(0:46) John Hallock discusses his previous roles in the healthcare industry including his time at Livongo and Transcarent

(6:02) John dives into Quantum Health’s focus on storytelling and how it separates them from competitors

(8:54) John discusses the strategies Quantum Health has used to bolster its industry presence.

(11:29) John shares insights into internal alignment and getting stakeholders to understand different forms of content created by the comms team versus the marketing team.

(13:29) John discusses in-house talent plus when and how to leverage external agencies.

(17:35) John talks about the importance of storytelling and leveraging different forms of media to support communication efforts.

(20:00) Kriste and John discuss the successes and failures of experimenting with out of the box ideas

(23:49) John discusses the rise of CEO PR and the importance of CEO involvement in public relations.

(27:48) Kriste and John talk about using brand journalism and real stories to inject new relevance into the Quantum Health brand.

(40:10) John and Kriste talk about how there are more opportunities to get your story out, level the playing field for smaller companies

(44:56) John shares his favorite news sources, including Med City News and Modern Healthcare, and the importance of staying updated on industry news.

[00:00:04.410] – Kriste Goad

Hello, curious marketers. We are kicking off our fourth season of how it’s done, and I can’t think of a better way to start what promises to be our very best season yet, than with arguably one of the best comms guys in healthcare, none other than Mr. John Hallock, chief communications officer with Quantum Health. Welcome, John!

[00:00:41.140] – John Hallock

 Hey. So great to be here, Kriste, with you again. It’s been a minute.

[00:00:46.440] – Kriste Goad

It has been a minute. You’re in rare company as a repeat guest on the How It’s Done podcast.

[00:00:51.810] – John Hallock

Very exciting. Trying to come with some new material.

[00:00:55.970] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, always new material. The last time you were here, I don’t know if you remember, but it was way back in October 2020, and that seems like forever ago, but at that time, you were leading comms for Livongo, which at the time had just announced one of the biggest deals in health tech history. Its $18.5 billion deal with Teladoc. A lot has happened since then.

[00:01:22.030] – John Hallock

A lot. Yeah, I remember those times vividly. Yeah, that was very fun, very tiring. And a lot has changed in the market for sure since that deal on a number of fronts.

[00:01:36.460] – Kriste Goad

Since then, you joined Glen Tullman in the move to Transcarent with much success. Then you went on to Quantum Health, another great healthcare brand where the band got back together, if you will, with you and Quantum CEO Zane Burke, who you also worked with at Livongo. And it’s almost like you’ve got some winning formula, John.

[00:01:58.310] – John Hallock

Well, listen, what is it? Better lucky than good. But no, you’re right. I left Livongo with a number of senior leaders, and I did join Glen at Transcarent and spent a number of years there with him as we stood that up and started to launch that brand and that market. And for the last year and a half, and that was a good run. And then the last year and a half, I’ve been at Quantum Health with that amazing team, and you said it. So Zane Burke is the CEO at Quantum Health. He was our CEO at Livongo, and Glen was our executive chairman. And it’s kind of a funny story because it will segue into some other things we’ll most likely talk about. But the navigation space was something we were seeing at Livongo. So if you go back, let’s call it 2019. And Livongo was this very large point solution, digital point solutions that employers and eventually health plans would use to try to better manage their diabetes populations. And we would always look at engagement and enrollment. Right. If there was an employer with a population of folks that had diabetes, what percentage of that population could we enroll in the program?

[00:03:24.230] – John Hallock

And then we’d measure that after a year. And what we were starting to see was that there were pockets of employers that were having much larger enrollment and engagement. And we started to dig into that, and it turned out it was Quantum. And so then, as our teams and our leadership team looked at where the market was going, and I think we’ve seen that now, but at that moment in time, we were seeing that if you were the buyer, if you were an employer and you had your entire benefit infrastructure, they really wanted a platform. And they might use Livongo for diabetes, they might use something for something else, something for MSK, etcetera. But they wanted to have that all on one platform that could be supported through highly trained people and technology, try to drive towards some kind of experience, and also from a cost saving standpoint. Right. And that’s where the market was going. Then that merger happened, and the entire market started to shift. Right. But there’s all sorts of these point solutions that are out there. Some very good companies and very good people. And today, if you’re at Quantum Health, which was the creator of navigation 25 years ago.

[00:04:43.690] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, they’ve been around a long time.

[00:04:45.960] – John Hallock

Absolutely. What we saw back to what we saw in that cohort of employers, they were Quantum clients. They were employers that had Quantum in place. And because Living might happen to be in that employer as well, we would see our enrollment engagement go up significantly because of the healthcare warriors and because of the model that Kara Trott, who’s the founder of Quantum, had created along with her early team, you know, we call it our secret sauce. But that ability to get somebody enrolled, using something, having a good experience, and then driving towards some kind of cost savings outcome, that’s very unique. And to do that at scale was something we had not seen. So I, along with others, saw that the navigation market was where things were going. And that’s what’s led me here.

