Today is part 1, and part 2 will be out on 12/16!
Today we are diving in the the incredible history of friend and fellow marketing mentor, Ed Lahue! This is part 1 of 2.
Ed Lahue, MBA is an Innovation Consultant in St. Louis. Ed helps technology start-ups and established businesses expand their innovation efforts through supporting various universities and SBDC centers. He counsels and teaches new business modeling, market research and other startup curriculum.
With 40 years of experience, Ed has an extensive background in innovation, strategic marketing and branding. His industry experience includes consumer products, healthcare and various industrial sectors. He is a retired innovation & technology counselor with the University of Missouri Extension/Missouri SBDC and holds an MBA in Marketing and a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration/Marketing from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville.
The Marketing Gateway is a weekly podcast hosted by Sean in St. Louis (Sean J. Jordan, President of https://www.researchplan.com/) and featuring guests from the St. Louis area and beyond.
Every week, Sean shares insights about the world of marketing and speaks to people who are working in various marketing roles – creative agencies, brand managers, MarCom professionals, PR pros, business owners, academics, entrepreneurs, researchers and more!
The goal of The Marketing Gateway is simple – we want to build a connection between all of our marketing mentors in the Midwest and learn from one another! And the best way to learn is to listen.
And the next best way is to share!
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Copyright 2025, The Research & Planning Group, Inc.
TRANSCRIPT:
All right, well, I’d like to welcome Ed Lehu to the Marketing Gateway. I already blew it. Let’s do a take two. I’d like to welcome. OK, here we go. Three, two, I would like to welcome Ed Lehu to the Marketing Gateway. Ed, welcome.
Ed Lahue (00:18.754)
Hey, thanks for having me.
Sean Jordan (00:20.457)
And it’s such a pleasure. We’ve worked together so much in years past when you were back at SSM Health. And I’m glad we’ve been able to keep in touch during all the things you’ve been doing since. And I’m so delighted to have you on the program because you have such a wealth of knowledge and experience that it’s going to be a treat for all of our listeners. So thank you.
Ed Lahue (00:37.24)
Well, that’s great. Well, I’m excited about doing it.
Sean Jordan (00:40.909)
Likewise, well, I’ll tell you, let’s just get started. We’re gonna jump right in. Tell me something surprising that I don’t know and it could be anything that you’d like to share.
Ed Lahue (00:48.93)
Well, I guess that one unique thing was I grew up, I was a small child in Japan. My dad was in the Air Force there. And most, I don’t talk about that a lot, but I think it was a blessing because it kind of helped me get a global perspective. And later did global marketing actually in Asia and places like that. So, you know, I think when you kind of grow up in one area, you kind of get a little myopic, but we, and we moved around a couple of places, but he retired though when I was eight. So I got to
grow up in one location, primarily St. Louis. So we’ll talk about that later.
Sean Jordan (01:25.61)
Well, know, growing up abroad always gives you a chance to see the world a little bit differently. And I grew up in a military community. I never got to live anywhere fun, but I had friends that lived in Japan or Germany or all over the world. And I just find that it really gives you a head start on life. So it’s a cool experience to have. Well, in this series on the marketing gateway, we’re really focused on St. Louis area, like you were saying. So tell me how you came to live and work here in the St. Louis area.
Ed Lahue (01:53.241)
Well, when my dad retired from the Air Force, my mom was from Collinsville. So we actually, when he retired, we moved three blocks from where she was born. So he took her all over the world twice and ended up back there. So I pretty much from eight years old all the way through. And then I went to SIU Edwardsville, got my undergrad in business, and then did my MBA there, mostly part time. And then we lived in Edwardsville when we first got married. I was a sales rep, a sale and
soap to retailers.
