The marketing division at FH has recently appointed Mario Muredda as president and promoted tenured executive Ryan Mason to chief marketing and creative officer. In this conversation we’ll learn more about their experience at FH, organizational changes in play to support a better approach to omnichannel marketing and what differentiates FH from other network agencies and commercialization partners.
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Mark I’ll give you two here.
Mmm agency 100 Studio sessions
mishawak Health.
Okay, we’re rolling.
Hi, this is Marcus. I’m editor at large for mmm and I’m super excited for you to plug into this episode of a 100 Studio sessions a new podcast series, which gives members of the mmm agency 100 list and opportunity to Riff on what sets them apart.
In this episode we’re focusing on the agency official act health and its Evolution and integration efforts come delighted to be joined by fishawak Health’s recently appointed president Mariam and its Chief marketing and creative officer Ryan Mason and this conversation. We’re going to learn more about their experience at fishawak Health some of the organizational changes in play to support a better approach to omnichannel marketing and what differentiates fishuac Health from other network agencies and commercialization partners.
Mario and Ryan, how you doing? And welcome to M&M Studio sessions
doing great. Thanks, Mark. How are you?
Absolutely doing fine. Thank you. So let’s just start out here Mario. You’ve been at Fishhawk health for just a few months. You joined the agency after working at a number of well-known Healthcare marketing shops over the years what an attracted you to fishaway health?
Yeah, you know, I think from the start every interaction I had with fish whack in conversations leading up to the new gig and since I’ve been here the people here are astounding just that the caliber of talent here the the energy of everyone I interact with everyone’s unified our purpose and our purposeful vision of you know, we believe the better health happens when we connect it’s not just, you know, a sticker on the wall. It’s not just a handle and a sign off on an email. We I mean the folks here believe it in stand behind it and it’s it’s impressive.
I think you know building around that and above that on the people is I think our Focus here on integrating the diverse talent and skill sets that we have and bringing all the skill sets together in a really really uniform way on behalf of our clients who of course are trying to do better things for the health of populations out there. So just just seeing how that passion and that connectivity comes together and generates an amazing product for our clients and ultimately for patients. That’s been the most impressive thing for me and what What attracted me to official act and what keeps me excited here and it’s this is a tremendous Foundation to build off of
sure and when your own people are jazzed about your mission, they become more creative and that makes your work more creative which benefits people outside the agency and has a you know, ripple effect on society. So very important that
energy is absolutely contagious.
Yeah, right. Absolutely you doing very important work Ryan you grew up. So to speak a closer look.
Go Firm well known in the industry which was acquired by fishaway Health in May 2021. What about the company has kept you working there beyond the initial integration phase
It’s a great question. I think it’s been that we’re at a point. Now, I think from a leadership perspective and I think Mario’s joining the team has really crystallized. This is that we can kind of see through the vision that we joined fishawak to really accomplish and I think that that’s one of
Pulling together kind of all the main disciplines in 21st century Healthcare marketing strategy creative data analytics in a digitally native way technology, of course into making better more meaningful marketing experiences for our clients and their customers and I think the stars are kind of aligning now, there’s a collection of talent. There’s been an assembly of various agencies and individuals that have come together. And now I think we’re poised to do this work at the scale that that we aspire to and in some ways it kind of needs to be done when you’re pulling all this together. There’s certain scale involved in it, you know has to be big enough.
And so I think the conditions are right the stars have aligned and it’s it’s exciting to be able to kind of move into this next chapter of this journey together.
Yeah, we should mention also that that role is reflects a promotion for you to Chief marketing creative officers. So congratulations on that and let’s just stay with you for a moment on your future plans. Can you tell us about more about the role and your vision for it?
So I think maybe the the cheap creative part is is more self-explanatory. I think the combination of Chief marketing and creative as a little bit of a unique twist, but I think what we are trying to mean by that are signal by that is essentially kind of an extension of what we’re just talking about is is the synthesis and integration that needs to happen for us to really create campaigns that that really create meaningful connections with customers. And so I think the the remit is pulling it all together here at fisha whack is an idea that we’ve been articulating more and more lately is that you know our job the
Reason that we would combine all these capabilities together.
Is so that we can create living brands for our clients and their customers living brands or brands that are rooted and relevance. So there’s some inherent aspect of these brands that need to evolve and change right as the customers. They serve changed as the landscape and the context in which they operate change. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to create a marketing force that can really do
that do that well and do that at scale. Yeah, the key keywords are rooted and relevant I think is a nice way of encapsulating a lot of the buzzwords you here today without saying them, you know personalization and how many Channel which you know entails, you know, better experiences and synchronizing everything. So yeah, very interesting Mario. What’s your vision now that your president at visual health marketing?