[00:05:38.540] – Kriste Goad

That’s awesome. And so at Quantum Health, you handle corporate comms and investor relations. And like you said, you’ve been there about a year and a half somewhere like that. Tell us. Well, you talked a little bit about what Quantum Health does, but tell us where the company was when you came in a year and a half ago relative to comms. And what have you really been focusing on since you got there?

[00:06:02.230] – John Hallock

Yeah, great question. So, like I said, Quantum had invented the navigation category decades ago and has been busy building that platform. Hundreds and hundreds of leading clients, millions of members, great experiences dealing with providers, but had been more in the background in terms of telling its story, whether that be to media investors, influencers.

[00:06:35.700] – Kriste Goad

Across the board, you feel like they were in the background.

[00:06:38.810] – John Hallock

If you think of Livongo, for instance, Livongo was kind of a case study on how you use PR and strategic media and content, and you create a flywheel and arm your sales teams with unique value props to drive the business. So I think Zane really wanted, and the leadership wanted, to take back that narrative because they weren’t the only ones doing navigation. Right? So, because we all saw that, others saw that, and they move into a market, it’s easy to say you do something whether you do it or not. And that actually makes it harder, from a marketing standpoint, as you know, to differentiate yourself. So we have been very busy where we put in, in the in-house team, a real rigor and cadence in the content we’re creating, how we’re disseminating that both externally, internally, how we’re arming our teams internally, to use that to differentiate who we are, what we do, how we’re different, and how we’re arming the client with tools and technologies as they try to deal with the various challenges they face as an employer. So you have to take that narrative back. And the way you do that is you build the muscle, you build the rigor to tell your story.

[00:07:59.150] – John Hallock

And we’ve been successful at that to date. But it’s not easy to reclaim a narrative, as you know. And once you start to do that, you have to keep that cadence going. So that’s what we focus on day to day. On the IR front, we all are. A company that has been very successful, has scale. So we also want a parallel process and start to better educate the investment community, analyst community as to who we are, why we’re different, how we view the market, so that they, over time, can understand why we’re different, and they’re consuming the same information that a reporter would or you would or anybody else in the market. And so you just put maybe a little bit of a different slant on it, but the same rigor and cadence is applied there.

[00:08:45.460] – Kriste Goad

Well, it seems like Quantum has significantly bolstered its industry presence in a short time. How exactly have you and your team done that?

[00:08:54.060] – John Hallock

Yeah, well, it’s the same game plan I’ve been running.

[00:08:58.960] – Kriste Goad

This is the playbook.

[00:08:59.870] – John Hallock

Yeah. It’s the only one I know.

[00:09:02.750] – Kriste Goad

Tell us your secrets.

[00:09:06.350] – John Hallock

It, again, isn’t necessarily rocket science. So you first have to have a plan. It can’t be too complex. I feel like I’ve told you it can’t be too complex.

[00:09:16.530] – Kriste Goad

I want to understand that a little bit more in terms of.

[00:09:19.540] – John Hallock

I think there’s a lot of well meaning comms and marketing teams that make things so elaborate and things they want to do in a market that they end up spending the vast majority of their time creating the plan.

[00:09:35.080] – Kriste Goad

Yeah. Okay.

[00:09:35.960] – John Hallock

By the time they go to implement the plan, whether it’s competitors or the market in general, has already moved again, it’s constantly moving. Right.

[00:09:45.960] – Kriste Goad

So how much time should be spent on such.

[00:09:48.560] – John Hallock

I think not long. Maybe a month.

[00:09:53.630] – Kriste Goad

I mean, really and truly, I guess that really should be plenty of time, right?

[00:09:56.960] – John Hallock

Yeah.

[00:09:58.350] – Kriste Goad

How much information is too much information, right.

[00:10:01.320] – John Hallock

Correct. You got to have internal buy in and all those things and those buzzwords. But you also need to have enough intentional gaps in that plan for flexibility. Right. Meaning it can’t be so fleshed out that a equals b equals c. What if b doesn’t equal c one day? Then you might have to switch. If you don’t also build that rigor and flexibility in your own teams, they may not be able to react to the market. So the other flip side to that is culturally, and I’ve had to deal with this a number of times in my career, you have to get buy in, not just in terms of the strategy and the tactics that fuel the strategy, but the people in the company that are going to be critical in telling the story. I can’t just be one spokesperson. It has to be across the board. So you have to get them energized and excited and have their unique voice as part of that. And you use all those different folks as part of telling your story, then it makes your life easier and your team’s life easier as you’re trying to go faster.

[00:11:04.920] – John Hallock

People have a vested interest because they’re part of the journey.

[00:11:08.720] – Kriste Goad

Tell us how you do that, because the name of this podcast is How It’s Done, and give us a little more insight into how you go about doing that. From a chief communications officer perspective, are you literally having a little road tour within the company and then how do you go about it? What’s the best way?

