Bill Klaproth (Host): This is a special podcast produced on site at SHSMD Connections 2025 in Dallas, as we talk with speakers and session leaders direct from the show floor. I'm Bill Klaproth. And today, we're talking about finding innovation in unexpected places and how sometimes the greatest marketing opportunities are hiding right inside your own organization. I love it. Joining me are Laurie Marino, Vice President of Marketing and Communications at the Menninger Clinic, and Jake Yarbrough, Group Director of Healthcare at Schaefer Advertising. Laurie and Jake, welcome.

Laurie Marino: Hey Bill, great to be here. Thank you for having us.

Jake Yarbrough: Yeah, thanks so much, Bill. I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Host: Yeah. This is really going to be interesting, and I love this. Laurie, I'm going to start with you, the title of your session, It's Elementary, Dear Watson. So, this suggests the detective style approach to marketing. What does that mean in practice though? And how can leaders start uncovering hidden opportunities within their organizations?

Laurie Marino: This detective style approach is really nothing new. It's not an innovative work of art at all. It's very much a framework that's grounding you in the research that starts by learning from the past. So if you think about the way a detective works, they ask a lot of questions about the past, about the history. So, soliciting feedback and asking all of those questions really helps you work to connect dots, and ultimately find things that you may have missed that could be buried in the history of an organization or history period, or even just hiding in plain sight and it's been overlooked because you've seen it so many times.

Host: So, what kind of opportunities generally are you looking for or hope to find in those areas that you're asking those questions?

Laurie Marino: Nuggets of gold basically. What are the things that we don't know? I'll talk a little bit more about it. But really, when you come into an organization and you think you know what the plan is, right? Or when you're rebranding or when you're marketing or launching a campaign and you really think you know what you're doing, adopting this sort of methodical approach really helps, again, ground you in what you're doing. You have this approach, you have this framework, you have to sort of check the boxes. And it helps you discover those little nuggets that you may have thought you had already solved for, but they might be right there and need to be addressed.

Host: Yeah. So, sometimes asking the question even, "What is it that I don't know?" can uncover hidden secrets like that, which is hiding right in plain sight. If you didn't ask, you wouldn't know.

Laurie Marino: Exactly.

Host: So, that's kind of the theory behind it.

Laurie Marino: And that's what I always ask is, "Okay, now we've talked about all of this stuff. Now, tell me what I don't know."

Host: I love it. So Jake, you've worked with many healthcare brands to help them see their strengths from a fresh perspective, which is great when you have outside people come in to do that. Why do you think so many organizations overlook the insights and assets that are already right there in front of them?

Jake Yarbrough: Excellent question, Bill. And I think I might answer that question of yours with a question of my own, why is it that when you're sometimes driving your car, you think, "You know what? I've been driving for about 30 minutes, and I can't remember if the last intersection I went through had a red light or a green light and did I stop?" right? So, it's a concept of inattentional blindness that we're going to talk about. And that principle of, "The last intersection I went through, was it red or green?" That's because our brains are designed to look at and look for patterns and not look for the unfamiliar. So, the more routine things become, the more you take for granted. And so, this notion of inattentional blindness is something that we're going to talk about in our session, but I think it's important for those listening to understand that sometimes you just really literally have to shake yourself out of that process.

And as Laurie mentioned, you know, this methodical process of approaching the world and approaching your opportunities in your organization through the eyes of a detective, through a very clinical, very objective method, and looking and asking those questions helps us to shake out of that notion of inattentional blindness. And so, that's really, I think, at the root of why organizations sometimes overlook those things, is because they get used to seeing things the same way all the time.

Host: This is the way we've always done it kind of syndrome.

Jake Yarbrough: Exactly.

Host: So, the more commonplace, rote, mundane things become-- you just pay less attention to them. It's almost like human nature, right, sort of?

Jake Yarbrough: Very much so.

Host: Wow. So then, it makes sense to ask those questions as you were talking about.

Laurie Marino: It gets into this very much a, "Well, if it's not broken, I'm not going to fix it. This is the way we've always done it for 25 years. It's fine." It's not fine.

Host: It's not fine. It's not fine. All right. So, your session, Laurie, draws from three real world case studies. Can you share an example where looking inward led to a breakthrough marketing idea or transformation at the Menninger Clinic where it wasn't fine and here you uncovered something?

Laurie Marino: Absolutely. So, I've been with Menninger about 10 months now. So when I joined, I had this massive priority to rebuild our website. That was it. It was a tunnel of vision, laser focused on rebuilding this website and refreshing our brand, a hundred-year-old brand. And that was my imperative. I mentioned a hundred years, because those two priorities were also in the midst of a hundred-year celebration. We turned 100 in May of 2025 this year. So along with that, those two priorities came the competing priorities of some centennial celebrations, just a few.

