William Tyree (00:04):

Hi, welcome to the Brand Intelligence Podcast, the show where you pull back the curtain on some of the world’s smartest brands. Today we’ll dig into how great brand marketing is the flywheel for growth, and how to manage brand compliance and governance while growing your business. I’m your co-host, William Tyre, and today we’re taking a dive into the world of healthcare marketing and how to be creative while adhering to both healthcare and financial services marketing compliance. Joining me today is Yuen Ferguson, marketing ops and planning lead for Medibank. Welcome, Yuen.

Euan Ferguson (00:34):

Thank you. Yeah, no, it’s great to be here. Great to have an opportunity to talk with you today. Yeah.

William Tyree (00:38):

Awesome. Well, before we dig into your story, we’d like to ask guests to give us a theme song. So if you were walking out on stage today to give a keynote address, what would the song be and why?

Euan Ferguson (00:49):

Now we’ll start this by saying, I know there’s a IB live in March in Melbourne. You’re in Australia, so I will make this request Now. Put some thought into this. I think Mr. Bluesky electric lighter orchestra. Very, very positive, very fun. Probably been working on the dance moves from Guardians of the Galaxy as well. So yeah, that’s my choice, Mr. Bluesky.

William Tyree (01:21):

Okay, and that is a great one. So I’m a huge ELO fan. I saw them at Hollywood Bowl about four or five years ago. Yeah, it was awesome. It was them plus the LA Philharmonics, so had the full thing, and I want to say that they might’ve ended with that song and it was just like this amazing way to end it. We just felt like we were walking on air afterwards. Yeah,

Euan Ferguson (01:44):

It’s a good way to stop the day. A good way to finish today.

William Tyree (01:47):

I love it. Well, let’s get into it. You’ve been an int inte bank client three times. You must have a really strong point of view on the importance of marketing compliance given what your company does. So let’s talk a little bit about your role. What does marketing operations do? And if you can get to it, I’d love if you would tell us a little bit more about the company as well.

Euan Ferguson (02:07):

Yeah, absolutely. So the elevated pitch for marketing operations I think has to be making it easier for marketers and everybody marketing adjacent to get their work done, try to remove as many of the barriers to focusing on creativity as possible. The nature of the compliance component is that it is a requirement that sits on top of that creativity and all of that great work that people do for customers for building the brand. I think in everything that is designed in using a platform like Intelligence Bank, it’s about ensuring that, supporting that ideation work, that design work, that creativity and the focus on the customer. I like to make sure things are as simple as possible. I like to make sure that they’re not duplicating information which is housed elsewhere. And also that any design work for marketing operations, we’re living in a digital world now.

(03:05):

It’s 2023, soon to be 2024. What we shouldn’t be doing is taking analogue processes and putting them into a digital platform. And that’s a mistake that I’m sure everybody in technology has made at least once in their career. So by ensuring that we’re not doing that, we’re listening, we’re focusing on making it easier for people, that’s marketing operations for me. There’s more in the job description, and I’m sure a lot of people listening to this podcast will be aware of what either they do or marketing operations people in their lives too. But for me, that’s the purpose. Make it easier to get things done here at Medibank. That’s a real focus for us. So I would say extremely customer focused, but also focused on our people and ensuring that our people are happy, they’re healthy. Recently it was announced in the media by our CEO that we’re talking about the four day work week.

(04:03):

We have flexible work arrangements. The head office is in Melbourne and there are some satellite offices, some WeWork offices around the country. I’m in Brisbane, so my commute when I go to the head office is a little bit longer than other people. I get to spend a couple of hours on a plane, but apart from that, I utilise digital tools to work with my colleagues around the country. So that’s our focus on people. In terms of customers who as Medibank, well Medibank are known largely as a private health insurer here in Australia and have been for more than 45 years. Our purpose is better health for better lives. And so we do that through offering private health insurance and the comfort that provides to people to know that they’re covered. We also have offerings in the general insurance space, so life travel and pet insurance. And then we also have people working in the mental health space in the primary care space and after hours medical support space as well. That kind of wraps up our health offering.

William Tyree (05:12):

It’s amazing. Well, you definitely do important work. I mean, if you were to ask people, I think your average person, what are the most important things to you in life and what do you need to make sure that you can have a really good life? I’d say you named a few of them, including pet insurance.

Listen to the full episode to see even more great conversation between Euan Ferguson and William Tyree…