[00:11:29.290] – John Hallock

I think you just nailed that. Yes. It’s a little bit of doing your own team’s PR internally to educate individuals as to why we’re doing this, what it’s going to enable us to do, how it’s aligned with key KPIs, the growth of the company. Everything we do, Kriste, is aligned with driving the growth of the company. We know that if we do something in the market, it’s going to add to the share of voice, power of voice, social implication. But all that content is also designed to fuel sales, marketing, amd the different growth drivers in the company. So there is a natural overlap there. And once you can convey that and educate individual folks at a company, they clearly see why they want to be a part of this and spend time because they have to allocate time. As you know, there is that tactical element of doing interviews, doing messaging sessions. And when you’re asking people to give up time and put effort in, they have to understand fully why you’re asking them to do something. But back to your earlier question. You need to parallel process, right? You actually need to do a lot of this.

[00:12:40.500] – John Hallock

You have to cross pollinate this. It can’t just be, we did this this week, then we do it this week kind of comes together and that’s a lot of work. And that was a lot of. Go ahead.

[00:12:51.930] – Kriste Goad

I was going to say, yeah, it’s a lot of internal alignment. They see it break down so many times between head of comms and head of marketing. How do you align there? We’ve talked about this before, but each company is different, right?

[00:13:04.780] – John Hallock

Every company is a little different. We have sort of put some numbers to it. So we have a good marketing team. They know their market. And to use an analogy, we’ve done over 300 different pieces of content this year that come out of, earned and owned through PR and comms.

[00:13:26.490] – Kriste Goad

Okay, say that again, because that’s 300.

[00:13:29.600] – John Hallock

Right in our fiscal year.

[00:13:31.590] – Kriste Goad

300 pieces of f content out of the comms.

[00:13:33.130] – John Hallock

That’s video, earned content, written, real media, all the things that we try things almost weekly. That’s a lot of logs to put on the marketing fire, so to speak. So they have to also come along with you and understand that they’re going to have to maybe change processes or adopt new processes or put new things into place to digest that content, get it into the get it out there nurture cycle. So that’s always typically in any company I’ve been at. The biggest challenge is you want to go fast. You have no choice but to go fast. You can’t go too fast because you need your internal teams to keep up and they have to change a bit and you have to appreciate their processes as well. So that’s something that I address by trying to be as transparent and open with what our teams are doing. With what their teams are doing. So I’ve probably spent more time at Quantum than I have traditionally, trying to get inward alignment and making sure that our teams are kind of rowing in the same direction. That’s a good challenge to have, though.

[00:14:40.830] – Kriste Goad

It is a good challenge. And the other thing is helping internally, the different stakeholders understand the difference between the kinds of content that the comms team is going to be creating versus and generating versus what the marketing team is going to be creating and generating. 

[00:14:59.470] – John Hallock

And that’s changed a lot. And I followed your career a long time, that the kinds of content that marketers use is wildly different. It was the webinars.

[00:15:12.470] – Kriste Goad

Yeah. I mean, even if you talk about paid opportunities within comms and PR, it’s different than when you’re talking about paid opportunities in marketing. Right. They’re more editorial, it’s more storytelling.

[00:15:27.010] – John Hallock

Yeah. Jonathan Bush back in the day, I don’t think I’ve ever said this, but we were doing so much like CNBC national broadcast, that kind of stuff, and Athena was hot to trot and we were kind of everywhere. And he said to me one day after he did one of his CNBC spots, he’s like, who actually watches this? And I said, not many, unless they’re, like, shaving at 07:00 in the morning, getting kids out the door. I said, but we really want the video. And it clicked for him as the CEO. Oh, I get it. So I say what we want us to say, what we’re trying to convey, it’s the video is the content. This is what, six, seven, eight. That content is the fuel that then you inject into the marketing or the comms engine or the sales engine, and the you just repeat that.

[00:16:22.110] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, I was going to say put it on repeat. You can use it everywhere and over and over again.

[00:16:29.050] – John Hallock

And then you work with your internal salespeople, your inside sales or business development. You curate it, you carve it up for their lead gen, lead nurture capabilities, internal culture, HR, which we handle, my team handles from internal. There is no KPI that I’ve seen. But when a company starts to tell their story and they’re out there and their brands out there, the buzz internally, we’re all still people. And you get a sense of pride when you’re being talking about.

[00:16:58.550] – Kriste Goad

They start standing a little taller.

[00:17:01.490] – John Hallock

That’s right. You can almost just feel it. And when you start to feel it, that’s when you know you’re moving in the right direction. And again, back to my earlier comment of getting more of those people involved in telling your story is critical.

[00:17:19.230] – Kriste Goad

Then you get them excited. Well, so that brings up a question for me. How big is your in-house team? You’ve always focused on building in house teams versus agencies, but what do you have going on today? What are you doing today and what kinds of agencies do you work with?