So, Topeka, Kansas is where it all started for Menninger. We then went to the American Psychiatric Association conference in LA, and then we celebrated our actual birthday on campus, all within about six weeks of each other I want to say. But I'm a veteran marketer, right? So, I knew where my priorities were. I had done my research coming into this. I knew that I had a brand that was incongruent in the way it spoke on its website. The colors were not at all what you experience when you come to our beautiful 50-acre campus. The colors were very juvenile and very disjointed and disconnected. So, I'm a veteran marketer. This is easy, right? My work is completely waylaid for this, I'm going to say, eight weeks of doing this road tour celebrating centennial.

But during that, I got to speak with some people. In Topeka, I spoke with clinicians who had been with us from the very beginning. There's still about eight clinicians that are with us that have worked in Topeka and moved here with us. No, they're not over a hundred years old, but they worked in Topeka long time and then moved here to Houston. But I got to speak to those people. I got to speak with Dr. Walt Menninger, and our own clinicians and stories of hope and healing in their careers.

What I can tell you that I found out was the fundamentals of what we were doing hadn't changed in over a hundred years. The things that our founder felt were important to being innovative in 1925 and treating mental health are things that are very, very much germane to today's treatment. So, we have three-foundational principles. We are patient-centric treatment, so individualized patient care, evidence-based therapy, and a treatment team of professionals. So, you don't just see one doctor, one therapist, you see a team, right? So, this team converges around the patient. Hearing that and learning that really led me to uncover that, in a hundred years, things had not changed at all. So, just kind of talking about like, "We've always done it this way." Well, we have always done it this way." But I discovered through this process that it wasn't the individual services that we do. It wasn't the individual programs that needed attention on our website and bringing all that language together and making that language congruent.

What was important was the story of why we do what we do. Those are the hows, but why we do what we do. And what it's led to is not some great, brilliant marketing innovation idea, but it's led to a transformational movement within our organization. And I'm really, really proud of this cultural movement that we've sparked within our own organization that's really bringing us back to those roots, during the tender age of a hundred year celebration.

Host: So, you had tunnel vision. I'm going to come in, I'm going to get this website done, I'm going to do a rebrand. And then, you found out, "Wait a minute, there's more to this that I didn't know about it, that I'm learning about, that we're missing some opportunities here."

Laurie Marino: There's so much more to the story than just the programs that we offer, the treatment that we offer. There's so much more to it, that's what we're called to do as marketers. We're called to tell stories. And it's hard to tell those stories if you don't really dig in and methodically unlock what's hidden in the vault of your organization, especially one that's a hundred years old.

Host: And now, with what you've learned, you're able to better market your services and be relevant in today's world instead of we've always done it this way.

Laurie Marino: Exactly. Exactly. It's meaningful to tell a story that while we have always done it this way, it was revolutionary in 1925.

Host: And probably we're looking forward, or here's where we are today.

Laurie Marino: Right. We are looking forward, we're innovating. Our researchers are constantly looking at different ways of treating clinical depression, substance use disorder. And because of our foundation and because we have continued to lean on that three-prong system of the way we treat patients, we unlock the innovation opportunities within research and development.

Host: Yeah. So, this gave you an opportunity to really tell your story and define that story.

Laurie Marino: Right. In an updated 2025 way.

Jake Yarbrough: Yeah. And, Laurie, I want to kind of dovetail into something that you were saying as well in that I think, a lot of times, we also get in the marketing industry, we get seduced by the new, right? We get seduced by the shiny new object. And I think that the amazing history that Menninger has and its consistency across the years is such a phenomenal asset that we should also be able to lean into. And I think that, a lot of times, we think, "Well, that's happened in the past. That's not necessarily something that we want to build an idea or a campaign or a concept or a program around, when actually we might should lean into that. And I think sometimes that's, again, part of that notion of inattentional blindness that we get into, "Okay. Well, now, the routine is we've got to come up with something new." Sometimes you don't, sometimes you need to be able to look at it with just new eyes.

Host: So, innovation generally is tied to new technology generally. But you're saying you need to focus, sometimes rethinking strategy from within, right?

Jake Yarbrough: I think so.

Host: So, Jake, let me ask you this. How do you help clients foster a culture that embraces this kind of introspection in creative problem solving if they just want to focus on the shiny new object as you just talked about?