Sean Jordan (02:26.575)
That’s fantastic. know, Collinsville is just up the road from where I live in the Metro East. So know it well. And the Italian Festival, you know, they do every year. It’s fantastic. Well, I always tell people the Metro East is the kind of hidden gem of the St. Louis area because it’s a bargain to live there. It’s close to everything. And, know, if you get tired of the city, you can drive out to the cornfields. not that far away. Well, what’s something about the St. Louis area that you wish other people knew?
Ed Lahue (02:30.53)
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yes.
Ed Lahue (02:41.836)
Mm-hmm.
Ed Lahue (02:48.366)
That’s right, that’s right.
Ed Lahue (02:54.306)
Well, it’s funny you said you made that comment. I think that’s probably one of the things growing up in the Metro East. And then now I live actually in Jefferson County that most people don’t know that you can be in a nice suburb or even a rural area and only be 20 to 30 minutes from downtown. We lived in Edwardsville and people thought that I lived out in the cornfields. Now there were some cornfields just down not very far from me. But the reality was we only lived 25 minutes to downtown.
Now we’re like 35 minutes from downtown and we’re actually in Jefferson County. And it’s actually a hilly area. If you were on my deck and squinted, you’d think you’re in the Ozarks. But we’re only 35 minutes from downtown. And I think a lot of people, if they’re not from St. Louis, they think of a city of St. Louis, which is fine, but there’s a lot more to St. Louis than that.
Sean Jordan (03:46.531)
That’s definitely for sure. And you know, when you go up to Chicago or some of the other large cities and within driving distance, the city spreads out really far and I, know, Chicago, like all of the cornfields that used to be near it are all suburbs now. So I think St. Louis is definitely different that way. You don’t have to go far. Well, fantastic. Well, let’s transition a little bit to talk about your background in marketing because I, you know, again,
Ed Lahue (03:55.01)
Yes.
Ed Lahue (04:00.023)
Yes, exactly.
Ed Lahue (04:11.608)
Mm-hmm.
Sean Jordan (04:13.655)
One of the reasons I went to have you on the show is one of our marketing mentors is because you have done so much and we have talked many times about all the things you’ve done. So tell me a little bit about your background in marketing, where you started, some of the brands you’ve worked for and some of the accomplishments that you’ve made over the years.
Ed Lahue (04:28.622)
Yeah, I mean, it’s hard to condense that. But yeah, I have about a 40 year career. I started out as a sales rep and I really snuck into marketing because back in those days, really were not. fact, I was the first one at Dial to actually go from sales to marketing. Nobody else had done that. Now, they would have loved it if I would have been a sales rep, went and got my MBA full time at a well-known MBA school at the time. Now, SIU-Ettersville actually is one of those. But when I was there, it was a little unknown.
But yeah, I really wanted that practical experience. What really helped me was scanners were invented. So the key thing that helped my career was the retailers had more information than the manufacturers. So the pendulum of power really shifted to the retailer. So when I first was in marketing, I was an entry level product assistant. And I had directors and managers lined up in my office waiting to talk to me and ask me, hey, would this work with the retail trade?
So it ended up being a benefit, but in the beginning actually it was a little bit of a they were like, oh you can’t do that You know people were told no one’s ever done that one of tell me if I know one’s ever done that that’s a challenge for me. So So I went to Phoenix, which is why we left st. Louis initially Back in 1987 and started out as a product assistant. So I was the entry level just like any other MBA grad But I ever had four and a half years experience and actually worked on the purex laundry
detergent business, was very trade driven. And interesting conversations I would have some of the sales force. didn’t know I, they just thought I came from Duke University. And I quickly, after they went through their spiel, I said, hey, just so you know, I just left the field. All of a there’s this long pause and they’re backpedaling. Well, that’s not really what I meant to say. So they knew that I knew what was going on. But we were, we got in bed with a little company back
in Arkansas called Walmart. may have heard of them now, but they were still pretty new company. Kmart was kind of the big player. But yeah, learned about my, know, marketing is not just about, you know, putting stuff out there. It was about can we make money at this and what is the margin? So we were a high volume, low margin business. We had four detergent plants, one here in St. Louis actually. And so I learned about how, you know, volume cancels all sins. And really that’s why
Sean Jordan (06:31.929)
Hmm.
