Interview with Denise Shouse: Advice on Launching a New Product and Winning Awards While Doing It
Denise Shouse is the Large Group Portfolio Manager for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota. Shouse oversees the development, marketing, deployment, profitability and enrollment strategies for a diverse product line that serves more than 250,000 members in the Minnesota marketplace.
Brian Bierbaum: What marketing advice would you give to others who are launching new products?
Denise Shouse: Take the time to choose the right team. If your team does not fully understand what the market needs before starting, you are doomed from the beginning. When we talk about the market, we talk about who is the end consumer. Being able to understand what is driving the consumer need is the key. As you develop products and create your marketing plan, you may end up generating awareness for a need your consumer hadn’t even realized they had. It is all about helping them find that ‘aha moment’.
Understanding what is driving that need cascades down into your marketing and communication plan and that really helps sell the product itself. Your marketing plan should help the consumer identify with what that need is or tap into what differentiates your product from other products in the marketplace.
On another note, if you are late to the market, the key is to focus on creating a differentiating value if you want to gain market share right from the get go. For us, when it came to Plans by Design™ in the 51+ employee market segment, we found that we needed the consumer to realize we were not offering canned healthcare plans. Blue Cross can give you the flexibility in plan design you want because you have unique needs and you don’t want to sacrifice benefits in order to reduce costs.
Brian Bierbaum: What individual strengths do you feel are important to have on a new product development team?
Denise Shouse: Having a cross functional team, led by someone who is a champion and understands the vision is crucial to success. Look for great communicators and collaborators when setting up your product team. Additionally, you really need a good mix of team members who are market-facing (who understand the consumer need) and an internal team that understands the operations side of your organization because you will inevitability run into a situation where operationally someone says you can have A or B, but not C (your vision). The diversity and flexibility of your team will directly impact your success as you run into roadblocks.
Brian Bierbaum: Why did your team decide to use interactive channels to launch Plans by Design™?
Denise Shouse: Primarily because it was an untapped avenue for us to deploy our message about Plans by Design™. Blue Cross already has a great infrastructure for web communication. However, we really wanted to create something that was new, quick to create, and allowed us to visualize the concept of picking and choosing your health plan components. We often find ourselves being pigeon-holed by market expectations that only paint a picture of Blue Cross in a particular way so we felt strongly that housing the product on a microsite rather than the main website, and announcing the launch via a special email campaign would allow us to communicate that this is a new concept and present it in a new, fresh way.
Brian Bierbaum: Did you face any challenges in launching Plans by Design™ and if so, how did you address them?
Denise Shouse: With the Plans by Design™microsite, you can visually build a health plan by manipulating the different “levers” that affect your benefits and cost. The biggest challenge was providing enough detail to be compelling without over promising or having to caveat everything. We had many requests from sales staff and underwriting around the concept of showing a savings amount with your health plan that were often directly conflicting. To solve this, we compromised by allowing visitors to visually see that there is a savings as you build a plan, without giving a direct dollar amount. Making strategic compromises is often the key to successfully launching a product on time and successfully.
The Plans by Design™ product from Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota was formally announced in partnership with Priority Integrated Marketing, the firm responsible for developing the bluecrossmn.com/plansbydesign website. The site recently won an “Outstanding Website” Award from the Web Awards 2010 International Advertising Competition™. Since its launch, hundreds of employers have built fully custom healthcare plans using the microsite’s health plan builder.
To learn more about innovation at Blue Cross feel free to visit their corporate website.
