Welcome to Designed for Scale, the HealthTech Growth Podcast, where we go deep in conversation with HealthTech founders, C-suite and CMOs, to find out what really drives HealthTech growth.

This week you'll be joined by myself, Rachel Burrell-Cook, and colleagues Paul McGuigan and Chris Skelton, where we explain why we're so excited by this space and what to expect from upcoming episodes.

It's been a while. We've tried to do a podcast before.

Yeah, we've had one or two false starts, haven't we? In my spare room.

Yeah, yeah. We'll put up the ante and come to a proper place.

It does feel like we're the last ones to do a podcast.

Yes, yeah, we've been talking about it for so long, but hey, we're here now.

So why don't you kick us off, Paul, by telling us what this thing is?

Well, the reason we've been talking about doing it for ages is because we're all really interested in HealthTech podcasts, because we work so much in that space, in the context of branding and marketing. But we've always said there's a little bit of a gap in the podcasts that we listen to and follow. And we're really interested in the role that branding and marketing plays in the growth and the success of HealthTech companies.

And the podcasts that we listen to don't really focus on that. So we saw an opportunity and have been saying for ages, we've got loads of interesting stuff to say about that. So here we are.

I should probably explain why we have so much to say about that. We are ThreeTenSeven, a creative agency specialising in HealthTech, and we work across the health ecosystem. So commercial as well as public health, and have done brands such as NHS Digital, NHS England, some work for Cancer Research Horizons, Psyomics, lots of stuff in this space, as well as brands that people will know, such as Morrisons, Confused.com, etc. So we've been doing brand a long time, but a lot is happening now in HealthTech. So we've specialised over the last few years, and it feels really like there's no better time for it.

You've been doing a lot of thinking, Chris, about the concept, for example, of HealthTech.

Yeah, we know that the sector has been booming, has been booming for the last few years, and competition is only increasing day by day as hundreds of thousands of HealthTech startups try and enter the market. But we also know that there's a massive failure rate in those startups, some say between 60 and 90% of those businesses fail, which is obviously a huge number. And there are all sorts of reasons for that, lack of research or product market fit, or just challenges with interoperability or sort of clinical buy-in. But that last bit about sort of clinical buy-in is sometimes about trust, and trust as a concept is something that brand and marketing can really help with.

You've also got the fact that investment has sort of waned a little bit, and investors are becoming a bit more risky, so risk averse. And that's another reason why sort of trust and clear communication can really help get your message across in a bit more of a compelling way. So we're obviously interested in helping businesses who are trying to enter this market, or trying to grow through this market to get their message across in a more clear and compelling way to build trust so that clinicians, the public, the investors, can really buy into that product and see the difference between that product and however many others in that same sort of HealthTech niche are trying to enter the sector.

I think that's a good distinction as well, that you've got to build trust with so many different audiences, particularly if you're selling into a health system, because you're selling to procurement people as well as clinicians, as well as building trust with the people, the end users if there is an end user here who is not a clinician, if it's a patient, for example. So it's a really multi-layered thing.

And I think it's probably a good point to talk about what we mean by brand, because we're not just talking about logos here.

No, absolutely, yeah. It's not in the sort of colloquial sense that a lot of people would use the phrase, we're not talking about just visual identity, although that is part of what we do when it's what's needed.

But really what we mean by brand is getting the positioning, the story, right? The right messages that are gonna be effective in all the ways that you're describing, that they're gonna persuade, that they're going to engender trust.

Because that's really, as you say, it's what can create or prevent success and growth. So yeah, that's a big part of what we do is understanding the audiences and how we can make sure that we're saying the right things and positioning in the right way to make sure that a product is accepted, trusted, and can scale in the way that we would all hope.

We talk about a lot, don't we, about building clarity, using empathy, and clarity and empathy really building credibility. And that's the role of brand really is to highlight the evidence in the right way in a compelling way that's right for that market, right for the audience.

We can't cover up for lack of evidence, or fake it as some brands have maybe tried to in the past, but we can make sure that we get that message across in the right way so that it is, like I say, as compelling as possible.