Ed Lahue (06:58.192)
brushed up on my variable cost, fixed costs, which really helped me as a product manager. But yeah, I always wanted to be a brand manager, but I found that I got bored because these were large businesses and they’re not gonna let some 30 year old kid make a bunch of changes. A lot of times we felt like we were taking last year’s marketing plan and kind of rearrange the deck chairs as we used to call it sometime. So I gravitated to more of the innovation world, doing new product development.
And I like that because it was heavy on the market research. I was always fascinated about consumers, any customers and understanding how they tick and what drives them. And so I got involved with new product development. Even prior to leaving Dial, I was supposed to launch a new product. And we ended up, we had some issues with a plant in California and I go into the details, but I couldn’t get a permit for my new product.
time that we wanted to get back to the Midwest we really missed Phoenix was great I would have probably stayed there if it wasn’t for family being in st. Louis it was just too far you know you pretty much had to fly it’s a 24-hour drive that’s that that’s without stopping you know so you know some people could take three days to do it so we ended up at Borden in Columbus Ohio our two daughters were born there and I worked on the cheese and culture products and really that’s where I did the
welcome my time, new product development. This is also where I learned how big companies don’t always pay attention to the market research. I was shocked to find that products were launched that should have been. So a lot of my job was, I hate to call it, but I was a little bit of fixer flush. So I was working on products that I had to decide, can I reposition this product another way that would be successful or do I need to just kill it? So I got pretty good at doing
that which I think you know again grew my career into thinking about these more as a business and not just marketing from a standpoint of the you know a lot of people think of the four P’s you know and and they heavy on the promotion side but the reality is it’s more about the business model and you know is there a customer here for this is we really having a product that fills a need
Ed Lahue (09:20.75)
And who is that customer, you know, and, know, how many actually will give us money for this? And how do we offer value? And I always talk, talk about value proposition in terms of how you, how you solving the problem in a better way. That’s going to change behavior. Cause what I learned quickly was that behavior change, people get into a routine, you know, they’ve been using the same product for a long time and for them to change, it’s like, eh, it sounds like it’s a nice, a better option, but I’m going to just
stick with what I got. So there I actually did create a bunch of new products. We launched a product called the Big Cheese, which was a simple concept. was like, if you look at processed cheese, it doesn’t cover the bread. So a simple concept was, we’ll make a product that covers the bread. The market research folks were kind of dumbfounded that it scored so high that they actually tested it twice. And it still scored high. And I also created a product
for a premium product. One of the concepts, again, learn heavy that, know, not consumers, even if consumers don’t believe it, even if it’s true, if they don’t believe it, it doesn’t matter, right? So a simple example was Kraft singles. Many households think that’s cheese. So we have a premium product that’s actually a higher cheese content. So how could you have more cheese than cheese? It is the way I described that product. So Kraft,
was actually talking about five ounces of milk. So I ran to R &D and said, how much milk is in our product, in this premium product? Well, it turns out there was six ounces of milk versus five ounces of milk. So my wife actually helped me name the product, More Milk Singles. We brought Elsie back to television, or she’d never been on television, frankly. was back when television was invented, the board didn’t know what to do with her. So they kind of didn’t do anything with her. So we actually revived her and created one of the first commercials
using back this was before computers were really state-of-the-art today now you just you know press a couple keys and you do this we actually had to shoot commercials live and then we had animation and you blended them together so very expensive production back in the early 90s
Sean Jordan (11:39.939)
And that’s Elsie the Borden cow, Yeah. The famous mascot. Yeah.
