Ashley Buehnerkemper is Director of Marketing at VitalSkin Dermatology, where she has led marketing and brand strategy since the company's inception in 2019, growing the platform from its earliest locations to more than 40 today. Her role spans far beyond traditional marketing: as a member of VitalSkin's executive leadership team, she owns the martech stack, performance reporting, and brand governance across a fast-growing, multi-brand dermatology group, with a particular focus on driving tight alignment between marketing and operations.
Before joining VitalSkin, Ashley spent 11 years at Heartland Dental, the largest dental support organization in the country, where she rose from managing marketing for a handful of offices to leading corporate communications and brand management across a network of 800+ locations and $1B+ in annual revenue. There she led a multi-million-dollar corporate rebranding initiative and built the systems that fueled acquisition growth, learning firsthand that marketing only works when it's built in true partnership with operations.
At VitalSkin, that philosophy has shaped her approach to scaling a company built through partnership with strong regional dermatology practices, each with its own identity and community roots. Ashley is known for pairing data-driven rigor with an insistence on keeping the patient experience personal, never letting scale come at the cost of the local relationships that make each practice trusted in its market.
She lives in Effingham, Illinois, with her husband Jay and their two daughters.
Josh Dougherty:
Welcome to A Brave New Podcast. This is a show about branding and marketing in the healthcare space. But more than that, it's an exploration of what it takes to create brands that will be remembered and how marketing can be a catalyst for those brands' success. I'm Josh Dougherty, your host. Let's dive in.
Welcome back to the show. Today we're going to talk about marketing and branding at scale. To help me do that, I have Ashley Buehnerkemper from VitalSkin Dermatology joining me. VitalSkin is a world-class dermatology and aesthetics practice management firm, and they have over 40-plus different clinics that are managed under local and regional brands providing aesthetics and dermatology services.
And I'm excited to talk to Ashley because we are going to discuss things like how do you build out the infrastructure to manage all these different brands, how do you maintain consistency of experience for patients that's focused on creating patients' great experience, how do you build connections in communities, and how do you manage marketing at scale with a small team? So it's going to be a great conversation for anyone who's thinking about how do they maintain a local presence within a market and how do they grow and scale and do it smartly?
So without further ado, I'd love to bring Ashley in. Well, Ashley, thanks so much for joining me on the show today.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Thanks for having me.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. Well, as we dive in, I'd love to, before we get into the meat of what we're going to talk about, give you a little bit of a chance to share your story. Could you tell our audience a little bit about your career path, what your focus has been?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Yeah, sounds good. So I've been fortunate, I guess I should say now, to be in healthcare for about 20 years now, so essentially right out of college. And what brought me into healthcare was a dental company located in Effingham, Illinois, which is where I still live today. They had a marketing position open and I was ready to move home and be back with my family, so I jumped both feet in.
I ended up staying there 11 years. When I started there, they had around 60 offices, and when I left they had over 750, and I think they have over 1,500 today. So a fast-growing company but got to see all sorts of marketing really working up from the bottom.
And then at the end when I left, I was leading communications and brand management on the corporate side. So I oversaw a complete rebrand project, which is still the same brand that they use today, and ultimately that brand is what drives and fuels their acquisition growth for all their locations.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. So you're very familiar with, I think it's going to be a theme of our conversation, scale and how do you manage brands at scale?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Yeah. And I guess I didn't say all 750 locations were individual brands.
Josh Dougherty:
Oh, my gosh.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
So none of them were actually held by the parent company while I was there.
Josh Dougherty:
Amazing. And now you're the marketing director at VitalSkin Dermatology, which I know is on a similar, maybe not as far advanced of a trajectory, but headed in a similar direction. Can you tell me about what your focus is on there and what VitalSkin's all about?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Yeah, so when I left Heartland, I jumped over to VitalSkin. When I started there about six and a half years ago, we had zero locations but only a vision and a dream of what we could do in dermatology. Dermatology specifically is typically PE-backed in one brand across multiple locations. It's a very rigid model, and I saw an opportunity to really learn from that dental space that we were in and that whole patient value on a local or regional brand and build on that.
So within the six and a half years, we went from zero to 40 offices. Just had our most recent acquisition back in January and have been here since day one and ground zero and had the fun opportunity of building all the systems and the strategy that went into a multi-branded dermatology practice.
