I love making people cry.
No, I’m not mean-spirited. But I aim to make my marketing impactful. Even in the most hated and boring industries, like health insurance, there are authentic human stories to tell that help flip the narrative. As the Product Marketing Specialist at WEA Trust, I launched various health insurance and wellness products. During my launch of WEA Trust’s online therapy service, I succeeded in shaking people awake, eliciting empathy, and yes, making people cry.
Emotion, combined with undeniable data, draws people in when they don’t want to give you the time of day. It persuades.
My goal was to convince Wisconsin public employers to demand innovative, high-tech solutions to mental health through their health plan. Why? Because WEA Trust was the only health plan that could deliver with our new product. And we were going to lessen the burden for real people in Wisconsin struggling with untreated mental illness.
Unfortunately, significant stigma surrounds mental health, and people don’t like to talk about it. It was going to be a challenge to get people to pay attention.
The Mental Health Journey exhibit was a very moving experience. Following an individual’s story as they struggled to access mental health care reminded me of our ultimate responsibility as leaders to take care of the people who work for us. The entire experience reaffirmed my commitment to building a culture of acceptance within my workplace, ensuring that no person fears being stigmatized or judged for seeking help.
-Lindsay Wallace, Executive Director of NAMI Dane County
Experiential Launch Event
To launch WEA Trust’s online therapy service, I designed an experiential launch event called the Future of Mental Wellness: Product Launch & Showcase. I invited current customers, top prospects, business partners, and mental health care leaders to a stunning research facility, which my team and I transformed into an interactive museum and showcase. The unusual program and location, paired with creative digital, print, and personal outreach, got the right people in the room.
When guests arrived, they each received one of four character booklets–The Teacher, The Athlete, The Professional, and The Musician. They would experience the first half of the event through the eyes of their character, who was based on our interviews with real, Wisconsin people.
Through market research and data, I identified the three key selling points of our product: improved access to mental health care, reduced stigma around receiving care, and better convenience for Wisconsin public employees. My team and I designed our exhibits to highlight the current problems in those areas, and we structured our characters’ narratives around these themes. During guests’ “Mental Health Journey,” they somberly encountered our custom artwork, audio booths, videos, interactive calculators, maps, and quizzes. The dire impact of poor access, rampant stigma, and inconvenient care weighed heavy.
Photo Credit: Dan Rose at WEA Trust
The Mental Health Journey led guests into the product launch and live demo, which I designed to literally transition from the darkness of the problem to the bright light of the solution. The high energy presentation and technically-challenging live demo of a video visit with an offsite psychologist captured the attention of the entire audience.
But I wanted to add even more credibility to what we were selling. The outside industry leaders I invited to the event each hosted a roundtable during lunch to discuss the issue more broadly and validate the potential of our product.
Following lunch, guests revisited the museum, now flipped to showcase our other health and wellness products in an interactive exhibit hall.
Photo Credit: Dan Rose at WEA Trust
Results
Within one week, two of our key customers requested we bring the Mental Health Journey to their workplaces so their entire staff could experience it and start using the product when it launched. Within three months of the event, one multi-million dollar client joined WEA Trust who specifically cited online therapy as a main reason for switching health plans. Eight months later, the annual State Education Convention–which is the largest gathering of current customers and prospects for WEA Trust–featured our Mental Health Journey and online therapy solution.
Many attendees thanked me personally for shining a light on the issue of mental health. A few said their stories mirrored our characters’ struggles with the healthcare system. Others said they knew untreated mental health was a huge issue, but didn’t know they could be part of the solution. Some didn’t realize how big the barriers to treating mental health were until the event, and they had no idea how much it impacted their staff.
I got people to pay attention to the issue–and see our product as the solution.
Follow-Up
Beyond the launch event, I orchestrated the actual launching of the product. I worked with our web specialist to redesign the section of our website that promotes telehealth, for both employers and employees. I also wrote copy for web, email, and print, like the new sales brochure below.
Mel Grau 