Ed Lahue (11:42.095)
Yeah, I’ll see the Broden Cal. So I created a whole line for kids. had things like bubble, you know, like bubble gum tape, I had cheese tape. Well, the problem was the company was financially not doing well. So I found out, so I had spent all this money getting the product ready or getting the concept ready. And they told me they don’t have any money. And I’m like, what do mean any money? Like, why did you have me working on this? And that’s where I learned really quickly that you have to have, you know, it’s all about objectives, strategy and action. And those have to
be aligned with resources. So if you don’t have alignment with the organization, so I actually revised the new product development strategy, which is where the big cheese idea came from. Well, we actually had some flavor, pizza flavored cheese that was for kids. So I took that flavoring and put it into big cheese and it was like a nacho flavor. We also had dinosaurs and bears, but they kept breaking as they fell down through the same line that made shredded cheese. And so anyway, I needed
new equipment we actually did a pilot test it’s the same way you make dog biscuits where you have these huge cylinders one has a cavity one solid and you you run those through there so we actually tested on a small scale and got it to work
But we needed to reinforce the floor because these cylinders are huge. They would like be as big as your house, you know. And so long story short was I needed $5 million in capital. They said we don’t need money. So I took my resume on the street. And with three job offers later, I went to work for Bristol-Mari Squibb in Evansville, Indiana.
And that’s really where I, so I ran the Gerber baby formula business. It was a licensing agreement with Gerber. And that’s where I really learned about CRM and doing database marketing, because that’s how infant formula is marketed. Cause you know, you’re only talking about 4 % of households have a child, but 2 % are on the WIC program and they’re essentially getting it for free. It’s paid by the government program, which was very successful in helping the babies,
Ed Lahue (13:49.953)
age. But so we only had 2 % of households. So I was constantly arguing with J. Walter Thompson, why are we spending $25 million on television when there’s only 2 % of households. but within six weeks of the job, I actually recommended to get out of the business. So I had to slowly kill the product. I guess it’s okay to talk about this now. So it’s like, you know, we’re several 30 years later. So I had to slowly kill the product over a four year period, because we just renewed the licensee agreement. And we didn’t want to just hand it over to
Sean Jordan (14:14.127)
You
Ed Lahue (14:19.856)
So I actually, so that’s one of things in my resume is how to kill a product over a four year period and make as much money as you possibly can. But what I did was I took all that money we made and I started doing new product development. The company had not done much in the product development and I created Infamil singles, which is a single serve for one bottle at a time. I did the Infamil AR, which was stands for added regurgitation or added brine.
We did market research and found out that moms were actually making the bottle bigger, the nipple bigger on purpose and putting rice cereal in there to make the baby not, you know, basically they can, it’s we call projectile vomiting. It’s like, literally like if you’ve had a baby in the back seat in a car seat, they could literally coat the front seat, you know, the back of the front seat. And so we actually like, hey, if you can’t beat them, let’s join them. You know, it’s that kind of thing. So it’s this whole thing of
understanding the consumer and so we actually put it in there for which made it much more safer. And then I also did the early development for ARA and DHA fatty acids. It’s found in the breast milk. So our goal was always trying to figure out how do we make infant formula closer to breast milk.
Let’s see, and I did also a whole, we had a whole line of products for diabetes. We had a resistance starch that we had clinical trials on that actually, so I actually did a lot of work and created a whole consumer model. And what I learned from that whole process was, you know, we really should be spending more of our time in problem definition, not product development, not concept development. You spend more of your time in that understanding the consumer or the customer and then
and then taking that and then building on that. Then you do your ideation and your product development. So all of those things really led me to, know, all my career was always a transition. then I, Bristol Myers-Scrib went through a lot of changes and I know I’m not listing all the things I worked on because I can’t remember them all now.
Ed Lahue (16:32.062)
because I was also involved with the infant meal. I also redid the packaging rebranding for the whole family of formulas because they had this family of formulas but they didn’t look alike. So I actually created and I negotiated a better licensing. I was trying to replace Peter. We had a Beatrix Potter Peter Rabbit on the label and I proposed that we should just go to the generic rabbit and the New York attorneys were not happy with that idea. So I took that consumer data
Sean Jordan (16:53.123)
Hmm.