[00:17:35.890] – John Hallock

We’re huge. We’re six people, including me. (said sarcastically)

[00:17:38.680] – Kriste Goad

Oh, my gosh. How did you get all the budget for that? (said sarcastically)

[00:17:42.290] – John Hallock

It’s not that big. I will tell you, I’m very proud of this team because a lot of them came over from some other divisions within the company when I came on and I asked them to do a lot and to change, and they did very quickly and they started producing high quality content and messaging and learning new things. And I couldn’t be more proud of that team and what they’ve done because it’s awesome, you know, better. It’s very difficult to not only learn new skills, but then learn it fast and put it into action.

[00:18:21.890] – Kriste Goad

What better way to learn, right, than to just go and do it.

[00:18:27.970] – John Hallock

When they start to see the work they’re doing, getting promulgated externally and getting used and leveraged, then they get a sense of pride. And then you go faster and the team gets that mojo. Now. Yes, you’re right. You and I have chatted about this a lot offline. I’ve never used a lot of outside agencies. I would always rather build in-house capabilities. That said, I have a short list of very talented people, yourself included.

[00:18:58.390] – Kriste Goad

Well, thank you.

[00:19:00.670] – John Hallock

That are truly experts or provide that third-party insight and expertise that I may need for some kind of campaign or something we’re doing, I will use them all day. And if nothing else, it allows you to also, back to our earlier chat about strategy, those intentional gaps, they can fill them or they can say, this is wrong, do that, and you can’t ever be so rigid in your own strategy. Like, this is my strategy for people listening, holding up a piece of paper, we will not change this strategy. Well, no. If you bring some real experts in every once in a while to take a quick look at and say, well, did you ever try to do this? Then we try it. It’s very rare culturally on my team that we don’t try new things. I love that we find things that work, we do more of it and then things that didn’t track very well, we may not do as much of.

[00:20:00.340] – Kriste Goad

I don’t want to put you on the spot. But are there any things that you’ve tried either here at Quantum or otherwise, at previous companies that just didn’t work?

[00:20:10.210] – John Hallock

It’s a great question. I think they all worked. Did they work as well as we would have wanted vis a vis the amount of effort and resources you put into doing it? I have a good sample set of those.

[00:20:26.220] – Kriste Goad

Hey, we all do.

[00:20:27.450] – John Hallock

Yeah, there’s nothing like, hey, we put our executives on hot air balloons and tried to fly them over a town. Nothing like that. But, yeah, we all have tried things. Or I will copy, I go through LinkedIn and I’ll see people doing cool stuff and I’ll try to do that. Or our team will say, well, did you see what that company did? And I like that. And you can even look at big giant companies that have ridiculous budgets and staff and say, well, we can’t do everything they did, but what if we did this? So we’ll try that all the time. And again, back to folks like yourself that may have done a project for somebody and they can come and say, well, this organization did this and this, and maybe you can’t do all this, but what about these two components? Those are things we do almost on the weekly.

[00:21:20.430] – Kriste Goad

Well, I mean, no matter what, you’re always learning, right. And learning, applying those learnings and keep going. I do the same thing. I’m always like, oh, man, look at that cool thing this brand just did. Let’s try that.

[00:21:34.690] – John Hallock

I feel like I’m back in high school cheating.

[00:21:36.570] – Kriste Goad

For me, I’m, like, trying to sell clients on, hey, why don’t we try this?

[00:21:42.590] – John Hallock

I want to hear that from you. As someone who deals with a lot of clients, when you propose new ideas, how often? What’s the percentage of times you have receptive clients that say, you know what, Kriste, that’s a great idea. I’m open to trying that. Versus the ones that say, well, no, that’s not really in our strategy, and we’re going to stay the course.

[00:22:00.920] – Kriste Goad

I’m going to call, it’s probably 50-50 for different reasons. Might even be higher than that. Just because I am always thinking pretty outside the box, and I’m not afraid to put those ideas out there because sometimes the client might just be like, hey, that’s kind of out there, but let’s try that. That’s cool. Other times, it might be a little too risky or a little too scary, or maybe it costs too much money and people have to be willing to go to bat internally for those kinds of things. Sometimes, if it’s not a sure thing. It’s not something that the company has done before. They’re not willing to take that risk. So I’d say it’s 50-50. And then I’ve got a great example with a client right now. We’ve been working with them and we’ve been having a lot of great success with them. And we had our quarterly business review and looking ahead at 2024. And so we put our heads together and we came up with a really great idea and they love it and they’re gung-ho and they’re ready. And then turns out that they’re still trying to close a couple of big deals right at the end of the year.

[00:23:12.780] – Kriste Goad

So they don’t have the money initially going into 2024 to fully launch what we call the big idea, but they’re bought in. So it’s just a matter of timing and money and budget. So we run into that a lot. Yeah. Well, tell me this. You said it earlier, but the healthcare navigation space is just hot. There’s a lot of new entrants. How do you use pr and your various forms of media to have your story stand out and really frame the market? You maybe touched on it a little bit earlier, but I want to kind of thread that needle a little bit more.

