TOP CMO: Raj Vavilala, G.E.H.A. - 'Unlocking Growth Together'

Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  00:00

Doing the right thing is also the right thing for business. It's always the right time to do the right thing and doing the right things also good for business as the right time.

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Ben Kaplan  00:08

This is the podcast where we go around the globe to interview marketing leaders from the world's biggest brands, fastest growing companies and most disruptive startups. Three ideas package a certain way want to spread, we want to be told to someone else simple, surprising, and significantly created. Locking viral creativity is to make it rapidly scalable. This is TOP CMO with me and Kaplan. Today I'm speaking with Raj Vavilala, chief marketing sales and product officer at key health, also known as the government employees Health Association. Thank you for considering AJ medical plans. A nonprofit association providing medical and dental plans to federal employees and retirees and their families. Roger's track record speaks for itself from leading health IQ to become a top 10 Medicare agency to spearheading effective marketing strategies that guide well in New York Life Insurance Company. But what are the unique challenges of marketing as a nonprofit organization? What strategies to ski have employed to educate customers about their benefits? And how important is honest marketing and shaping the trust between G.E.H.A. and its members? Let's find out with Raj Vavilala. 

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Raj, you have a long background in the industry, some of that's been on the for profit basis, some of us is now on the nonprofit basis. We're one of the largest health and dental benefit providers for federal employees and their families. So first of all, how is it different when you think like a nonprofit when you are a mission driven marketer? How does that change your day to day?

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  01:52

Thank you for having me, Ben, it's a great question to start with. For us. What's mostly important is to make sure that the members are educated around the benefits that they have access to. So we spend a lot of time talking through various benefits, how does it affect their health, their updated their health status? What does their individual journey look like? What does their family journey look like? So beta, mission driven marketers really important for us to make sure that our members continue on the journey of health and wellness. So we focus a lot of our energy in education, we focus a lot of energy and farming members even post sale, about how to use the benefits, how to maximize the coverage that they have, that would be the largest different from a commercial business, where it we're more focused around the member health, and then how it helps us grow the business come secondarily,

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Ben Kaplan  02:42

for people who don't know how this type of business or industry works in relation to the federal government, as I understand it, if you're a federal employee, there's a number of options of providers you can choose from that are all managed by the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, they're your clients. And there's a certain type of open enrollment period like you'd find in for profit healthcare as well. But it's kind of the Open Season. So that's the point of where people can choose people can change. But so some of what you have to do is just educate people on how to use their benefits. Correct. And some of it is that in that open season, that's the point where you have to differentiate a bit more and say, you know, pick us from this maybe handful of choices you might have,

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  03:23

yeah, that is accurate. So OPM is a tremendous partner. And we work with them right from plan design, and onwards to the various agencies on how to be sure in their offices to talk to their members about these benefits. So every year, OPM and the various agencies that come under it, they hire employees, and so when a new hire comes in, that is the first time that they're exposed to this concept of purchasing or enrolling into an insurance that's provided to OPM. So that's the first time they take a look at all the choices that they have and their settlement. And then towards the end of the year, there is an annual Open Season cycle where every employee, all existing employees get the chance to continue on the coverage that they have, or switch coverage. So along throughout the year, we work with OPM to create products that will offer an advance their health, the member health. And so the the Open Season timeframe, each member comes in takes a look at the product that they have now assesses their health, and we work with them to understand if they need to continue on the product or switch to a different product and thus the conversation that every employee has with themselves and with their families to see if they want to continue and move to so we will have members join in throughout the year. But towards the end of the year, there is a big rush because everybody gets the chance. It's very similar to commercial insurance that you arrive might have from our companies that you get a chance towards the end of the year to switch if you're an existing employee,

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Ben Kaplan  04:50

for anyone listening who's a CMO who might have this type of you know, being an industry that has this enrollment period or they might just be a CMO that has a seasonal push like end of year where a lot of people have Like holiday marketing is where a lot of purchases come from. So how long does that lead? Is that like a three month period? Is that October, November, December? Or is it something different

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  05:06

four to five weeks. So pretty much every healthcare CMO who was was listening to this, it is very similar to Medicare, it's very similar to our car, it's very similar to group insurance. But unlike those businesses, it's a very compressed timeframe with the federal employees base. And there is not a lot of open market competition, if you will, like those businesses,

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Ben Kaplan  05:31

meaning you don't need to show up in a Google search for someone looking for I'm a federal employee, who do I pick? Correct? Because there's very defined choices and define how you interact with them.