Ed Lahue (17:01.776)
I actually researched that consumers just said yeah it’s a nice rabbit and and so I negotiated cut the royalty that we paid them in half so save several million dollars with that research so again it’s based on you know research based decisions you know and then yeah
Sean Jordan (17:22.911)
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, when you have a situation where you’re paying a lot for a license that nobody recognizes, and the research says ditch it, that’s just one of those things where research pays for itself really quickly.
Ed Lahue (17:28.524)
Yeah.
Ed Lahue (17:32.697)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, even the packaging work, what we did, we went all over the country and actually had, and did some of this actually in Asia as well. We actually just had a test kitchen and we laid out every possible utensil you can think of, right? And it’s all laid out. And then this was primarily for powder formula. And then we’d say, okay, mom, make a bottle. We’d watch her and record it.
And we’d ask her, why’d you do that? So some of the coolest insights we learned were things like, first time mom doesn’t put the scoop back into the container. Cause she’s afraid she’s touched it and she’s really worried about germs at that early age. So one of the things we were trying to do was actually get rid of the scoop. And I tried, I actually had some test products that I think I could make it work. The problem was we were invested with, we had a plant that was
pretty high tech and for me I had to change the whole the entire process. Actually we had three plants around the world that were using the same technology but infant formula is like uneven particles. My laundry detergent was more it’s more of a bead so each bead has everything in it so I had to learn a lot about you know engineering and so I hung out with all these scientists and engineers and and but really trying to take that consumer learning even at me
Johnson, a lot of them had different ideas about science and how the baby should perform and moms. But then I would match that up with, well, here’s what’s really happening. And they liked it though, because then could take their kind of their science insights. And then I would take the consumer insights and see where they match up, which is where the ARA and DHA came into play, because she really was worried about brain development and the breast milk was really the ultimate
that for for that brain development. But yeah, it’s it’s we can never you know, it’s kind of like a North Star. never have we hated it. It’s kind of crass when I hear it say that I’m public, but internally, we called it breast milk and can that was the goal, right? We would never get there. But that was always the goal. You know, it’s kind of our North Star if you would. But so from there, I went to so then I was tired of big corporate life. I was not a good corporate guy. would tell people what I
Ed Lahue (19:59.361)
really thought, which I learned later was not necessarily the best way to do that. But it works great in consulting world. So I left, I actually sold all my Bristol Myers stock while it was still high and started my own consulting practice. And then I worked there, I worked with clients like ConAgra, Slimfast, RecSell Sundown, and was able to apply really that fuzzy front end as I like to call it, help them. So I’d walk in there and I would every
Every company had done a brand equity study, an attitude usage study, we call an ANU. Everybody had done lots of qualitative research. But guess what? No one actually sat down and read the whole thing. So I would take all their research from the last five years. fact, I would love AI now, it would probably be great for this. I literally would go in there and research. I would spend six weeks just reading all their stuff. And then I would come back with a summary and say, here’s the creative connections I’m seeing here.
across all this research. And then from there, they would then define their hunting grounds, very similar to how I did the modeling with Ebony Johnson at Bristol Myers Squibb, where we would take all the data and we would scrub it, you know, and we do a post-it notes and we would create a model up on the, you know, up on a wall. so I essentially was offering that to those clients. And then they would then, then I’d work with them on their concept development and then we’d go out and do qualitative to refine
those concepts and then they get them what we call we want to get them to where they are quantitative ready but most of the time I was spending a lot of my time was with bases and I don’t know you’re familiar with bases but it’s a division of AC Nielsen so when cable TV came out test marketing kind of went away live test marketing so in fact Evansville Indiana was one so those are the old they were I don’t know if ever heard of a company called behavior scan so they’re all behavior scan mark
It’s like Euclid, Wisconsin, Peoria, Illinois.