[00:23:49.680] – John Hallock

Well, I think you got to own the narrative. And what I mean by that is a lot of people say own the narrative, which is, I had a boss a long time ago when I first got into pr in the early, early two thousands, and he had been the managing editor of the Boston Globe business section. So I was wildly fortunate that I was trained by an ex reporter/editor and how they think as individuals consuming PR.

[00:24:20.760] – Kriste Goad

Right.

[00:24:21.970] – John Hallock

And he told me something that I’ve never really forgotten, which was, it’s very powerful and there’s some power in telling a group of people or an audience how you feel about some topic. Imagine if you can create the topic that people are having feelings about. And so I’ve always thought of that in terms of using data, using campaigns that are thought leadership based surveys, working with media organizations that bring that third party validation to it, to where the audience consuming it. It’s not a question of if they have an opinion about navigation, it’s a foregone conclusion via the data and the way the message is designed. That, of course, navigation is the logical thing I need. Now it’s a question of which kind of navigation offering. And in that paradigm, then you can more easily compete, because if you feel you have a comparative advantage, you’re not battling on two fronts to say, boy, we have to convince people that navigation is needed. We just did that. Now we just have the competition over here between us and others that are in the space. And that’s something we’ve been focused on quite a bit this past year and doing those kinds of campaigns and that third party validated research.

[00:25:51.670] – John Hallock

Did I say that analogy right?

[00:25:53.890] – Kriste Goad

I think so. I think I heard you say so. You’re really leveraging data to create that emotion to find the nuggets, right? And really connect those dots for the audience, for the media.

[00:26:10.470] – John Hallock

If you’re the head of a company’s HR and benefits or the CFO even, of course, they’re all dealing with the same macro challenges of, like, rising costs and employees wanting a better experience. And they want these benefits they work so hard to procure for their populations to be leveraged. So you validate that quickly, right? You validate the challenges they have and then you use PR and messaging and research to very quickly bring them to. You’re absolutely right. Those are real problems and you’re in good company. And now let’s naturally segue you to where we have solutions that can help you address those problems and do it in a way that doesn’t come off so self serving because people do have that natural antenna up of. Well, what are you trying to sell me?

[00:27:02.470] – Kriste Goad

Okay, well, is this what you’ve done then with, I noticed you’ve got this trademark, the Quantum health effect. And I see some healthcare warrior videos which are really just sort of day in the life. You’re going out there doing some brand journalism, right? You’re talking to the people at Quantum health who are talking to members, to patients, to people every single day. Is that what those are for anybody? We’ll include some links to those in our show notes. But I was taking a look at them, and they’re just like, I love the simplicity of them, but they’re also so real, right? And they’re so human. And it’s in the words of the people that are on the front lines every day.

[00:27:48.150] – John Hallock

I’m glad you brought. That’s a great example. That’s something recently we did. And that had three goals. The first goal is to make sure that we’re using all or as many of our different warriors and the different things they do at our company, our care coordinators, our clinicians, our nurses, our heads of member services, heads of technology. Right. So we’re telling that broader story and how we see navigation and what hopefully the market should consider. What a broad navigation offering is. But then every day, Kriste, we have dozens and dozens of. We have a system that gives member feedback because we have over 3 million members of different experiences that they had and how we helped them navigate healthcare. And some of them are candidly very moving. And so this is still about people, because more times than not, the people that are coming to Quantum are in some of the most vulnerable positions they’ve ever been in their life, because through a diagnosis or something happened with a family member or what have you. So the impact we have is tangible, daily, and it’s great for our teams to be a part of that voice and that brand because who else better to relay that?

[00:29:03.630] – John Hallock

And so we also use that from a recruiting standpoint for HR and supporting their efforts. And so as we try to get more people to join the company, so you get multiple different uses.

[00:29:13.350] – Kriste Goad

 It’s like brand ambassadors.

[00:29:16.230] – John Hallock

Right. And then internally, like we said earlier, people see their colleagues on videos that’s out there and there’s a sense of pride. So you really achieved multiple objectives in a video like that. And we try to do that with as much of our content as we can because that ultimately is what drives the culture, which without the culture, you don’t have much. And Quantum has, without a doubt, the strongest culture I’ve ever been a part of. There’s a mission here to help people.

[00:29:50.670] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, I’ve been admiring Quantum health for many years and that always comes through to me. You were talking about earlier, you see brands doing things I’ll never forget. It was several years ago, Quantum had launched a new website and a whole new brand. I was like, oh, man, that’s good. It’s so human. Not a lot of brands in healthcare are necessarily willing to go there. But I think maybe what you’ve hit on is there is a culture, and when there is a culture like that that exists, it makes it a lot easier to tell the story, too.

[00:30:27.800] – John Hallock

And you feel a sense, from my perspective, you have a sense of obligation to tell it that way. Right?