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  05:42

You're right, you know, in the Medicare space, for example, you see a number of ads, and you generally a beneficiary might want to understand more about what the companies are. So then they go to Google and say, talk to me about Medicare companies in an OPM space, there is a little set of predefined carriers that the employee can select from. So they go to the listing, they look at all the companies there, and then they sometimes research those companies sometimes research those products, and don't once they're educated in terms of what those offers are, then they make the enrollment, they don't necessarily go to Google to search for what does my federal agency offer be as insurance, that's not the journey for shopping in that instance.

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Ben Kaplan  06:25

And then how much how important then, as a marketer is the customer experience, or if you will, potential customer experience, they're not a customer, yet, there's more predefined options, I would guess there's more face to face type marketing, like, like, call someone up or visits one of the fair or it's probably more of a one on one, because it's more defined is the experience, they have important meaning like, is it a proxy for the experience they'll have as an actual customer, that you educate them and answer their questions and are patient and are responsive and all those things? Does that become part of what you need to communicate as a marketer, it is

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  07:00

even more important. And here's why the customer experience specificly in a commercial space, when you experience a product, and you have certain baseline understanding of what the experience looks like, you know what to look for or against when you go searching Google, for example, in this space, you relying on your colleagues, your experience is your baseline within this ecosystem. And you generally rely on your colleagues who also have the choice because you have a fixed set of options.

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Ben Kaplan  07:29

So someone in the cubicle over office over you said like, Hey, I'm new here, I got these options. Who did you pick? Why did you pick them. So word of mouth is going to be very important here too. And so

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  07:41

yes, very important. That is why our experience thresholds are even higher in terms of what we aspired to be, because somebody might have experienced a few features of the product and a few features of our operating model. But the person next in their cubicle might have experienced something different. So we have to tell our current members or prospective members, not only what they consume, but also what they have access to, that they can consume that they might not have already have access to. So the threshold of experiences, not just what you experienced, but also what you could potentially experience in the future. A good example would be individuals and families. So if you're a single person, and you have a certain experience, and now you have found weak upcoming, your experience is determined by somebody else's experience, your understanding is determined with somebody else's experience, because you haven't experienced it yet. So you will ask your cubicle mate, to say, Hey, I'm about to have a family, how's your insurance compare, because you've not experienced it yet. So we better tell this member, we also can help you with your family experience and how that experience will look like even if they've not experienced this yet. Hopefully that makes sense. So the threshold is even higher.

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Ben Kaplan  08:49

And I actually in our work, when we do a lot of education work, or we do a lot of thought leadership work, especially when we need those ideas to like be communicated not just to the person we're communicating to, but they need to communicate it to someone else. We have this when you say higher threshold, it resonates with me because we have this vision of that where we say like the goal. If we're communicating something or working on something for our clients, it's not just that, you know, we communicate something that sounds good. We want to sound good. It's not just we communicate something that sounds good. And you the audience understands it. Although we want you to understand it. The goal is that we communicate something so well, that you understand it and can communicate it to someone else, almost as good as we could do on our own. And that's a pretty high bar that your message is so strong and so sticky and so simple and our words simple, surprising and significant that it can be passed along, like a photocopy that hopefully doesn't denigrate and quality with each copy as its message it holds its pristine message quality. That's a high bar and if you want you're the guy in the cubicle or the woman in the cubicle next door telling their person and they have a face million you don't, you need that you need that that's a high bar

