Timothy Brown, CMO at Stony Brook Medicine – Positioning an Academic Medical Center

Timothy Brown’s path to Stony Brook Medicine is a fascinating journey. Starting in broadcast journalism and having worked in development in the non-profit space, he has since switched gears to communications and marketing. Most recently, he was appointed the Chief Communications and Marketing Officer for Stony Brook Medicine.

Christian Banach sat down with Brown to discuss the unique challenges of an academic health center and how brand journalism and content marketing shapes Brown’s strategy now.

Where to find Tim Brown: LinkedIn

Where to find Christian Banach: LinkedIn

Telling Your Story in Healthcare

Banach:

You have experience in a lot of different kinds of work, including journalism and development. How has that shaped the work you do now?

Brown:

There are so many great stories to tell in healthcare, particularly for healthcare systems that don’t have a huge budget to spend on marketing, which is often the case in the health systems I’ve worked. That’s why telling your own story with brand marketing is so important for institutions like ours, and I think my background in journalism has shaped how I think about that.

You’re not really “selling” a thing per se in healthcare, but you are offering something that can be a life-changing opportunity. I’ve had experiences where I’ve helped tell stories of the work doctors are doing which led to literally life-saving treatments for patients. Certainly not something I’m taking credit for, but it’s a great feeling to help connect patients with experiences like that.

Banach:

Let’s shift gears and talk a bit more about Stony Brook. Tell us more about your role and what you’re there to do.

Brown: 

My role was just created—the leadership wanted to have a structure for marketing and communications specifically for the health system, which the University component of Stony Brook already had. We have a small team here, but they are all talented people.

Part of my job now is to build that team, and build out our technical abilities as we grow. Healthcare is a much more aggressive and competitive landscape than it ever has been. AMCs in the past didn’t have to compete as much, but that’s no longer the case.

Banach:

Tell me more about the Academic Medical Center—how do they differ from other kinds of hospitals?

Brown:

As the name implies, it’s a hospital that is part of a university. So there’s the primary medical school as well as a dental school, nursing school, the schools of health science, the school of social sciences, and a few others. 

We like to use the term an academic health center now, since we focus on both treatment and prevention, and having access to that level of expertise gives us a real advantage for dealing with pretty significant disease states. 

The Stony Brook Strategy Guide

Banach:

Given that context, talk a little more about your target audience 

Brown:

It does. Part of what most academic health systems are doing now is becoming that “one stop shop” for patients—we’re about to open a new facility here in Long Island to do something similar. A place where you can “do everything” in one stop. When you look at our target audience, it ranges widely, and that’s one of the challenges for our marketing department.

So recently, our department was considering our ad spend for the coming fiscal year, and depending on the service line—e.g. cancer vs cardiovascular vs orthopedic care–you’re looking at very different audiences in very different age groups. You might be considering marketing through traditional channels like TV and print in one specific area, whereas you are going heavily social and digital in other areas. 

Banach:

AMCs face a lot of business and marketing challenges: increased competition, patient acquisition and retention, or balancing medical and academic priorities. Tell us more about what you’re prioritizing as you take on the new role

Brown:

Our leadership has recently established a “strategy office” with whom I’m working to identify strategic objectives for the institution as a whole. We always have people across the system who come to us and say, “I’d like more visibility in my clinic,” or “we have to market this new treatment.” And I get it—for those doctors, the work they are doing is the most important in the world, as it should be from their perspective.

Content marketing and brand journalism go a long way to accomplishing those goals. When we have our own channels—the web, social media—we can pump out content at very little cost.

Banach: 

How big is your team, what does it look like?

Brown:

About 20 people, and compared to other similarly sized institutions, we are really looking to double that number over the next few years. We are trying to hire some specific writers and content creators, but we’re lucky that the team we have is talented and really committed. Sometimes, you can come into a new team and find something of a train wreck, but that certainly wasn’t the case with Stony Brook. 

Outside agencies at AMCs

Banach: 

You mentioned you have an AOR now. Tell us more about what role they play for you.

Brown: 

They do our analytics and our overall creative work. The big brand campaign just completed before I started was mostly done by them. They also help with our media placement, and we collaborated with them recently to figure out how we would prioritize our media spend. We looked at journey mapping for patients in different service lines to determine the best “intervention” we could make for patients. 

Our team is such that we have a mini “internal” agency here with our own creative team who can do great work on a smaller scale, but for the heavy lifting and the bigger projects, they have been invaluable.

Banach:

What are you looking for in an agency partner—in this role, or ones you’ve had in the past?

When I’m looking for an agency, creativity is what‘s most important—someone who can provide us with a lot of collateral. Brand campaigns are important in healthcare, especially as you try to differentiate from other health systems.

It can be tough because healthcare advertising tends to “look like healthcare advertising.” If you can find an agency that can really make you look a little different and “stand out,” you know you’ve struck gold. 

I also like to be able to look to an agency for the intel they can provide. Being able to give me benchmarks against what other people are doing in the market is critical, especially as big behemoths like Amazon and WalMart are moving into the healthcare space. 

Banach:

Is it important that an agency has a healthcare background, or maybe something from outside the industry with new ideas? 

Brown:

To me, it’s important that an agency has some healthcare experience because this business is so specific and there are regulatory concerns. It’s a unique area so specializing is more important for an agency working with us. 

Banach: 

Any parting thoughts?

Brown:

I think if I’ve learned anything, it’s that there are a lot of different people who have a lot of great ideas. You can’t be everything to everybody, but you need to be willing to listen, even to people who aren’t necessarily marketing people. That means you might get humbled from time to time, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, either.  

Banach and Brown discussed several other topics, including how to balance working with several MDs as your “boss,” and the culture of academic medical centers and how they compare with other healthcare institutions. 

Edited for Brevity.