[00:30:35.370] – Kriste Goad

Yeah.

[00:30:38.090] – John Hallock

I love to tell our warriors story, because I think they do some pretty amazing work for people and I want them involved in this narrative and on the journey of telling our story. So I think if you have that asset, you’d be reluctant not to use it well.

[00:30:55.830] – Kriste Goad

So from a brand standpoint, are those the kinds of things that you’ve been able to do to really, I guess, take this brand that’s been around almost 25 years and inject some newness and new relevance?

[00:31:09.190] – John Hallock

Yeah, I think we have, and I think we’ve got more work to do, but I think it’s been pretty exciting to see the traction we’ve made internally and certainly externally in a relatively short period of time. And as someone who’s charged with the investor relations component too, you get constant feedback from individuals in that realm of the world where they’re seeing and feeling this as well, because again, they consume the same content that you and I consume.

[00:31:40.200] – Kriste Goad

Right.

[00:31:40.580] – John Hallock

And also a fantastic source of intelligence on the market as well.

[00:31:47.500] – Kriste Goad

Oh 100%, without a doubt.They know what’s going on.

[00:31:49.860] – John Hallock

They know a lot. And they’re not just in the numbers. I mean, they’re talking to benefit consultants and they’re talking to clients and prospects and employers. And so typically I will get intel, good or bad, from that source faster than any other source that I deal with.

[00:32:10.430] – Kriste Goad

Interesting. Well, so you do wear that IR managing investor relations like you did at and Livongo. Quantum is certainly a company many look at as a prime company that could enter the public markets at some point. Where does pr and comms support that?

[00:32:26.510] – John Hallock

Well, I think we’re a company that has reached a certain scale.

[00:32:35.090] – Kriste Goad

How big are you guys? For our audience?

[00:32:37.080] – John Hallock

We’re over 2000 employees, over 500 clients, over 3 million members.

[00:32:44.740] – Kriste Goad

Wow.

[00:32:46.230] – John Hallock

Very strong financials. We don’t talk too much about them publicly. And so you always want to maximize optionality. Right. So if a company ever wants to go public, there’s a large amount of work that goes in prior to that in terms of educating the investment community, educating other key stakeholders that would be involved in that. And that takes some time. I haven’t done that a number of times. You got to do that in concert with everything else. It’s a full time job whether it ends up happening or not. And candidly, one of the reasons we do a lot of that analyst education and work is they end up producing content themselves. Right. Through analyst reports.

[00:33:29.240] – Kriste Goad

Yes, that’s right.

[00:33:30.050] – John Hallock

And we use those analyst reports, Kriste, the same way we use a story because very few times does it actually have numbers in it. It’s them looking at the market. We can fuel our sales, our consulting teams through that third party research as well. So it’s a one big flywheel. But the reason that’s now become a trend where typically comms and IR were two separate entities. We started doing this candidly way back at Athena Health because we figured out, wait, the same thing we’re saying to CNBC or the Wall Street Journal or a trade magazine is essentially the same thing we’re saying to a sell-side analyst.

[00:34:11.560] – John Hallock

And yes, there’s numbers and other elements of that. And you have to have that locked down. But they’re looking for a story just the same as a reporter is for their audience. And that’s what Livongo was very successful at, as you know, is that they can get the numbers all day. That’s not the issue for analysts. What they want is a narrative and a story and a framing market. And where you fit into that, well.

[00:34:35.850] – Kriste Goad

You said something interesting. And that is even as not a publicly traded company. Right. Even if you’re not having to report out on a quarterly basis and having to do those interviews or whatever, those analysts are still covering the leaders in the space. So you’re getting media hits. I’m using air quotes for our listeners, too. Media hits. You see those balloons? You see those balloons? That just happened?

[00:35:04.180] – John Hallock

Animation.

[00:35:05.350] – Kriste Goad

I don’t know where they’re coming from, but every video call that I am on now, randomly, balloons, fireworks, things just like bop in the background. So if anybody, any listeners know what’s happening out there, you let me know. But anyway, yeah, that’s a great point. I don’t know that everybody in every comms department really thinks of it that way. Maybe I’m kidding myself.

[00:35:31.640] – John Hallock

I don’t think they do. And when I adopted it years ago, quickly, not just myself, but others in the companies, they saw that as a strategic advantage. Right. If you can be a private company, that’s driving a narrative with that audience, not only does it meet your tactical objectives, but it also helps with the brand, amplification and authority as well. So you want to have it as integrated as possible because it ends up being the same story. You might as well have all the levers available to pull at the same time as needed.

[00:36:08.620] – Kriste Goad

I got to think, if you’re working with a CEO that you’ve worked with at previous companies where you’ve had success in these areas, it makes it a lot easier. You kind of get like, free reign.