Ed Lahue (22:04.014)
in New York, they were isolated. When cable TV came about, it really messed that all up. So what we did was we simulated these concepts. So I spent a lot of time getting concepts ready to, because when you do a three cell basis, we’re talking $100,000. So you want to make sure you’ve tested the concept really well and refined it and done a communication check on the concept.
we would.
it would simulate the market. I spent a lot of time, that’s why I’m so big on business models and I want to understand your blind metric model. Who’s the customer? How many are there? How many will buy? And then how many will repeat? So it’s like awareness trial repeat and then you measure the repeat of the repeaters. And then you do a basis to where you actually give them the product. And then you find out, do you have concept fulfillment? Does the product perform like they thought it would in the concept? So you essentially simulate
And then with Macy’s you actually put in a marketing plan by week. So you literally put in I’m gonna drop a coupon on week 16 I’m gonna run this many gross rating points on television or radio or whatever now You could do digital and they would essentially the black box would actually simulate the model It would simulate and it was pretty accurate within if you did a Macy’s one. It was probably within 10 % Typically because what they’re doing is they’re going back and they’re looking at products that actually
performed in market and then they back they kind of back into the the black box model based on real market in market results.
Ed Lahue (23:46.531)
Now, you’re doing something truly new to the world, like an Apple phone, iPhone, it’s probably not gonna test well, right? It’s really meant for, I’m gonna launch a product that’s at least somewhat similar. It’s not so foreign that you’ve never heard of it. So I could test things like a smoothie, which was actually a new concept back then, but at least I could describe what it was, right? So it still had some reference to the world, but if it was so innovative, new, new, really new to the world,
think Basie’s did so hot on those concepts because it really didn’t have anything to reference it.
Sean Jordan (24:22.497)
Yeah, and research has always been bad at being a crystal ball for new things. Because they’re often, they’re so outside people’s schema that they don’t really know how to interpret them. And you know, some famous research failures. I mean, one of the most famous is the show Seinfeld, which tested horribly and then went on to be one of the biggest sitcoms ever. So I can totally see that. But at the same time, as you said, if there’s analogs to the market, or you can at least explain it, testing can work really well.
Ed Lahue (24:27.052)
Yes. Yes.
Ed Lahue (24:38.043)
yeah.
Hmm?
Well.
Ed Lahue (24:47.778)
Yes. Well, and also a new product development is always a timing game, okay? Because there were concepts that tested poorly, like the fax machine, the answering machine. When those were first invented or thought about…
they the the current lifestyle didn’t make sense. So they would research this and they would say people would say, you know, was primarily a farming community when the when the you know, when people would say, well, if I’m not home, they’ll just call back, you know, so so the notion of an answering machine didn’t make any sense. But of course, later it did. So some of it’s a timing game. Many of the products that we were test, we would retest again, like five years later, and they would score much better because things had changed. So lifestyles change.
And so I was always fascinated by that. was my… In fact, I probably should have went market research full time because I loved really understanding that. And that’s what drove my… That’s what motivated me to really be a marketer. Because it’s not really so much about the execution of advertising that a lot of people kind of fall in love with. They think that’s so cool. And I’m like, yeah, that’s cool. But after you’ve done a few ad campaigns, it’s not that… I mean, it was that fun.
You know, what for me was fun was going out and spending time behind the mirror, you know, behind the one way mirror. And I would say I spent most of my career in the dark, you know, because I was in a focus group, you know, room in the back and hearing that person going, like one of the coolest insights we learned at Johnson when I worked on Mothers of Toddlers was she’s schizophrenic. And we said, OK, so after we showed you we had this concept of the worry ball. And we said, OK, well, how big was your worry ball before
you saw the concept and they say like this, okay, so what did your worry ball do after you saw the concept? it went down, it went smaller. And we said, what would it take to eliminate your worry ball? And she said, over my dead body, you’re gonna take my worry ball away. And that was huge. So here we were trying to like totally eliminate your worry. That’s impossible. That’s actually almost like you’re taking my job. That’s my, as a good mom. So we had this whole idea of the mommy badge and, but she’s definitely schizophrenic. She wants the baby girl
Ed Lahue (27:03.512)
up but she doesn’t. So those are huge insights and I researched that all over the world and I found that consistent no matter where I researched that. So those are the kind of things that once you kind of have that basic understanding that really drives a lot of things. You don’t have to you don’t always have to go back to the to the customer for every little thing if you know them really well.
