Marketer Under Fire: Kelly Calabria, Chief Marketing and CSR Officer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina

The latest Marketers on Fire profile features Kelly Calabria. chief Director of Marketing and CSR for Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. He examines his three challenges facing brands in 2024. This is likely to be the case for many people. Continued collaboration between sales and marketing, especially regarding the data stories that flow between them. Establish business use cases for generative AI. In a recent conversation with his marketing chief, Mr. Calabria explored these challenges and his team’s approach to addressing them.

Chief Marketer: What is the biggest marketing challenge facing you in the next year within your industry?

said Kelly Calabria, Chief Marketing and CSR Officer, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina. The field of marketing in general is rapidly evolving, including marketing and communication, and how to resonate with your audience. The first challenge remains data. This is nothing new. We’ve been talking about it for a long time and it continues to accelerate. The question is, where does your data reside within your organization? How clean is your data? How much access do you have to your data? Is it the right data you need to drive your decisions? [What is the] What is “big data” within the data analytics team and the marketing team driving?

We need to understand two things. One is the need to be more personalized with consumers to build relationships with them, which is very important. The second challenge is the continued connection between sales and marketing. Our sales teams and departments are under tremendous pressure to drive growth and improve profitability. But as a marketer, you need to stay on top of the data side to quickly deliver results in terms of revenue growth. In my organization, we focus on building relationships between the two. How are our partners sharing the data they need to understand and work together to drive growth? We’re partners, and we’re coming up with the data story together. And we have the same goal of providing great experiences for consumers and driving growth. I don’t think you need to be nervous if you do it properly.

The third is to focus on generative AI. Obviously, everyone is talking about it. It’s the future. Especially in a regulated field like healthcare, you need to work carefully in collaboration with your technology team. We are starting to do this by considering a variety of business use cases.In a perfect world, how would you want to use it? I pressed it. [this] And they stepped up to marketing to be one of the first companies in their organization to consider that use case. Although there are so many opportunities, there are some things to consider. We need to make sure that we understand how AI accounts for bias and things like that.

CM: Are these challenges similar on the B2B side of your business?

K.C.: It’s so funny how quickly we forget that decision makers in the B2B space are actually humans. Entering ’24, we’re taking a closer look at how B2B decision makers are consuming media in different ways, moving away from LinkedIn and considering other channels and other mechanisms. . There are a lot of opportunities out there.

Next, on the B2C side, I can’t say this enough. Emotional connections and building relationships over time – Chris Walker’s idea of ​​“demand creation” – solidify with consumer audiences that we stand behind something. Helpful. They see value in us as a brand and will always stick with us. In summary, I don’t think focusing on ad spend is that important for either audience. It’s more about how we listen and connect. And that leads to personalization and understanding these people as people, not just a mass audience.

CM: How is your team planning to address these challenges next year?

K.C.: The relationship between sales and marketing is something we’ve been passionate about. It sounds very basic, but it’s about relationships. We’ve probably spent more than half of our time building strong relationships with our sales team. In other words, what I want to say is that [asking each other] What keeps you up at night? What are you trying to solve? How do you like to think about problems? How can you understand how each one thinks? That’s because part of that shift is shifting marketing from being a “order taker” to being a strategic partner, and thinking about how to solve problems. So before we thought, “This is what we’re going to do with the sales team,” we thought, “How do we work together?” How can we support you? Is this what you are thinking about and how can we think about it and be your thinking partner? We are here to help you grow. We’ve put relationships first so they can see the value of what we can bring to them.

Editor’s note: Stay tuned this week for part two of our conversation with Calabria. Learn how your business has evolved post-pandemic, the new channels you’re pursuing to reach your audience, how geo-targeting can be incorporated into your brand’s marketing strategy, and more.