Yeah. I think it’s it’s bringing to life this notion that that we believe in profoundly here that that we can make Health better if we if we connect internally and if we can act better
With with our clients and with the populations, we’re meant to serve the internal part of that is connecting better as an organization that has grown substantially through acquisition making sure that that all of those amazing organizations that are part of the issue at Cal family now are connecting in a really effective way in supporting each other brilliantly that’s part of it. I think the other part of it to Ryan’s Point earlier is we believe our approach to building Brands is to build brands that are alive. So we call it living Brands living Brands adjust and shape and reflect, you know, the environment that they’re in and they bring benefit to that environment and for us to make that environment better for the patient if we’re connecting experts in data and analytics in Consulting in payer and payer strategy in creativity advertising and marketing if we can all come together to create a brand that’s going to live and Thrive we’re gonna make Health better for the people. We’re meant to serve. So how we do that though is I think if you know, we’ve all
Works in environments in the healthcare setting in the agency side at least where we each had our own little silos of expertise and and more often than not those silos of expertise were very very difficult to connect in real time because we each had our own little, you know, our little fiefdoms and we had to deliver work very very quickly in those beef thumbs and it’s been very very difficult in many settings to bring those silos together. I think what Ryan just described in his new role in how he’s envisioning creativity is breaking those silos down and saying we’re going to make people’s Health better through creativity and we’re gonna create a brand that’s gonna be alive and that’s gonna reflect in shape Society. We need to really understand what’s happening on the ground in society. And so that means we have to have a really good understanding of the data and the metrics around what’s happening on the ground. We have to bring those analytics into our creative process not at the end to validate some thinking that we came up with on our own, you know, not way at the end after something’s been released and we’re checking to see how well it did it generate lift, but way
Beginning to inform what we’re planning to do. And and that’s that’s our vision for fish about health is how do we bring the information that’s on the ground that can make people’s lives better into the creative process so that we generate a product that’s going to make a huge difference
right and speaking of you know, the talent Mobility. I think one of the things I’m hearing, you know, as I as I talk to different agencies as part of the a100 is the realization more than I’ve ever heard about the connection between talent’s ability to move amongst those formally different fiefdoms and not be limited and how that translates into a more seamless experience for clients, especially when you’re talking about an agency that’s integrated other agencies and you want to make sure and they’re maintaining their what their uniqueness their brands but you want to you want to remove the friction. So talk about how you know, your approach is different in that regard Mario, maybe stick with you on this one. You know, what is that? And what does that mean for growth and investment in?
Internal teams.
Yeah, I’ll start with some advice that I’ve learned from clients and that I’ve shared with clients in the past is you know had you know oftentimes all you need to do is generate a positive first use experience such thing a trial is really important. So I think part of it for us is creating opportunities for trial for people to experience something new to sign up voluntarily to try something new and experience the cultures and the skills that exist within our organization because oftentimes that that experience is positive. And once that experience is positive people on both sides of it want to replicate it. I think, you know, the other part of it is recognizing that diversity of skill and experience and and background is a really really positive thing and it leads to better thinking and better output. So reinforcing that as people learn the organization and move across the organization is another thing that we’re piloting here and making sure that we share those really really positive stories.
I think the last thing is recognizing that even though we have a unified vision for fish OAC Health that doesn’t mean that the individual portions the beautiful portions of what made each of those entities special before the acquisition or lost. I think it’s recognizing that a lot of the pillars of what made closer look or dudnick or Stone Arch really really amazing prior to fishuac health acquisition of them. Those are still a place and they’re all built in to the vision that we have as a collective and so we’re not losing those amazing pillars which is building on top of them and share and we share more than we have differences among ourselves.
Yeah. That’s a lovely way to look at it Ryan. Can you give your own take on what makes your approach unique and maybe give some examples of where you’ve already executed in this way?
Yeah, I think that so some of the the examples of kind of a living brand come to life I often think about
one of the Hallmarks of of that is that there isn’t quote a brand marketing approach and then an omnichannel or activation approach but
they’re symbiotic from the start quote unquote the brand ideas that we’re having are immediately tested against well, what kind of experiences would that call us to create right and understand back to Mario’s point of like how are end customers going to experience this variably it’s going to be in a digitally multi-channel multi experiential way. So let’s make sure ideas from a brand standpoint actually inspire that and vice versa. I think that a great example of a place where we’ve done. This has been in our work with our Gen X in myasthenia gravis.