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  10:03

is a high bar. I love that simple, significant surprising. I love that I think that's, that's the threshold, it really is the threshold because this is influencer marketing to the nth degree. Because this is a fixed set of audiences. It's just imagine a new employee joining a company, they come in, they get into their cubicle, they're just trying to figure out their job. And along the way, they get this email that says, Yeah, you know, X number of days to finish your enrollment, you're trying to learn your job you're trying to learn you're calling you like to try to figure all of that out along the way, you have to figure it out your insurance. And that is where it's really important. To be simple, it is really important to love the significant part, it's really important to explain that you're their partner, and you're going to help them navigate to because life changes you 10 years ago is different than view now. And I know

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Ben Kaplan  10:51

that and I consider you know, I've written a number of books about personal finance, I know a lot about the topic. But even for myself, I have a two year old and one year old once we had kids, some things that surprised me that I never thought about was, you know, my wife went into the hospital went into labor, she's the superstar, I'm the supporter there. And, you know, we have pretty good insurance, we had maxed out all our deductibles, and then suddenly, we had a child born, and there's a new deductible for the child, and we didn't know was coming. So suddenly, there were all these things, we thought, Oh, we've maxed out the deductible, we're fine. And suddenly, there's a new deductible because like, oh, there's a new life form here. After the actual labor, they are separate. And so that surprised us and I thought it was a pretty not knowledgeable person. So it can be confusing, and particularly when new family and other things of your families

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  11:34

moving in, typically know our health issues. And part of part of what makes our product and part of why I enjoy what I do is we help people in their greatest moment of need, right? I mean, nobody's looking to consume health insurance, because they want you to consume a day, they have a need, either they're preventing something or they're attacking something, they're dealing with the situation. And it makes them navigation, all the more important to explain to someone how to get the best of their health benefits. And that's, that drives our company to make sure that our members are well taken care of, for other

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Ben Kaplan  12:07

people listening and trying to understand how you work and how you think and what they can learn from it. What are your key channels, you're not doing Google search through an SEM and SEO, you're not doing probably I'm guessing broad based advertising, because you have very focused, you do care a lot about word of mouth, you do care a lot about customer potential customer experience, what are your key channels,

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  12:29

our key channels are what everybody probably uses, but in a very different way. So we do how digital assets, but they are used to basically digitize a reputation. They're not used to do no global searches and try to sell product all the time, they really talk about who we are as a company, so we can expand our reach. So for example, we we execute a lot of health and wellness programs, such as the Learn to Swim program honoring the Joe Delaney Foundation, and the Kansas City Chiefs. And so we use digital channels to talk about that program. And we advances that's a way for us to advance the reach and influence we have on the company along the way people will look at that program, and they will get a sense of who we are as a company and the value system we hold is that the

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Ben Kaplan  13:12

differentiating point? I mean, are the products because obviously these are government programs, they probably have to have certain guidelines, they probably have to be standardized, do they become the products are very similar in some way? commoditize. So you have to differentiate on like who we are as a company, our values are something that makes you feel good about who you're getting healthcare insurance provided by is that the differentiation?

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  13:34

It's one of the elements? So it's a great question. It's one of the elements, but overall being a non profit, it allows us to have other assets that we can use to deploy into market. So we're, I believe, and our company believes this product is bought somebody consumed throughout the usage of this insurance plan. So it's not just that they bought some benefits and a price associated with it. It's also the network that they access. It's also the call center that they call them to get their answer. It's the app that they use to get their services. So we plan on differentiating on the package, because we really believe in the package being strong. And that's where it's seamless experiences, whether you're using a phone center or an app, whether it's timely information. If somebody you know, I'll give an example, if somebody's searching for an insurance company, generally they're trying to search for their phone number. They're trying to find what the phone number is, the logical assumption is that this person is trying to call, there's nothing preventing us from sending a text message that says, Hey, do you want us to call you and we can offer the right time to call. So it's a simple tweak on experience that comes through the whole package that helps us advance our value proposition or simplicity of usage of the product. Because ultimately, we want to make it like really simple to use really clear to us so people are not worried about figuring out how the system works. They can worry about the problem that they're dealing with and the system can help them in We can help them navigate the system.