Jake Yarbrough: Yeah. Great question, Bill. I think it takes a lot of different activities in order for that to really happen. I think you need to look at it both from an internal and an external perspective. I work for an advertising agency. And so, I am generally the person that comes into a situation and looks at it, and says, "Well, I ask dumb questions. I challenge certain assumptions and I think that's part of it. I think it's also, as an outside observer, when I come in or when people like me, in my role, come in and start asking why and start asking why again and then asking why another time. I think there's some real value in that.

The reason that organizations like Menninger or any other organization might look to an external partner like an advertising agency is because of that external perspective. We don't walk in and say, "Oh, well, we know your business." You know your business better than we will ever know your business. What we can do though is help you see things in a new life." For Schaeffer as an agency, we're here at a healthcare-based conference, right? And everybody is in the healthcare industry. We work in other industries as well. And so we're able to bring innovation or ideas from-- we work in a lot of tourism accounts or we work in real estate or economic development, and those may seem like strange bedfellows, what does that have anything to do with healthcare? But actually, I find over and over and over again that the ability to walk in and say, you know, "We did this for the ballet," and while that may not make sense on the surface, the Venn diagram of all these different industries really comes together in a family decision maker, right? If I'm looking to go to the ballet, if I'm looking to buy a new home or rent a new apartment, I'm also thinking about what are my healthcare decisions for my family? There's a real value in us being able to just simply show up and say, "Have you thought about this? Have you thought about the way that a home builder would approach this?" I don't work with the home builder myself. I work only in healthcare, but I get to see and understand from my colleague's perspective, I can bring new ideas to bear that allows people to go, "You know what? I hadn't thought about it this way, but I think we could apply this to a new service line that we're considering at this organization.

Host: Well, that broad perspective certainly can lend new ideas to an organization as well. And coming in with those, have you thought about this kind of attitude really seems beneficial. You really can learn anything from other verticals too. "Oh, look what they're doing over there. This is in healthcare. But oh, maybe we can apply that here." So, that seems to work. So, Laurie, I'm sure you had to encounter some resistance inside the building when you said, "Hey, I want to tell our story this way, and maybe you got some of the, "Well, that's not how we've done it." We haven't done it this way. I'm sure you had to get buy-in from leadership. What did you find most effective in getting leadership and staff to rally around a new or transformative marketing direction that you uncovered?

Laurie Marino: You're right in everything that you say when you come into a new organization, particularly one so steeply rooted in a hundred years of doing business, it's a difficult thing to do. So for me, the foundation is always relationship building, always. That's my fundamental piece. It's the foundation of the work that I do whenever I go into an organization. Listening and, I mean really listening, not listening to speak, but really listening to feedback that you get.

I spent the first four-ish weeks meeting every single person within our organization from social workers and therapists to program directors, to chief medical officer to everybody. Our chef in our dining hall, who by the way is a renowned chef-- won't go down that rabbit hole-- but really listening to these people who have been there and see things differently than I do. They see things that have worked over the years and maybe things that haven't worked over the years. Listening to them and their ideas, and I'm very much an idea person. Jake has heard me say this a thousand times, that all ideas are good ideas because even the one that you think is the worst idea, somebody else around the table may take it and turn it into something great. But what that does is it builds trust, and it allows you to really build teamwork within that organization. And so, people are very receptive to your ideas when you come back to them and say, you know, "I heard you say this, and I was thinking about that." And they say, "Oh, that's great. That's exactly what we were trying to do. We just couldn't articulate it. And you've done that now."

And then, of course, the final piece of that is delivering on your promises, right? So, you know, when organizations bring in kind of somebody like me that I've done a lot of transformational work in the organizations that I've been in, they're ready for the change, but they just don't know how they're going to make it happen. And so, aligning with everybody within the organization is a really big, helpful tool.

Host: I love some of the things you said there, relationship building. So if you were to come in and say, "Here's where we're going, people. We're changing this," they'd probably been like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, time out. Who is this person going to tell us what to do? We're a hundred years old. We're Menninger," right? "What are you doing?"

Laurie Marino: "What are you doing with all of our colors? They're so bright and colorful."

Host: I think that's really key. And you said, you know, not listening to speak. So many people don't do that. So, you actually wanted to listen. And then, you said you spoke to everyone. Just quickly, what did you ask? Tell me about Menninger. Tell me about your time here. What did you ask all of them?

Laurie Marino: Tell me what a day looks like for you. What have you seen? What do you like? What's eating you right now? What keeps you up at night? If you had a magic wand, what would you do?

Host: Great questions. That's excellent. Love it.

Laurie Marino: That's my favorite, the magic wand one.

Jake Yarbrough: I love that question so much.

Host: That is so good. Okay, Jake, I'll direct this one to you for attendees who want to start this journey when they return home, what practical tools or first steps would you recommend to begin uncovering hidden opportunities and building innovation into their marketing strategy?