And the work that we’ve done helping serve the the patients and the supporter community in myasthenia gravis. It’s a disease. It’s kind of the MS that nobody knows about.
And so we’re working there on the patient side both in a disease data education manner as well as in a supporting the new product that’s in market and some of the early things that we learned by using data by using analytics by sitting down and talking people why using kind of a multi-factorial or a multi-disciplinary approach to Insight and understanding?
Was that people needed and really wanted to be seen and recognized and understood and they they felt invisible in alienated and that’s not unique in rare disease or frankly in ninety disease, but it was particularly poignant in this in the space.
And so as opposed to just thinking of like a wonderful beautifully executed what I’d call kind of like a public service announcement campaign about minus the name gravis. What we decided to do instead was
Begin, helping people even before the product launched begin creating and so we created essentially what we call like an omnichannel publication called mgunited that was really rooted in the Insight that people experienced my destiny and gravis differently and they needed help just getting through daily life how to live daily life. And so it’s essentially like maybe an overly simplified way is like a custom designed magazine or publication for people living with an affected by that as opposed to an ad campaign. We created this thing and of course there were invitations and advertisement to that experience.
But the other thing we learned is that the community as a whole felt invisible.
And if life was going to be better than they kind of wanted and needed the general public and those in their lives to better understand what this disease was. And so we
created with The Bravery of our clients at argenics documentary film series called a mystery to me.
and that was part that was brought to them by the community mg United online three-part documentary film series depicting three different people and their different Journeys and they’re like what real life with my assistant and gravis is like and so those two experiences really allowed us to engage the community people were opt in and signed up that was the cost of admission right to the film and we did some amazing things virtual premieres and
a host of things but what would allowed us to do is really understand the community and have
what I’d call kind of empathy at scale so that when we were ready introduced the product we were able to do some way that that was an extension of in some ways the promise the benefit the experience that had already been created by our genetics and so Viv Garden, so that would be an example of a different way of going about marketing and thinking about a living brand so both the Branded campaign as well as the mg United has evolved and it will change and extend and will be consistent in the way. It’s recognizable sure. We should certainly
showed a commitment to the mg Community, you know prior to the launch there. So that was really really nice example, and
then I think in many ways a commitment to maintain that and I think a big fear the community is was this was wonderful but is this gonna go away when you have a product and our genix has made that commitment that no, that’s not the case not just for it’s a like humanitarian reasons, but they’re really smart business and marketing reasons to do the same in a way that’s beneficial.
All parties involved and so it’s been wonderful to be part of that and see that come to life.
Yeah starting to understand and gain a better appreciation of what you mean by living Brands really interesting approach. So kind of a fun question, you know, especially when talking about two creative people like yourself, but you know talk about what inspires you, you know, where to get your inspiration from Ryan stick with you on this one
sure. I think that growing up in a world that was kind of digital or multi-channel around many Channel or whatever the next.
You know moniker of channel is gonna be is it and what we learned over time was that really our discussions every day and the things that mattered most to us were the were the entities on the ends of the channel right people customers Healthcare professionals and brands on the other end. And so
it’s a really visceral experience when I get to sit with customers with patients with supporters with with Healthcare professionals and hear there once and needs and then go and sit with folks in our client organizations who are passionate and really articulate about the stories they want to tell
and it’s the motivation to forge those connections the matchmaking there is super inspiring and say maybe more on kind of like a personal level as a creative.
I spend a lot of time like thinking and listening and watching other creatives not in my domain of experience and expertise Architects fashion designers this and that spend week. Probably too much time on YouTube, you know kind of actors directors watching and listening to other people talk about how they create and what goes into that and in some ways kind of not looking directly at what we do every day, but kind of looking aside a little bit. I’ve continued to find very inspiring about how to practice better creativity and particularly work in
Spaces where creativity is essentially collaborative which is which is a different thing than kind of a solo act that really fascinates me.
Sure. So taking inspiration from from the creative process amongst great artists and people that excel in various lines of work. Yeah particularly teams of creatives get me
get me real fired up. Yeah.
Sure Mario. How about you?
Yeah, you know not sitting not so different from Ryan once upon a time when I thought I wanted to be a bench scientist, you know, I spend a lot of time in a lab studying lung cancer if you can believe it and I knew it wasn’t for me because it was just so insular and while you know as an introvert, I do like the alone time in my head to process things. I just felt like the other part of it that was missing was the interaction with others to be able to kick things around. So I really love about this industry that that really inspires me every day is that I get the benefit of both of those things. Like I can be in my head a little bit to think things through strategically.