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Ben Kaplan  15:01

Is that why it sounds like in terms of organization, I mean, your title, you're a CMO, your chief marketing officer, but you also have Chief Sales Officer, Chief Product Officer, as part of your title. Was that deliberate? Is that how historically it's been as the company is that because of how we market and sell and product, and they're all interrelated, and we're just gonna put it in a title, so it has to be interrelated and work together and be integrated? Is that historically, how it is that how other people do it? Or is that unique here?

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  15:31

I think there is an element of uniqueness. And the element of uniqueness really is the the leadership team that I'm a part of, along working with our CEO art Nisa, and the Board of Directors we are very collaborative. And that's the culture we have in the company of being 30 is very high for collaborator. And sales and marketing were together as of as departments before, when I joined are we add a product to the mix, because we really believe in product being the enabler for growth. And so that's how all those came together. I'm also accountable for experience. And so we make sure that not only do we create products that add value, but they are consumed the right way, and we measure those. So it's a unique element of G.E.H.A.. But it's also because of how the leadership team actually works and collaboration being placed at a premium in our company.

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Ben Kaplan  16:21

In our professional journey, we often discover that no achievement is a solo act, more like Destiny's Child rather than Beyonce, is a symphony of efforts harmonize by teamwork and a shared vision. In the realm of marketing, the spirit of collaboration becomes vital, acting as the creative crucible, where groundbreaking ideas take shape. However, hyper collaboration transcends the conventional bounds of teamwork. It's about cultivating a culture where openness reigns, where each participant feels valued. And every idea, no matter how out of the box, is given due consideration. It's about trust inclusivity, and the belief that we is greater than me that our collective wisdom is far greater than the sum of individual insights. What's something different in the way that you work that you don't think is common,

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  17:17

we bring everybody into the fold in terms of conversations and things that we do we meet multiple times as a leadership group, and we meet multiple times a week and a month as extended leadership group. So there isn't a management team member who's not aware of exactly what's happening in the company, at least on a monthly basis, if not more, and we are very engaged in terms of each other's projects. So I might be running a growth project. But there will be members who are across the enterprise that will be part of the growth project, even if they have nothing to do functionally in terms of contributing to the project. Because we believe in being inclusive, we believe that good ideas come can come from anywhere, just a number of times we need and the depth of the conversations that we have, and the transparency of information that we provide that is different than what I've generally seen. And that's where I really value the the fabric of who we are as a company in terms of being collaborative. Hence, I say, hyper collaborative, because we really, really take it to heart, our CEO art Nisa, he actually listens to a lot of feedback that comes straight from members and straight from our customer advocates, and then passes down to us and we spend hours talking to issues that are across the enterprise that we really take to heart and six right away. And so that's very important as a value system that we hold,

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Ben Kaplan  18:42

what would be an example that will be something that you know, someone messages, something, it's an individual person's issue that comes up that you fix it for that person, and it sounds like you fix it for the system, the company. So maybe that won't be a problem in the future will be an example of something you wouldn't expect a leadership team to tackle.

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  18:57

Oh, it could be as something as simple as somebody reaching out and asking about what's the processing time of a particular issue. And we take that particular record. And not only do we help that person, if they didn't have the right farmer like that, we also go investigate the process behind the scenes to say why would this issue even come up? Can we do something practically to communicate on that? Is there something that we should think about structurally from product or anything else that we need to change? So that is just a trigger for us? It's just another listing post, to understand where we can also focus our energies. Most companies have their agenda, that set out to say, this is a roadmap on what we need to do. But we always listen to what else is happening. And art's really good about that and engaging his leadership group to really take these situations to heart and fix them right away.