Sean Jordan (27:23.085)
Yes, and I’ve had the experience many times myself as a researcher. I think when you when you get that perspective where you suddenly start to understand this explains a lot of the actions that I’m seeing in the market, then it makes it a lot easier to start asking different questions, sometimes the right questions, because you weren’t asking it right before. And then to your point, when you’re in the role of having to put this all together in strategy, you can articulate it.
Ed Lahue (27:40.906)
Yeah.
Sean Jordan (27:50.797)
very quickly and very easily with just that quick example as opposed to having to go through reams and reams of research to get there.
Ed Lahue (27:56.004)
Yeah.
Exactly, And then my consulting days, I ended up actually, because I didn’t want to travel all the time, Zoom had not been invented. I would have loved Zoom. I might have stayed as a consultant. But you know, you had to get on an airplane and go talk to the client and maybe get a project. So I started doing some smaller companies. And that’s where I kind of fell in love with small business. And actually a good friend of mine ran the Chamber of Commerce in Evansville and it had me as a volunteer.
for their local small business development center. That’s how I got my first exposure to that as a volunteer. But I had some smaller clients that would call me in for marketing. And this is an example where you’ve got to really define the bigger company strategy versus the marketing strategy. And I would say, that’s great, but marketing strategy for what? had one client in particular, I basically wrote, I could say your strategy is make anything out of metal. know, they were primarily a company that could coat metal.
And so I helped them, you know, did that more like a hundred thousand dollar McKinsey project, you know, but only charged them twenty five thousand. But I helped them really figure out what do we want to be when we grow up and did a lot of what we call. I used to do a technique called cover story vision, where it’s like, you know, pick the trade magazine that you want to be on. You’re on the cover in five years from now. You’re on the cover and you had this great success. And tell us what was it? You know, what was it?
you open up the magazine, inside the magazine there’s a sidebar that kind of highlights some of the key accomplishments. So those kinds of things. So I really enjoyed doing that as well. And I really loved consulting, but I was a solo practitioner and I had a couple of virtual partners. I had a market researcher, I had a graphic designer, and I also had a facilitator. She was really more facilitator. I would love to train her, had trained her as a focus script moderator. I think she’d been a great focus script moderator too.
Ed Lahue (29:56.418)
a lot of cross-functional facilitation, both for strategic planning as well as sometimes new product. Sorry, I wouldn’t call it new product development more like.
hunting ground development, know, trying to find what’s that bigger hunting ground. And then also sometime evaluation on concepts. You know, we want to get people to not always work on something that’s like, we’re going to go to Mars, you know, maybe we should just go to the moon, you know, you know, and try to find a combination of portfolio. But so I really miss people and I miss running a team. So ended up in healthcare. So I spent about 15 years in healthcare. My first job was a large physician group.
So that’s where I taught them about CRM. The CEO was a physician and he called it compliance, patient compliance. So I just started calling it patient compliance. So what we did is we figured out when they missed their annual exam and we would send them a mailer and said, hey, you need this. Little did I know that all that experience would help me help later on help medical scientists do a new product development. But there I learned
really it’s about, you know, again, very focused marketing. Not all marketing is, you know, mass media. And then from there I went to Ascension also in Evansville, Indiana. They had a, their local system was called St. Mary’s. Now it’s St. Vincent. created a state network through all of Indiana. So an example, a great example of that,
was we had a product called, it was a teaching children how to eat because they’ve been, were NICU grads and they were tube fed since birth.