Josh Dougherty:
I think it's unique to be able to start from scratch with something, so it's probably been a fun journey.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
It is. You get the opportunity to learn from maybe past things that were given to you or choices that maybe you made that you would've done differently had you had the experience that you had. So it was really exciting to get to take all of the best things that I learned and those ahas and put them in place at VitalSkin.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. Well, we obviously are a show about branding and marketing intersections, so we're going to spend some time digging into this conversation around maybe some of the decisions you made and the learnings that you've had. But I'd love to start out by just asking you how you define branding. What do you think of that as a term? I think everyone has their own definitions, so it's interesting to hear yours.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Yeah, it's a loaded question. And when I thought about this reflectively past all the experiences that I had, I kept going back to one thing, and I don't know if you've ever heard of this book, but it's called Everything Is Marketing by Fred Joyal.
Josh Dougherty:
Mm-hmm.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
It was a book that was introduced to me early in my career, of course, with a marketing degree. And I thought marketing was just creating the campaign, figuring out the CTA, and sending it out. And after reading that book, it really shifted my perspective to realizing that marketing is way more than the ad, and it starts and ends in the office. And in order to be successful, you really have to have that operations knowledge and peace with it too to make sure that you understand the business. Marketing isn't just supplying an ad.
So when I think about branding, I think it can be unique to each individual location because our model allows our physicians, who we acquire in most instances, they already have a passion and they have a vision for what their practice looks like, but they just need help shaping the narrative of what that is so that it's consistent every time a patient comes into that practice.
So I guess long story short, I don't think it is X, Y, or Z. I think it's dependent on the culture of the practice, the community that the practice is in, and then the staff that ultimately executes that brand.
Josh Dougherty:
I like the definition of it spanning from the ad down to the experience because I think, at the end of the day, the brand is the heart of an organization, and so it needs to come through clearly in all of those different spaces. Well, this is interesting. So I know we're going to talk about how you've made this decision intentionally to mostly keep the regional or local brands intact. So do you all think of VitalSkin having its own unique brand as well?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
So we went back and forth. Our first location was actually a VitalSkin clinic here in Central Illinois. That was a scratch start. So with it not having an existing physician or brand, we led with VitalSkin. As our model shifted a little bit from a growth standpoint, acquisitions became a priority and we shifted more to identifying a lead practice within a market that we felt was a good fit for VitalSkin. So they had to align to our brand culture, but had the ability to still stand independently, and we didn't want to lose the equity that they had with patients just wiping clean and starting over with VitalSkin.
So that's how we grew in the early days. We identified that flagship office within markets and then looked for other locations that were maybe smaller, not as strong as a brand awareness with patients, a smaller patient panel, ones where the risk was a lot lower to actually change to that regional brand. So it's not a matrix, per se. I think it's judgment based off of the strength of the practice and the condition of the brand in the local market before you can decide is this a keep or is this a fold-in to a regional strategy?
Josh Dougherty:
So no playbook, per se. You're really going off evaluating each situation one by one.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Yeah, for sure. And we've even had situations in the Chicago market, which is highly competitive. We acquired a practice there with a very, very strong brand. We folded three locations in underneath of it, but then we had the opportunity to affiliate with another really good brand in the market. And we kept both of them from the marketing hat trying to figure out how am I going to navigate promoting equally to individual brands within a market? But honestly, it's worked out because they both have their unique positioning and were able to take the framework of VitalSkin and put in those unique things that each one of them has offered to make their own.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally. And also a market like Chicago, I imagine, is big enough that there's enough geographical difference even in within that city to be able to keep stuff separate.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Yeah, for sure.
Josh Dougherty:
So you talked about evaluating acquisition targets and evaluating the clinics that you're bringing in to make sure that they match the experience or the philosophy of VitalSkin. So what are those touchpoints that you're looking for as you're going through the process of evaluating going into a new market? You're looking at who to maybe move into that market with, through acquisition. What are those touch points or those key elements of your culture experience that you're trying to make sure are true across every one of your companies?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Yeah, and it really comes down to one thing. It's the people in the practice. Do they have the same philosophy? Are they focused on patient care? Do they care about participating in their community? Or are they just wanting somebody to come in and take over their business and then they just punch the clock every day?
Josh Dougherty:
Okay.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
That's not necessarily the model that we think thrives. Specifically from the marketing standpoint, 80% of the marketing initially comes down to the office doing it. They have to do the outreach. They have to build the referral relationships. And if they don't have the passion and understanding for how that actually makes their practice successful, that's the no-deal. This isn't going to work if we both don't do our parts. The brain's in the muscles, I guess, of the two coming together.
Josh Dougherty:
So it sounds like it's not just about keeping that local brand, but it's keeping a real local feel to everything that a clinic is doing.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Yeah, for sure.