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Ben Kaplan  19:47

What kind of metrics are you using for this? Like, what are the ones that matter? You don't have as much of the broad funnel but you do have obviously, Open Season open enrollment, even that's the kind of bottom Line metrics. But what else are you doing to track this? And sort of, you know, are there elements that are unique to being a mission driven marketing organization, things that you track that maybe you didn't track at your other past for profit places, you've been a leader? Great question.

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  20:15

We track individual things like enrollment and leads, and so on, so forth, that everybody does. We track impressions, we track clicks, we track all of that. But what we also track is events and impact in the community, like how many kids did be held, learn how to send, how many kids did we helped by associating a Big Brother or Big Sister with them, how many community leaders should be honored for the contributions that they have made, how many scholars should be foreign to get education and be future doctors and medical professionals so we track all of those

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Ben Kaplan  20:47

things. These are all like kind of CSR Corporate Social Responsibility type programs that are part of your footprint, and how you market that you just talked about, like, reveal kind of the values of the company who the company is, which are part of that decision. These are all programs that that fall into there

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  21:01

they are. And that's why they're part of my accountability, because we believe they go together, it isn't separated out that this this is our value proposition to the community that we live and work in. And then we want to advance so we make conscious choices on those in terms of investing and funding, not just from a financial point of view, but the team and the resources that we put towards that to push those things forward.

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Ben Kaplan  21:23

And how do you think if word of mouth is important, and it's especially important between colleagues, or as we discussed the cubicle over? Do you have any marketing programs that tried to leverage that you have, like the sort of the quintessential back from the web 1.0 days was like it was the button, like, tell a friend, right? Like, tell a friend about this, are you trying to empower people to somehow communicate to their colleagues or communicate elsewhere or help each other out, help them understand to sort of facilitate this positive word of mouth,

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  21:50

they added regulations and rules in place in terms of what we could do, in terms of creating like customer advocates or member advocates is, unlike a commercial business, you couldn't offer like a referral program. So we don't do that. What we basically do is good work. And we say Good work, they'll carry the bit. If you do good work, people will recognize good work. And they will help their colleagues into the good work that we're doing. So we don't push to advocacy programs. But we do make sure that we help the ones we help and that will carry into the future.

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Ben Kaplan  22:19

And what's one thing that you wish you could do better or different? Where do you think if you have your wish, or can kind of wave a magic wand, you know, three years from now, and you're doing something else for G.E.H.A., what would you like to do that you can't do now or it's not so easy to do now?

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  22:36

Great question, what I would love to do is to expand our reach through various emerging channels to members who are probably not in the office anymore. There's a lot of members after post COVID who are no longer in the office. And they use various media to get

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Ben Kaplan  22:52

they're still working for the federal government, but it's in a remote capacity. Correct.

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  22:55

So some of these, these members don't have access to some of our programs. And so when we run a health fair, for example, the the ones who the authors will get access to those services, the ones who are not in the office, the won't get access to those services. So one of if I had a magic wand, I would figure out a way that everybody who deserves those services are really to take part in so it could be something as simple as the right way to eat nutrition age could be something more complicated in terms of measuring their blood sugar or diabetes to see if they need some help there. How can everybody get access to these programs? That's what I would figure it out. Obviously, technology has a play into it. And obviously people have a play into it. And how do we scale those assets to reach the majority of people who may not be coming to an office anymore?