Which is always exciting to me, but the really really inspiring part is, you know in a conversation either with a teammates like a creative conversation on a brief strategy discussion or with a client or potentially with patients or customers of our clients that moment you have when you’re kicking ideas around United in the mission of making someone’s Health better somewhere. You’re kicking ideas around us to how to get there. You know that moment where you have that spark and you see someone’s eyes light up and then that person’s eyes lights up. Someone else’s spark. Someone else’s creativity and you get to this place as a collective sometimes an often actually is very disparate people from different walks of life life who maybe in some cases of never even work together before and you just created something really special and unique that’s gonna make a difference that didn’t exist before you all said down together that to me is incredibly inspirational. I it’s it’s like a drug for me. That’s the beauty of working.
Create a field I think for folks like us.
Yeah.
Yeah, right. It’s plenty of opportunities to get that fix if you will and you don’t want to work and you know, I know you just started a fish a whack Mario, but getting you to think a little bit more, you know toward your legacy. What do you want to leave a lasting impression of you know there with your your new role?
Yeah, you know, it’s um, I like to look back at things and say did I you know, did I have some small hidden opportunity to make something better for as many people as possible and so, you know internally for the organization to me what I want my legacy to be is, you know, I helped take an amazing organization to be a little a little more amazing and slightly different ways and we did that together and then beyond that to me is and did we make people’s lives better outside and it’s not I know how trophy that sounds it’s not meant to sound trophy. It’s all I think all of us at the agency and most of
Work in healthcare we do this because we build you know, we want to make population Health better and I want to be able to look back at my career and say I was able to I was able to do that with some amazing Folks at Fishhawk.
Right, right. Otherwise, they might as well be selling sneakers nothing against the sneaker here. But Ryan, how about you?
I think it’s it’s very much the same and I think it’s one of the reasons Mario and I have connected as quickly as we have I think.
One of the phrases that I’ve learned over the years is, you know, I really love to look back at our work and feel and know that we helped clients do well by doing good.
That those things don’t have to be at odds with each other.
particularly in the field that we work in that would be a very satisfying letter Legacy and then kind of a little bit more inside baseball I’d say
Goes back to kind of where we started the conversation. It would be wonderful to kind of look back and also say that we helped transform marketing and biopharma and Healthcare to be more human more meaningful more inventive more clever more data-driven more Tech enabled. I think that we as an industry haven’t always been accused of being the most Progressive or the best when it comes to to marketing and I think
In many ways the conditions are changing and stars are learning to really to change that because what we’re dealing with and interacting with is so meaningful that why shouldn’t we be as good at marketing and connecting with customers as they do when they’re when other folks are selling shoes, you know, that would be wonderful to look back and feel like I had a plate a role in that
absolutely absolutely well said and one final question and I’ll let you both. Go here this being the a100 studio sessions. I like to get each of you to kind of tell me. What was the last song you guys listen to rhyme
start with you. It’s good question. I was listening to a song called Garden song by Phoebe Bridgers
and I find that I
are gonna stuck in my head and then I’ll just listen to it on repeat again and again and it’s a wonderful song to do that because it’s almost like a palindrome like it kind of just it starts it plays and then the end rolls right into the beginning again and it’s a kind of TransLink. So I was listening to that yesterday great song
nice Mario.
Nice. Well like Ryan sometimes I’m looking for inspiration. I troll YouTube and it’s amazing. How much time you can spend on YouTube if you’re not and I yeah nice. Yeah, I stumbled on to this at this section of an episode of the Might Get Loud where it was Jimmy Page The Edge and Jack White sharing some other signature riffs with each other and each of them learning each other’s riffs and Jimmy Page went into you know, how we came up with the rift for cashmere. He started talking about the complexity of the Riff that I had never that never really appreciated until he isolated it and talked about how he created it and how it repeats on certain intervals. And so I
I’m embarrassed or maybe proud to say that I listen to cashmere five or six times last night before it was
that’s a good, you know hour plus listening time there
exactly.
That’s a great documentary. That’s the documentaries something worth watching on repeat. Again. It’s phenomenal.
Yeah. Yeah. I love love hearing their creative process. That’s so much fun to hear that gives you a whole new appreciation for the music exactly. Well to that end. I want to congratulate both of you on your new roles, and as you progress in those new positions and make living brands for this agency. Hope we can do this again sometimes thank you.
Thanks for the time Mark
you God. This has been Markus to it’s for mmm Studio sessions signing off. We hope you enjoy this conversation stick around for another one. We’ll see you next time.