Jake Yarbrough: Yeah, Bill, I don't know if I could answer that question any better than Laurie just answered. Because I think what Laurie was just saying in terms of listening not to speak, but going out with curiosity, going out with an openness to a new perspective, putting yourself in the shoes of your other colleagues. But maybe in fact even more important is putting yourself into the shoes of the customer, right? Who is the end customer in this situation? And it's not always a customer per se. But who is going to need to see you in a different light than they're seeing you today?

And I think that, as a practical step, I think just getting curious is really important. Now, that said, as part of we're giving our presentation tomorrow, and one of the things we're going to share is a detective's checklist to finding innovation hidden in plain sight, right. So, I haven't trademarked that yet. There's a checklist that's a single page, right? It asks a few prompting questions, and it's really meant to get you thinking differently. And so, start at the beginning. You have to go through this in a very sequential manner, a good detective really starts out by, you know, understanding the landscape, right? What is going on in order to then start to suss out some specific clues. This is different. This is unique. But start at the beginning of that list. Go back and commit to uncovering just the patterns that are inherent in your organization. Look for the anomalies inside of those patterns. Where is there a glitch and where can we start to latch onto some new information, latch onto a different, point of view that enables us to start building for the future, and putting more practical innovation into the things that we're doing. Not innovation for innovation's sake, but bringing a new vantage point into the conversation around how we're going to achieve our business objectives.

Host: I like that. Get curious. Get curious people, and put yourself in the shoes of the customer. I think that's really good. And I love the detective's checklist too. I think that's really going to be great. If you're unable to be here at SHSMD, if you're listening to this, say, in 2026, a recording of Laurie and Jake's presentation will be available to members during the SHSMD Connections virtual conference and online as well, so you will be able to check it out. I know it's going to be really good. So, I'd love to wrap up with some final thoughts from each of you. Anything you want to add? Any final thoughts you want to leave with us? Laurie, let's start with you.

Laurie Marino: I would just say I'm reinforcing this, get curious. That was the perfect way to say that, Jake. Just get curious and listen. Seek the feedback. You know, we're in a state right now of Jake and I were having a chat before this, and the world's kind of angry right now. And you can get really caught up in doing the day-to-day stuff. And if you just ground yourself in getting curious and using a detective checklist can bring you right back to center, and really help with your work every day, not just I'm a marketing and communications gal, but my team members are social media content strategists and graphic designers. And if they get pulled into the day to day of what's going on in the world, it's overwhelming. So if I can just say, "Hey, you know what? I see you. I know it's hard work right now. Just take a minute, decompress and ground yourself."

Host: Build those relationships.

Laurie Marino: Yep.

Host: Listen.

Laurie Marino: Listen. Get curious.

Host: Get curious.

Jake Yarbrough: Yeah. I'm going to steal from, Ted Lasso, right? Get curious, not judgemental. And I think that that is such a-- I don't know if Ted Lasso officially owns that, but it's such wisdom--

Host: You do now. It's yours now.

Jake Yarbrough: Oh yeah. Right. But also, Bill, I think something else that really struck me in yesterday's keynote presentation, Poet Tucker got up and spoke about this notion of doing different things differently. It resonated with me partly because it's true. Also, it resonated with me because I think it's also at the core of what Laurie and I are going to be talking about at tomorrow's session in that what we are saying is this is just another way to look at that same principle of doing different things differently. It's being curious in that way, and it's not a revolutionary approach. It's very, very practical, quite honestly. And in some ways, I don't want to toot our own horn, but it's also kind of an elegant way to think about it. And sometimes that simplicity produces the most profound results. You know, really, if you ground yourself in this methodological process of walking through with a curious mindset and staying disciplined while the fires are raging all around you, you're probably going to come out the other end with a changed organization and one that's better equipped to innovate in the future.

Host: We'll leave it at that. Jake and Laurie, thank you so much. Thanks so much. This was so much fun.

Laurie Marino: Bill, thanks for having us. This was great.

Host: Yeah, thank you. Love it. Once again, that is Laurie Marino and Jake Yarborough, and we hope you enjoyed SHSMD Connections 2025. A recording of Laurie and Jake's presentation will be available to members during the SHSMD Connections Virtual Conference.

And if you found this podcast helpful, please share it on your social channels. And please subscribe so you get every episode, chock-full of great healthcare, strategists, marketers, topics and solutions like Jake and Laurie. And to access our full podcast library, visit shsmd.org/podcasts. Thanks for listening. This has been a production of Doctor podcasting. I'm Bill Klaproth. See ya!