Josh Dougherty:
So, obviously, one of the benefits of a roll-up is you have a centralized team, but I know when we've talked in the past, you have a small marketing team to support all of these clinics. What are the key principles that you follow to make sure your team can support all those brands at once and still get some sleep, I think, is the real question?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
That is definitely the struggle. And scale is the number one thing that we're always trying to achieve. I think it probably falls into a couple non-negotiables back to what do we look for in practices?
The first one, which is a hard stop, whether we're doing an acquisition or building an office, is that MarTech stack has to be the same across all of our locations. It might not be on day one, but there is a pretty tight timeline to when we make all those conversions. That MarTech stack is essentially what allows our team to achieve that scale because we're only working from one platform. We don't have multiple logins, multiple plans. It's really impossible to manage if we can't measure it within that one stack. So I'd say that's number one.
Number two comes back to the thing I was talking about earlier. Our site managers have to own their local brand. They have to be passionate about it. We can't run 40-plus clinics from a couple of desks here in Central Illinois. And, ultimately, that's not what the patient wants either. The patient wants to see those individuals in the community, the same people that they're going to see when they go in for their dermatology visit. Nobody sees Ashley, nobody sees VitalSkin. They might see my ad, see the creative, but site managers really have to be in.
So our team positions ourself as this strategic creative engine behind them. We hope that nobody ever knows that they've got this force helping them, but they have to bring the relationship and the local presence to life.
Josh Dougherty:
So you talk about the MarTech stack. One of the things when we were prepping and talking was also about website and making sure everyone moves into a similar website framework. How do you manage that portion of it?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
We outsource 99% of our digital, whether it's SEO or paid. Finding the right vendor is probably rule number one from our marketing team. If we can't find a partner that can be both that muscles and brains so we have the muscles and brains in the practice, but we have to have it with our vendors too. And knowing when they're not delivering and knowing when it's time to move on has been a key for us.
They're a dime a dozen. I hate to say that, agencies in the marketing world. They always overpromise, underdeliver. So making sure contracts have allowed us to be flexible, not just with services, but our growth too. I mean, we just went through a big acquisition in January, another 10 locations. They manage all of their stuff independently. Well, now we have 10 locations to bring into our platform and figuring out does the existing shoe fit? What changes do we need to make in order for us to now bring in two more brands under our house of brands and still maintain that scale and consistency?
Josh Dougherty:
Do you have advice—for folks maybe who have not done the agency choice as much as you have—of questions or places that you really like to explore as you're doing a search to make sure you're finding the right person?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
I would be happy to share the RFPs that we've done. And I can't take 100% credit for them. And I know one of your questions later was about the use of AI and how we use it in marketing. Using AI as the sounding board, almost your therapist of what you're going through to help you work through what you actually need and develop those objectives, has been a game changer.
When we sent out our last RFP, it was lengthy. It was about 13 pages. There were specific requests and responses that these agencies had to give back to us. If they wouldn't give us the time of day to fill out the three pages of questions that we specifically needed to know, they weren't a fit. We disqualified so many who just sent an email back and said, "Ah, can we just talk through this," and we don't have time to interview 40 vendors. We need you to actually give us feedback.
Josh Dougherty:
No doubt.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
A strong RFP, identifying your goals and sticking to what you're looking for, make sure you have your non-negotiables is probably the primary thing. And they're out there. You just got to weed through the ones that want to give you the smoke and mirrors of their abilities.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally. I think I've worked on the agency side my whole career and-
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Oh, no. I hope I didn't offend you.
Josh Dougherty:
You didn't offend me. It's not surprising, but I think the art of finding the right fit is one of the most important things because everyone can do something. They can do good work, but they have to be in the right environment and you need to find the agency that's not going to bullshit you, for a lack of a better word, and be really honest-
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Exactly.
Josh Dougherty:
...about this is where we're strong. This is where we're not. Because that's a reality for every organization. And every agency likes to think they can hustle, but at the end of the day they can't do everything.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
They can't. And you said something that made me think of another key thing to ask for is meet the team that you're working with every single day. I feel like they put their best faces forward, the ones that talk, the ones that manage all the individual team members, but you want to know who you're working with and make sure that you have a connection. I don't want to meet with you weekly if I can't stand talking to you for 20 minutes on an introduction call. There's got to be a fit from a relationship standpoint.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's one of the most important things. And so I'd love to shift back. Thank you for your insight there, because I do think that is a pain point for people about how to pick partners when you have a small team and you're trying to move quickly. The temptation is to move fast, but it's important to move slow and choose the right partner because that's going to speed you up the rest of the way down the road.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Right. A lot to undo if you don't pick right the first time.