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Ben Kaplan  23:41

Companies that truly flourish are those that understand their power to shape the world around them. Yes, we want to grow our business. But can we also grow our community? It's a mindset, a commitment to making a positive difference in everything that accompany touches. companies that understand this have staying power, and they have the community goodwill built up to weather any unexpected adversity that may be on the horizon to

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  24:10

doing the right thing is also the right thing for business. I've heard it a couple of times on on your show to other CMOS have said that it's always the right time to do the right thing. And doing the right things are also good for business as the right thing. So that's what I would I would encourage any for profit marketers to think about is when you do good work in the community and you do good work with your members and the communities that you serve. When you really have a service oriented attitude. The math will pencil out if you continue doing if you don't continue doing it then it doesn't look you cannot look at something around corporate social responsibility as a transactional item. You have to continue to invest in your community you have to continue to invest in your brand that way and didn't matter on growth will pencil out on its own. I've just had good fortune working for two large companies before We shared the same value system. And so they wouldn't be surprised by it. But maybe some other companies who probably don't look at it as a long term investment, they might want to think about it. We've been around for 35 plus years. And the essence of why being around is we've been a great company taking care of our members.

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Ben Kaplan  25:16

I think sometimes one of the things people miss a little bit about aligning, either it's doing good work, delivering true value to your customer, or all of these things is that not only does it make sense in a long term perspective, but it kind of future proofs, your business and your marketing from a lot of changes that happen in the short term. And I'll give you an example. For those who are marketing by Google search, there was a time when people would gain Google search, right? It was like, Okay, how can I trick Google into thinking, I'm really impressed people with stuff like tons of keywords on a page, maybe they're like, there's a lot of keywords, or people would try to put things in image tags that reference things, even though the image wasn't about at that point to it, it worked at the beginning. So those were kind of short term thinkers, they weren't adding value to the end person searching. And they could get away with it for a time. But Google became more sophisticated, the algorithms became more sophisticated, Google started looking at things that like, you know, time on page, are people just looking at your site for a little bit and leaving or staying on, because they're really engaged, they're really learning something. So if you are someone, there was two ways to win, you can either be like, I'm going to trick Google into thinking, or I'm going to deliver really good content and value for that person looking at it, so much so that they're gonna stay and you can win either way. If you pick door A, eventually Google would have figured you out. And you wouldn't have future proof your business and you might have won for a bit, but you then would have lost if you pick door B and you had that focus on delivering value are doing the right thing, are really trying to do it. No matter how Google changes their algorithm, you're going to be fun, because Google wants to deliver a page that people want to see. So no matter how they define that, as long as you keep that front and center, you're going to be successful in the long run. And so that's why it's actually a powerful marketing strategy that protects your business and protects your marketing to add value and do the right thing.

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  27:12

You're absolutely right. I think the other part is you, we may, if a marketer decides to take that route, you may trick the one programmer who's putting the algorithm or chemo programmer straight, but you taken a big chance by thinking you were tricked millions of members and customers will come to the page. And that's what happens. And reputation could be destroyed easily. That's one of the things if somebody goes to a site, and they realize that wasn't the value proposition that they were expecting, they will never go again, you could fix everything about it. So short term gain, if you're offering something, but you don't actually have it, and you just advertise fictitiously to get the membrane, you will lose. So I think that's where great companies do, it should be one of the great companies, we don't do those things. So we do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do. And I will tell younger team members in my past that we're joined, again, I could kind of do the short term things like what why you're never going to get that member back, make sure your product is right, make sure all the delivery, all the fulfillment, all the value proposition that you have is right, before you go to market, because those early adopters won't come back again. And your reputation is more important than any immediate short term game.

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Ben Kaplan  28:31

And the only thing I'll add to that, because I know there's gonna be some CMOS listening, and I talked to a number of CMOS in financial services and maybe a cousin of insurance. And they're gonna say, you know, Raj, I'm with you on that, Ben, I'm with you on that. But they're gonna put one caveat on that, which is like, yes, we want to do that. In an ideal world. However, here's sometimes what happens is, we're aligned at a corporate level, we're aligned in this mission, we want to do the right thing. But we also have frontline workers. And someone's going to be hired who's like, let's say, you know, I talked to a lot of bank CMOS. So as soon as we hired, they're at a branch, they're the person you walk up to the counter the teller, and they maybe didn't get the whole message. So how do you do that? Because problems if they don't give a good customer experience, not because they're a bad person, but maybe they just didn't have the training to know what we're about and how to deliver it. And you know, complicating things, maybe they have a customer who's speaking a different language, and they've got to deliver it. And there's this added challenge. How do you think about that, because the problem is great customer experience doing the right thing. It's kind of a last mile kind of situation, meaning whatever they walk in that last mile, whoever they talk to, even with good intentions, if they can't deliver it, it's hard. And I know some people will say, you know, sounds great, but easier said than done.