[00:36:19.550] – John Hallock

I wouldn’t say free reign, but, yes, it does. Take it. I don’t have many conversations with Zane trying to convince him why we want to do something or with Glen or certainly with Jonathan years ago. And I will say the thing that I have found really refreshing at Quantum and you and I chatted about it a little bit earlier, was the commitment that the leadership team has made, Kara Trott, our founder, has made to this. And as they see it working, the additional commitment, because that’s critical. And if you don’t have that, it’s very difficult to execute. And so, yeah, that’s a hurdle that I don’t have. That would be difficult.

[00:37:02.790] – Kriste Goad

That would be difficult. Yes. That’s a good place to be, but you’ve earned it, right? And you’ve had your time in the trenches.

[00:37:13.370] – John Hallock

A lot of media lists. What were those back in the media lists? And the Beacons. Remember the Beacons?

[00:37:19.030] – Kriste Goad

Oh, man, that’s really going back. Yes, I remember that.

[00:37:23.230] – John Hallock

I remember. You’d have to write a press release and print it out and then mail it, fax it, or fax it to a reporter. Wait, like, two days and call to give the pitch.

[00:37:36.410] – Kriste Goad

You’re not that old.

[00:37:37.880] – John Hallock

I am.

[00:37:41.170] – Kriste Goad

Well, considering the years in the business and how we mentioned at the start, like, just how much media has changed, what’s your view on the use of. I’m going to quote, unquote, the use of, quote unquote air quotes. There goes those balloons again. Media, real media, and other forms of media, like video, thought leadership, social, to support your efforts along with those traditional earned and owned channels.

[00:38:08.450] – John Hallock

It’s everything. Listen, I have had my years of lamenting social and all these new conduits because I do miss the days when you’d call the New York Times and you’d work on a story for two months, and you have that anxiety of how the headline’s going to come out. You go and get the newspaper that morning and that excitement. If we can’t create content that can’t be promulgated on social channels or in some kind of digital form or real media way, it’s not very effective. And so just getting an online story. Yeah, you can measure that story. You can measure the power of voice, did the messaging resonate, etcetera. But it has to be then parlayed into some kind of conduit and format that can be used in the way you mentioned. So most of what we do is geared towards that. I, you, most people consume media that way. Today, video is king or queen. I mean, it is the thing that people digest and gravitate to. So we meet the market where we need to meet them. People aren’t going to dunkin’donuts anymore and picking up the paper and having a hazelnut coffee.

[00:39:28.960] – Kriste Goad

Oh my gosh. I’m always, like, marveling every time I see a piece of print media, whether it’s the local newspaper or the local alternative.

[00:39:41.270] – John Hallock

We used to frame them Kriste, at Athena. When you get Business Week or you’d get some feature story, we’d have all these frames in the hallway of the story. It was like a trophy.

[00:39:56.600] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, it was awesome.

[00:39:58.100] – John Hallock

Those days don’t exist.

[00:40:00.210] – Kriste Goad

They don’t exist anymore. But there’s good and bad, and it opens the door to a lot more opportunities to get your story out.

[00:40:10.050] – John Hallock

Let’s not forget, if I can do it and you can do it, smaller competitors can do it. And this is something I convey internally. As much as we have access to new media and real media and different ways to carve up our content, so do smaller entrants that can move fast. Right. Can inject themselves in the conversation. And so it’s acted as an equalizer in that regard. And so you always have to pay attention, and I always do, to the new companies that are saying things using different ways to say it because there’s no shortage of companies out there that at some point were upstarts and then suddenly they weren’t. I have worked at a few and you were the annoying company biting at the ankles of the incumbents and then suddenly you look twice and they’re big and they’re not so cute anymore. So you always have to keep your eye on these new entrants and how they’re telling their story.

[00:41:14.280] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, constantly. No doubt about that. And the ones that do it and do it well, I saw, you know, Chrissy Farr.

[00:41:22.740] – John Hallock

Yeah, know her well, known her for years. She was at venture beat.

[00:41:27.390] – Kriste Goad

Yeah, way back. Well, I follow her on what used to be Twitter. It’s hard for me to say X. Anyway, she tweeted the other day that 2024 is going to be the rise of the CEO, PR, CEO leveraging PR, because that is the most authentic way that companies can get out there and tell their stories. And CEOs that aren’t going to do that and aren’t going to be front and center and tell the story are going to be left behind. What do you think about that?

[00:42:05.110] – John Hallock

She’s right. And she’s been saying that since 2011, 2012. I can’t even count how many stories I’ve done with her over the years. But if you don’t have a CEO or a high level leadership team that is willing to be out there and be the voice or part of that voice and committed to it, it’s very difficult for a company or a brand to separate itself.

[00:42:29.630] – Kriste Goad

I was going to say that very thing because as an agency we get all kinds of different companies asking us if we can help them. And then sometimes we get in and we are helping them and we find, oh, wait, you mean your CEO isn’t going to be available and isn’t going to be the face that’s going to make it a lot harder, if not impossible sometimes. And I’ve had to deliver that message sometimes and clients don’t always like to hear it, but it’s the truth. And if the media, especially if it’s a big company and if they’re doing great things or if it’s a shitstorm or whatever, if the CEO is not out there, then they’re not interested and they’re not going to listen to.