Josh Dougherty:
Exactly. So I'd love to shift back to the conversation around marketing. You've talked a lot about how the on-the-ground team's presence is really important, them doing that work. 80% of the day-to-day marketing is them doing that outreach. How do you coordinate with those teams and make sure there's consistency? What type of support do you provide them centrally to maybe accelerate or improve what they were doing before they were part of VitalSkin to help guarantee their success?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
It's a good question. We do a lot of playbooks, so a lot of documentation. A big piece in any playbook, to me, comes down to accountability. So how if we train on this do we know that they're actually doing that, and that goes back up to their director of operations. Which then from our team, as I mentioned earlier, we're highly aligned with operations. Those are weekly touchpoints for us.
So our playbooks are meant to be digestible, actionable, idea-driven. We're not expecting them to be marketers. We're not expecting them to be salespeople. We want to give them quick, actionable things from a timeline and checklist. If they can identify two 90-minute segments during the next 30 days, here's what you can do during those 90 minutes to get some momentum. So try to make it as easy as possible.
I think the hardest part though is not every site manager might enjoy those kind of things. They might be very managerial and maybe not so outgoing and that might give them anxiety even having to think about it. So the ability to delegate too, a lot of times we tell our site managers, "You might not have to be the one that does these things, but you can't oversee them and hold your team accountable. So maybe you have a front desk person that talks nonstop and would love to go out and visit physicians."
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
"This is an opportunity to help your team members grow as well."
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, absolutely. I think equipping people to know when they can hand stuff off because they aren't going to be good at it if they do it themselves is really important.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Which doesn't help the office if they're not comfortable either.
One thing I didn't mention too, from a systems standpoint, all of our locations have access to an online store that we partnered with where all the items are dynamic. So we have templated materials that this store is able to populate in location name, phone number, physician name. So at the click of a button, if they're going to do some outreach, they can order brochures, business cards, et cetera, versus our team having to touch it or for them to have to even think should I do a brochure, do I do a bio card, what does that look like? It gives them great visuals and instant access.
Josh Dougherty:
Nice. I'm glad you brought that up because that was one of the things I was wondering—if they don't have the in-house capabilities to build things, you have a specific level of quality that you want everything to be, that's hard to manage, so that's a good answer. And that's again, I think stopping and building the infrastructure for growth before you really turn it on to make sure that you can continue to support that.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Absolutely. Something we started with five locations, because at that point we only had two team members. And even keeping up with five location marketing requests and one-offs became a time burden for having designers and content people populate. So it was one of the first things we put in place to make sure that they had access to the materials they needed and we didn't have to touch it.
Josh Dougherty:
Nice. Well, I'm going to go a little bit outside. We talked about how brand is the experience in the clinic, not just the marketing. So we talked a lot about how the marketing is scaled, but I think, ultimately, you have to match that experience inside of when a patient is interacting with a provider. So how do you work to ensure that that experience stays the same for each patient as they come in? Or maybe it's not the same in each clinic because I think each of them probably has their own unique strength, but how do you make sure that the quality of the engagement is the same across all your locations? Are you dealing with that at all in your role or is that-
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Yeah, we are. Our team also manages the patient experience from start to end. So we used a national patient experience vendor when we first started. We recently switched to another one which went from that full patient experience survey to just a post-appointment survey feedback. We found patients didn't necessarily want to fill out the lengthy survey. The information we were getting back to ops wasn't really actionable. It was just running in the background. So we moved to something more elementary, where it actually gets patient feedback post-appointment. That feedback is immediately sent to operations, positive, negative, or neutral. And if anything is on the negative side, they actually have to action plan it.
The flip side of that is it actually helps marketing too because it's actually automated into our website. So all of that feedback goes to our star rankings on the website and also drives our search because it's an independent website where it's collecting all that provider-level feedback. So it felt like not just a better operational move for us, but from a marketing standpoint, a quick way for us to keep fresh content on the sites and help search too.
Josh Dougherty:
And build transparency.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
But it does vary to your initial question.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
I think we're all human. We all have bad days, but ultimately at the end of the day, it's about monitoring the overall experience and making sure that it is semi-consistent across front desk and physicians and then managing just the one-offs if needed, if they need to be escalated.