I think clarity, you mentioned as well, which is a huge part of what we do. Obviously we're working in a space that is highly complex, both in terms of the healthcare, medical side of things, but also the technology side of things. It's very easy to get lost in the jargon and the detail, which is absolutely one of the areas where you can lose your audience and lose a sense of empathy with what healthcare ultimately is, which is about care and looking after people and making sure that we cut through all of that jargon in a way that doesn't lose any of the distinctive assets of what makes that product special, but at the same time brings complete clarity in a way that is gonna bring people along with the brand.

And it should be exciting as well, because creating a new brand, scaling up, there is huge growth potential. People want health tech, I want health tech, we want more of it, and the brand should be the fun bit, but it also just has to be underpinned by a really robust strategy that is absolutely rooted in market fit and that is tested and you're using language that is shown to motivate and move opinion.

So we've still got all the fun of the brand, but what we take is a more strategic approach, and that's what we need to really, that's what we're gonna be highlighting in this podcast, is how you can use brand as a strategic lever for growth.

Absolutely. So it'd be good just to talk about a couple of examples, our favourite topic, about who's doing it right, who do we look to, that's a good example of who's really used brand as a growth lever.

It's hard to know where to start really, I mean, we've been talking a lot about Flo recently, just because we had a long conversation about a podcast that the CMO of Flo was on recently, haven't we? Which is a really lovely example of brand used as a lever for growth.

Yes, Flo's a really interesting one, so one of the predominant period tracking apps now, though not the first, but the ones that who have arguably used brand and marketing and particularly content in the smartest way, they've really built the Flo brand, which is why it now extends out to period products, etc, and they could probably go into supplements or anything they wanted to, because they've built this brand that's all around educating women about their own bodies, and their brand extension exercises, the things that they sponsor, the things that the way that they distribute their content, echoes that positioning about educating women and empowering us with more information.

I actually find it a bit annoying. I don't like the interface. I find it really salesy. I don't like the Flo brand, well, the Flo UI, I don't like the UX, but it's doing something right, because it is the preeminent period tracking app.

Yeah, well, it's a unicorn, isn't it? It is, yeah. There's a lot of people that maybe disagree with that. Absolutely.

I mean, the other interesting thing about Flo, that is that they didn't really market themselves in a traditional way to begin with. They focused solely on building credibility going on to that point there. And that naturally might not be seen as a brand building exercise, but it absolutely is. There's a strategy there that is building the brand in terms of its credibility to prove itself to the market and its investors, etc before then the more visual, creative applications are sort of layered on top to help it then scale beyond that initial phase.

Yeah, super interesting. You use the word strategy in the sense that it's often about making decisions that means strategy isn't just how do we appeal to everyone. It's about making smart decisions to appeal to a sizable enough market segment where you can win, which is why it won't appeal to everyone.

But it's been very successful for them that they've found a big enough market, a big enough audience who do really care about that depth of information and education.

You've been talking a lot about Cera recently as well, haven't you Paul?

Yeah, that's an interesting comparison in the sense that it's not really a consumer facing app. It's more geared towards social care practitioners. What I like about it is the positioning that it could have just been created as an app that is a really smart AI driven piece of technology that helps carers deliver better care in the home. And they could have developed that and sold it into organizations that need that technology. But actually what they did was zoom out even further and kind of go, what are the bigger problems in social care that we can help to solve? And actually what this app, what this technology is capable of doing is partly addressing the challenge of bringing enough people into social care and retaining them there by making it a more appealing looking career.

Because finally, it's always been the underfunded part of the healthcare world, hasn't it? But finally, it's getting smart technology, it's getting investment, it's getting the tools that are actually making this a compelling and interesting and great career. So they've put a lot of their energy into leveraging the app and positioning it in a way that is all about attracting people to come and work in social care under the Cera banner using their technology to do their job more effectively. And I think that's a brilliant strategy.

And there are so many others that we could pick on in this space more and more coming to market every day. And we hope to be speaking to the really exciting ones.

But let's talk about what's coming up to close. We are actively recording at the moment, but we're also looking for more founders, CEOs, CMOs, etc. And I would love if people would recommend, but also feel free to self-nominate with no shame because we want to hear interesting stories. We want to hear what has been your growth story.

And if you'd like to get in touch with us, you can follow us on all the key channels by looking for Designed for Scale. We're on LinkedIn. You can find us at designedforscale.com. And we will be releasing new episodes monthly. So people can look out for that coming across all the key platforms.

But that's all we wanted to share today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.