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  29:44

I fully agree with some of them who would say that and hands for us at least here. My first order of business is investing in our employees. That is the first order of business of tech stacks and I've come to tech stack world in my career that has essentially commodities, you can get the same tech stack anywhere anybody could, what differentiates are the people who use it, and what they do it as the same thing in terms of carrying your mission forward, really investing in people. And that's several things, one, getting right people, to giving them the training that they need and the expectation setting. And most importantly, and this is where some of those CMOS might not have, the opportunity is giving the resources time on test, giving employees time on tasks, so they can practice tests slowly, and not have to run before they're ready is really important for me personally, in my journey is, let's make sure that when they take the field, that they are going to be successful, if it means we have to delay it and taking the field, it's okay, because we care for the longer. And those are options and choices that not every company can make. And so I fully recognize some of the challenges that some have. But to me, it's such a critical part of what you set up as expectation, because once you deviate from the expectation, once you deviate from the standard, and you change the standard, it's really hard to put the genie back in the bottle. And now you have to make a lot more exceptions, a lot more choices. And it's a tough challenge. I fully agree with my fellow CMOS, who might have gone through some of those challenges. But that's where the governance and the mission of the company becomes really important to have those conversations to say we could do this now. Or we could do it a little later. But we do it the right way. And we make those choices.

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Ben Kaplan  31:32

And of course, to your earlier point. If you are collaborating or hyper collaborating with other members of your leadership team, as CMO, maybe there's some understanding there, maybe it's some understand they're like, yes, we could rush this out for this quarter, I want to drive results in this quarter. But from a longer term perspective, I think we ought to wait until q3. And maybe there's a little bit understanding if you are collaborating. And if there's maybe the currency of that collaboration is actually trust. If there's a high degree of trust within the organization, then maybe you can make some decisions that might be more long term focused than maybe people would otherwise make. So Raj, final question for you, as in all of the episodes, we do at TOP CMO, we'd look at all different elements of marketing, all different elements of what it means to be a CMO. And we're trying to overall define a definition of the ideal TOP CMO and all the skills he or she should have, what is one skill set that you utilize as a CMO that is maybe different or surprising, or something that isn't normally like in the job description, but you think it's important to success in the role? That's final question and give you the final word.

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Raj Vavilalla - G.E.H.A.  32:42

Great question. I think what I do is I bring, I bring a combination of being easygoing and being intense on the right things that we need to be. So I have a very collaborative team, everybody talks about the ideas that we need to best idea events, a lot of a lot of trust within the team to execute on the things we need to execute. But we're very focused and intense on when things don't work to figure out what that to me is different. Because you can learn a lot from tests that have failed. It's, it's an important element that I tried to do is to understand what test actually didn't work. And I get a lot of learnings from that. So that that is my differentiating skill that I bring in is create an environment where in failure is okay, but also create an environment but you learn from that failure so you can future proof your business against those issues, at least.

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Ben Kaplan  33:38

According to Raj Vavilala, the essence of marketing in a mission centric organization is about emphasizing member welfare. Word of mouth becomes your most important channel of marketing, and customer experience, including how an existing customer experiences your marketing plays a critical role in shaping trust. Rush emphasizes the significance of being truthful. Caution that short lived gains from deceptive tactics could lead to longer term damage. Put another way, the heart of effective marketing lies in authentic connection, valuable education of our audience and making sure that our walk matches our talk for TOP CMO. I'm Ben Kaplan.

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