Josh Dougherty:
Makes sense. So that makes me think of obviously the third-party site with patient experience reviews super helpful for AEO, which everyone is talking about from an answer engine perspective. What else has your team, and I know you work with some other vendors to manage that SEO, AEO stuff, but where have you seen success there? How have you been able to adjust and manage your strategy to prove that?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
That's a great question too because with multi-brands on the same domain, we have to be a little bit careful about conflicting information at the practice level. Then Google's not sure which page is telling the truth and then they just don't promote any of the pages. So we really leaned into Google Business Profile strategy with our agency where a lot of our one-off content, promotion, services, things about the physician, things that make each location unique are posted on GBP and have seen a lot of that content actually showing up in the search results versus even our webpage, which has been great. I think it allows us that autonomy level of the practice. When they say we want to do things differently, that we're able to accommodate that even though our actual brand architecture can limit that at some level because of the importance of being consistent on the website-
Josh Dougherty:
And I think that is someplace that Google definitely preferences their-
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
… with theirs.
Josh Dougherty:
.. .own platforms anyway, so it helps you out there.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Yeah. We use a vendor again to make sure listings management is always up to date as well. Managing 40-plus locations, they all have 40-plus listings. Per location would obviously be a big time suck to individually update, so we have one, the vendor that actually you update in the platform and it auto-distributes to all of their plain listings across the web, which has been a great help for us.
Josh Dougherty:
So do you have a big Google review strategy that you're working on then too for each of those?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
We do. And it goes back to that post-appointment survey question. Can I name the vendor that we use? Give a little plug?
Josh Dougherty:
You can if you want. Why not?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Is that okay?
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Okay. So we use Ratings.MD. We've used Ratings.MD since basically day one of our practices. They host their own individual sites for each of our providers and locations, but the post-appointment surveys also allow us the flexibility. If we need more Google reviews, we send those patients to Google to leave a review or to Facebook or wherever we choose versus Ratings.MD.
So it's been awesome as we've had new providers come on who maybe are brand new, fresh out of school and this is their first practice, first in the market for us to actually give them some credibility quite quickly. I mean, our response rate has been fantastic to really start to build that momentum on their Google profiles too.
Josh Dougherty:
100%.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
And it just happens in the background. We don't have to do anything. We have to review the comments every week just to make sure there's no PHI or anything in them. But outside of that, it has been a pretty hands-off strategy in this case.
Josh Dougherty:
I think that's the key, as you think about any business that has that local on-the-ground presence, is how do you automate that review cycle? Because otherwise that's what credibility is. I'm pulling them up on my phone and I want to see that it's a credible organization from multiple angles.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Exactly. And the good, bad, and the ugly.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally. Totally.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
We need to see all angles I think to form a good opinion.
Josh Dougherty:
Well, I'd love to shift over to AI. I know you've mentioned a little bit about AI already, but I would like to hear about, as you're doing I think uniquely, I mean not uniquely, people who are doing a thing similar to you that it's about scale, it's about how do you move quickly, how do we maintain quality? So I'd love to hear maybe some successes you've had at leveraging AI to help your marketing team move faster and smarter so far. And-
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
So a couple things come to mind on that one. Another shameless plug for a vendor that I don't think we would be where we're at today without would be Brevium. Brevium actually scrubs with AI all of the data in our EHR system based off of the requirements that we have. So if they had a diagnosis code of A, this is how quickly we want to see them if they don't have an appointment.
The returns that we've seen on that, I'm just telling you, are way worth it. And I'm happy to talk to anybody more about it, a huge proponent of it. So that's one big thing. Again, offices used to have to go out and do that, or we were pulling lists of patients that were overdue. We were manually mailing letters. It was just a headache to even keep track of. And honestly, there was zero way to measure the return. This is full return measurement from start to finish.
Josh Dougherty:
Nice.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Other things that we're looking at, so there's lots of things coming to the market, right?
Josh Dougherty:
So much.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Lots of things around AI chat, which I am super interested in. We've done a few demos, and we are going to get ready to trial it at a couple of locations. Our biggest hangup right now is with patients needing to schedule an appointment. Regardless of the platform that we're using, they actually have to individually click in, select the date, select the time, wait for the confirmation, yada, yada, yada. A lot of the AI chatbots are automatically doing this, offering them three appointment times, "Hey, you're overdue for care. Here are three days that I can see you next week. Click the one," and then it automatically schedules it. From an office standpoint, not having to manage that and a patient standpoint being able to get that completed in 20 seconds or less, I feel like is going to be a game changer from retention and reappointment of future appointments.