[00:43:14.560] – John Hallock

It’s not something you can turn on right away. That’s where PR becomes a high level PR that’s been built into the company’s cadence, becomes a strategic asset. Because you know all too well it isn’t something you just flip a switch on and say, well, today, on Tuesday we’re going to do PR. And so if you’re up against a company that’s been leveraging it and doing it and now it’s become that strategic asset, for them to suddenly turn that on is very difficult to catch up.

[00:43:44.070] – Kriste Goad

Yes. So Quantum Health, you got it all right. You got the CEO that’s willing to be the face and the voice and then you’ve got all these wonderful stories. You’ve got a great culture to tap into. You’ve got all these wonderful stories that now you’re mining and doing some brand journalism you know to tell those stories within the walls or the virtual world of Quantum health.

[00:44:06.500] – John Hallock

And Zane would say it’s beyond just Zane. We have sorts of fantastic leaders that are real subject matter experts in all sorts of topics and we try to leverage them as much as we can to tell the story.

[00:44:18.690] – Kriste Goad

So smart when you’ve got that, when you’ve got that kind of bench like it is a gold mine for comms, right? So we are coming up on time. John, I’ve really appreciated having you here. Thank you for taking the time and being a repeat. Always. I always learn so much and I know our listeners do too. I got to leave you with a burning question. Curious minds want to know. We’ve been talking about news source and media. What’s the number one news source on the daily for you and why? You may have answered it earlier when you talk about getting your news from analysts, but I’m just going to throw it out there.

[00:44:56.670] – John Hallock

It’s probably on two fronts. So I get the same news aggregators that most people probably get, the ones that I find the most helpful that I think do the best job curating the various happenings in the industry. Med City news does a very good one, I think in the provider space. Modern healthcare has always done a very good one. I think if I put on my IR hat. Yes, every day I’m getting dozens of analyst notes and I will spend between 430 and 530 in the morning going through those.

[00:45:34.090] – Kriste Goad

What? 04:30 a.m John? Early bird

[00:45:39.450] – John Hallock

And some of it isn’t relevant, but there is usually one or two things that pop up. Certainly look at my competitors every day and that sets the tone for the day. And then throughout the day, I’ll look at whether it’s on the investor side, what the market’s doing, but also on the industry side. And our team has gotten very good at doing that, too, which has been great to see. So they’re invested in keeping up with what the Joneses are doing.

[00:46:06.790] – Kriste Goad

That’s awesome. Then you can always stay a step, right?

[00:46:11.030] – John Hallock

Right. I’m just proud of myself. I did this whole thing without talking about Tom Brady, football.

[00:46:17.210] – Kriste Goad

Well, I didn’t want to bring up a sore subject.

[00:46:23.450] – John Hallock

Sundays are sad for me, and I don’t have anyone to really cheer for.

[00:46:30.270] – Kriste Goad

You need a new team. You’re looking for a home?

[00:46:33.840] – John Hallock

I might start following the pro pickleball tour. I don’t know.

[00:46:39.230] – Kriste Goad

Listen, come on over to the Tennessee Titans fandom because we haven’t had a great year so far, but I’m always a Tennessee Titans fan.

[00:46:48.930] – John Hallock

It’s a great city. We really enjoyed our time living there. And I do think when they get that new stadium, especially where it will be located right by the river there, it’s going to be a must go-to spot for the NFL. It’s going to be pretty neat to see that city just go to that next level.

[00:47:09.420] – Kriste Goad

Well, we’ll have to get you here for a game when that happens.

[00:47:11.980] – John Hallock

I always find a reason to get to Nashville. Martin’s BBQ, it’s the best.

[00:47:20.090] – Kriste Goad

I was just telling someone this the other day. There was a friend of mine, she was visiting from Colorado and I was like, well, lots of barbecue, but I do really like me some Martin’s. She had a brisket burger and she was raving about it.

[00:47:36.530] – John Hallock

Now you got me thinking, right.

[00:47:38.450] – Kriste Goad

I should send you some barbecue. Well, listen, it’s been great having you on, John, as always. We’ll include links and backgrounds on everything we talked about in our show notes. So everybody listeners, be sure to check that out on our website, growwithfuoco.com or wherever you get your podcast again, my guest today has been John Hallock, chief communications officer for Quantum Health. John, thank you so much.

[00:48:05.960] – John Hallock

Hey, thank you for having me. It’s great seeing you.

[00:48:09.130] – Kriste Goad

You too. That’s it for now. Thanks so much for listening. We’re looking forward to keeping great conversations coming your way as we grow this podcast. There’s even more great content from our conversations on our blog. Be sure to check it out at growwithfuoco.com. That’s  growwithfuoco.com. Stay tuned until next time. And no matter what, stay curious.

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