Ed Lahue (31:50.124)
So we’re talking really small target, right? So my analogy is, it’s kind of like if you had an ant going across the room and you got this gigantic sledgehammer and I want to kill the ant, right? Well, they actually came to me and said, we think we should do a TV ad. And I was like, wow, TV ad. What would we talk about? Do we have a, do we have a children’s hospital? No. What, what, you know, and then I drilling down and finally they’re like, well, really what we want to promote is this. And I was pretty excited because it was a team approach. It took six
weeks to do this program and I could get moms within a day’s drive. So I did search engine marketing and I learned what are the keywords they search for. I literally spent $500 a month and I had 55 people knocking on the door every month. It got to the point where they finally said turn it off because we we now have a backlog. We also had a Ronald McDonald house that just got built. It’s in the same parking lot. So you literally could just park your car stay at the Ronald McDonald house because you had to
stayed there for six weeks, right? And, but I teach that example, especially when it comes to digital marketing. So people, you know, people want to do these ads. And then I had a doctor that came to me and said, well, I want to use a GI doctor. He wanted to do a billboard. And I, you know, of course I was new to healthcare. So I already had all the research in my full folder. Didn’t tell him that I said, so, so, Hey, you know, I’m new to healthcare. Tell me about your business. How do you get patients? Well, now that you mentioned it, about 99 % of my patients come from primary care doctors.
I went, really? That’s fascinating. And so through this conversation, I’m asking him, so I said, so if the primary care doctor, and then I said, yeah, and somebody said something about them. So what they called? They’re called an office scheduler. And when they want to do a colonoscopy, I found out that the, I heard that the office scheduler just wants the easy button. They just want an easy way to get it scheduled for the colonoscopy, right? It’s not about some advertising or, right? And so I said, so what would the, how
this the billboard? You know, I just kind of like, you know, yeah, I’m new to marketing. I’m new to healthcare marketing. And how does the billboard going to help with these doctors? And he’s like, well, that’s a good point. And I quickly said, well, you know what? Now, you speak really well, and you’re really, you know, you’re doing the state of the art stuff. I can, I can pitch this to the news, you know, and they need some news stories around medical, the latest medical technologies. And he was all excited about that. So he wanted the billboard for his ego.
Ed Lahue (34:19.697)
And so I quickly learned in healthcare, I had to really bring it down to marketing 101. Like, okay, who’s the customer? How do we most effectively reach them?
Sean Jordan (34:19.886)
Right.
Ed Lahue (34:34.093)
And that was probably the biggest thing that I brought to Ascension. They thought I was going to come in and do this big branding strategy. And I ended up just showing them, you’re not spending enough money at the doctor’s office. I said, that’s like your wholesale market, right? And even your own doctors who actually work for you don’t even know all the services that you are selling. And so I turned that whole thing on its head.
Sean Jordan (34:54.271)
And I’ll just mention there. I’m sorry to cut you off. I was just going to mention there that what you’re saying is so important in terms of the vanity of advertising sometimes, especially people that not doing it. They have a personal business or personal practice. They want to see their faces up on billboards because they see other people doing that. And they think, those people must be successful. with the experience and the knowledge that you had in marketing, you’re able to help pivot them.
Ed Lahue (35:08.622)
Yes.
Ed Lahue (35:20.003)
Yes. Yeah.
Sean Jordan (35:22.457)
to something much more effective, which is, hey, earned media is going to get you a lot more. being a presence in the community in other ways is going to get you a lot more than just having your face on a billboard. And by the way, that billboard is going to cost you a lot more than these other things that we’re going to have to do. So I think that experience and that knowledge is really part of what makes a marketer so valuable. And especially whether you’re in a corporate role or a consultant or you’re in a managerial role, as you wound up being in.
Ed Lahue (35:41.264)
yeah.
Sean Jordan (35:51.567) You have to be able to articulate for this is why we do this. This is the strategy behind it.
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