Josh Dougherty:
Because even if you can move, fill your slots 30% more or something, it's a massive game changer.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Huge. Like, hey, we have 10 appointments open next week, let's use this to our advantage to get them filled.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Versus having to have somebody at the front desk manually call the patient, the patient calls back, that whole game too.
Josh Dougherty:
Totally.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
On the flip side of the AI for our team, I'm not a big fan of using AI for content generation at scale for campaigns. I still feel like it's not there. Patients don't want to see that content. They still want to see your team members. They want to see the physician. They want to see the location. AI can't recreate that.
But when we do use it, back to my point about the RFPs that we were developing, is a soundboard. It can get you so much quicker to the end goal and probably a better campaign than what four people in a room could have come up with in a week—in one day. So I use it for strategic planning almost versus actual content planning within the marketing space.
Josh Dougherty:
I agree with you on the content. There's a decent amount, I think, of lack of inspiration still with content when you're having it created and you're like, it doesn't quite... Something seems off. So we're big proponents still of leveraging it obviously to accelerate strategy, et cetera. And research is huge to be able to save hours and hours of time. But that content creation, I think it lacks the context to do great content.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Definitely. That personalization, that human touch is still needed. I have so many friends that are like, aren't you worried AI is going to take over your marketing job? I'm like, probably not in my generation, but I feel like eventually it's going to get there. It's gotten so much smarter every time, but there's still a pretty big gap, I think.
Josh Dougherty:
Yeah, it has the capability to take over some of those ops things, but those are all things that I think most marketers don't enjoy doing anyways.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Right, for sure.
Josh Dougherty:
I don't know.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
For sure.
Josh Dougherty:
Some do. Sorry to any marketing ops people that are listening that really enjoy that.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
For sure.
Josh Dougherty:
So if you had to look forward into the future, and how do you think marketing will look differently in a year from now as a result of AI and other tech advancements?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
I think a lot of the things that we've seen in the last six months are going to continue. I mean, all the vendors that we've talked to about helping with that appointment scheduling, reappointment, I think the bots are just going to get better.
I think, unfortunately or fortunately, the content models are going to continue to learn and eventually will be able to put down creative for custom campaigns and have all the images that they need in their bank. So I think it will be helpful still. I think it still gives marketing the opportunity to lean in and shape what the actual message is. I worry that it would ever get to that point, but I don't know. I think it'll be an interesting next year just to see how it continues to evolve.
Josh Dougherty:
I think I see, what you talked about the bots getting smarter, I think we've seen, I don't know, maybe eight months ago it was like everyone's talking about agents. Now there's agents in the field that work in six months. I was talking a couple of weeks ago, we work with HubSpot a decent amount, I was talking to the person who manages their sensitive data program for HIPAA compliance and their marketing platform, and he was talking about how they're adjusting how their agents will be actual full users inside of the platform eventually and all that sort of thing. And that's going to be the game changer when they're smart enough to interact and do specific jobs, not replace all the marketers, but be able to actually operate as a full teammate on a certain thing.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
And do it more efficiently and consistently. I think as we talked about how do you maintain that consistent brand experience, if you have the ability to truly give a playbook to a bot, that bot isn't going to deviate. Humans do deviate. We have good days and we have bad days.
Josh Dougherty:
Exactly.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Bots are just doing their job and checking the box.
Josh Dougherty:
And 24/7 able to do it, right?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Right. Meet patients when they want to be contacted and-
Josh Dougherty:
Absolutely. Well, thanks so much. I think that closes out our conversation, Ashley, and I appreciate you so much coming on. As we finish up, how can people connect with you? What's the best way for them to follow along with the work that you're doing?
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
LinkedIn is probably the easiest. Definitely connect with me. I'm not on there tons, but I do keep up with messages and connections, so I would love to connect with anybody in a similar story. I think I always have a lot to learn too and there are different ways to accomplish things. So I always love learning and hearing how people are approaching similar problems and happy to share any of the resources that we talked about today too.
Josh Dougherty:
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for the time and for sharing your experience. I really appreciate it.
Ashley Buehnerkemper:
Sounds good. Thanks for having me.
Josh Dougherty:
Thanks for listening to this episode of A Brave New Podcast. Go to abravenew.com for more resources and advice on all things brand. If you enjoyed this episode, show us some love by subscribing, rating, and reviewing A Brave New Podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts.
A Brave New Podcast is created by A Brave New, a branding agency in Seattle, Washington, that crafts bold and memorable healthcare brands. Our producer is Rob Gregerson.