marketing going forward.

It absolutely has. The, the overwhelmingly positive response that we've had is a reminder to me that we can tell our story, we can tell people who we are and, and we can, we can, you know, be. Not be afraid about calling out some of the issues that exist. We don't have to tiptoe around these things. We need to, in fact, and not only do we not have to do that, we need to, in fact call them out. We need to spend more time and energy on focusing on what's broken so that everybody sees it. So everybody's excited to work on it. Everybody's going to work to fix it.

We can't do it alone. We're going to do our part. But this is why I talked about it being a clarion call to the industry. It's important that, that we talk about these things, that we bring them into the light so that they can be worked on. And, and we as an industry need to work on some of these issues.

Yeah. And I, that was gonna be. My next question is sort of like where, where do you go from here? Right. I mean, it's almost like you've kind of stepped into a new arena and kind of a little bit elevated the bar for yourself even as a brand in terms of like truly owning this and talking about this. So how do you plan to build on, on this, this commitment? And that's a big question. Right. Because it's, there's a business element of it and the commitment and the, the consumer experience. Experience part of it.

But then of course, certainly the marketing component of it as well.

Absolutely. I think it continues to be, you know, an all on approach. Right. An all encompassing approach to, to try to, you know, fix this broken health insurance system. First of all, I'm going to continue telling the story, you know, members need to hear, prospects need to hear. Our industry needs to hear how, how health insurance is broken. Our, our audiences need to hear, need to be reminded. They need to see that yes, it is broken, that we see it, we hear them and we're continuing to work on it.

So, you know, a flash in a pan is one thing, but getting people to understand and recognize that we're going to continue to not shy away from these problems, that we're going to continue to bring them into the light, that we're going to continue to battle and fight for them is important. So I think that's the first and foremost piece is continuing to tell that narrative. I'll also tell you that, you know, as we bring on all of this new membership, they have an opportunity to experience the magic of Sara. And so our member services team, our member experience team, is focused on making sure that they're delivering a tremendous experience to these new members, but also to members that have been with us for many, many years. So continuing to deliver that strong experience that we're known for is also at the forefront of our focus.

Love it. Well, if, if you're game with me, I'd love to switch gears a little bit here and end with a quick fire segment.

First question is, what's the marketing hill that you will die on?

Know your member. You know, we say that so often, right? But I think this campaign talk shows you how you can know your member at a different level and communicate with your member in a trusting manner. So I think it goes back to knowing your member and being member obsessed.

Love that. What's one belief you've changed your mind about in the last year?

It's this notion of boldness. You know, you talked a little bit about it. I think I've gotten more and more comfortable in our truth, that things are broken, things aren't perfect, and I've gotten more comfortable bringing that to the forefront, sharing that. I used to think that, you know, you don't always have to talk about these things, but in fact, I've come around to say no, actually, it's our responsibility to bring these to light and to talk about them and bring even more focus on them. Otherwise they're not going to get fixed and they're not going to get addressed and the status quo will maintain, which is not acceptable.

Love that. What's one thing you wish more marketers would try?

I would say, you know, telling that member story in a way that ties to their mission. You know, so often we talk about, you know, what's our, what's our benefits, you know, what's the unmet need. But it's about connecting the, the, the, the experience that our members have to the mission that the company has. And if you can find an authentic connection there, there's, there's gold there in, in, in what you can do with that.

Last question. If you could leave listeners with one idea about the future of health insurance and what needs to change, what would that be?

I would say that there's an opportunity to continue to fight the fight, that this isn't going to be accomplished by, you know, one nonprofit Medicare Advantage firm alone, though we are going to try. We're not going to stop. But, but the idea is that is one of optimism is one of hope that that many people will see this message, will hear this message, and will get energized and excited to to help fix health insurance because it's going to take many hands and many feet and many hearts and many minds to make this happen.

Well, congratulations on the brilliant work of this campaign. Thanks so much for sharing insights with us today. Before we wrap, how can our listeners get in touch with you?

Sara, thank you again for the opportunity. Really appreciate the time and the opportunity to be on this podcast. For me personally. You can find me on LinkedIn. But again, Inprela is on all all the major social media channels. I'd look look up Inprela health plan on on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Instagram. We're on all the major social media channels. And if you want to see our spot, you can go to our YouTube page as well.

Awesome. Love it. Definitely check it out folks. You won't be disappointed. I promise you that. Thanks for joining me today, Nishant.

Thank you, Sara.

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