Beyond DEI: Redefining Cultural Communications - with Aleisia Gibson Wright

00:00
Daniel Nestle
Welcome or welcome back to the trending Communicator. I'm your host, Dan Nestle. I'm not under an impression that communications is a dangerous profession, but when I say, as I often do, that it's a minefield out there, I think the metaphor works. We're creators, we're storytellers, we're masters of message, where the people, CEOs, politicians and leaders of all stripes turn to when they want to know how to say something. We're word people. So when the sociopolitical winds change, we have to deal with it in what we perceive to be the best interests of our employers or our clients. In other words, it's on us to get the message right.

00:47
Daniel Nestle
And when we live in a chaotic and volatile and unpredictable world of fractured and often oppositional audiences, we have to deftly and skillfully navigate the universe of possible reactions and outcomes to the words that we put out there into the world. And when we make mistakes and missteps, maybe nothing will happen or maybe a career will derail or a company will go under. No big deal. Like I said, it's a minefield. I bring all of this up because my guest today is no stranger to walking the minefield. And as a comms pro who recently started her own consultancy, she's in the same boat as me.

01:24
Daniel Nestle
I realize I just mixed the metaphor a little bit and will definitely mix it more, as is my want, but however you want to say it, she's flying without a net and building a communications practice in this chaotic world she's built and grown businesses, led high performing teams at some of the leading PR agencies and been a constant innovator. A pioneer in healthcare communications, she's racked up recognition and rewards from Clio, Silver, Anvil, PR Excellence, PR Week, MM&M Sabre, DTC Awards, I for Pharma, PRSA and more. It's a long list. I'd love to see her a trophy case. She's an expert in global communications, corporate storytelling, narrative development, cultural insights, and she founded GW Health Public Relations last October and is dedicated to transforming how companies communicate about health and medicine.

02:14
Daniel Nestle
She's plugged in, tuned up, and it's hard to think of a service that's more necessary right now than helping audiences understand health and medicine today. Please join me in welcoming to the show my new friend, Alicia Gibson Wright. Alicia, hey.

02:30
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Oh my gosh. I have been so looking forward to this conversation and thank you so much for such a wonderful intro. That was really kind. I'm like, God, did I do all.

02:45
Daniel Nestle
That maybe I love it when, like, I love it when people introduce me. I mean, it's love. It's a love and hate thing. Like, I love it because they introduce you and they. And you hear all these things that are, you know, full disclosure, pulled off of some of your profiles and, you know, with a slight little tweak here and there. It's stuff that's out there in the world, and you're like, that's what's out there in the world. When you hear it all at once, it's frightening. And then. And then, you know, at least in my case, I'm just like, man, that's a high bar. Oh, boy, I hope I can live up to that. But in your case, you know, I. I've met you, I've.

03:24
Daniel Nestle
I've seen some of your work, and, you know, that bar is extremely high, but you're always, oh, vaulting right over it.

03:32
Aleisia Gibson Wright
You're amazing. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to have this conversation, and I'm so glad to have met you at that dinner party.

03:41
Daniel Nestle
Talk about serendipity.

03:42
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah, Seriously. We're just chomping down and I look up and we just started talking, and then it was. You're gonna start my podcast.

03:51
Daniel Nestle
I know. Side note, like, to people out there, you know, LinkedIn is a. Is a. Is an incredible universe of business contacts and professionals and good people. And there are also operators and, you know, kind of shady characters and your sheriffs, scammers and spammers and whatnot. But every once in a while, you know, you. You get this kind of, I don't know, I want to call it a pitch, but like a random message that on a normal day you'd be like, ignore, delete. For some reason. You're like, maybe there's a there. And I was glad I did because it was from. From this fellow named Chris Giddings, and who is an incredible networker. And it just turns out he's a giving sort and a very, you know, believe. He's a big believer in paying it forward.

04:44
Daniel Nestle
So he organizes these dinners and in Cross, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and, you know, shout out to Chris Giddings. I went to one of those dinners. I didn't know what to expect. And was there 15 people there, Alicia?

04:57
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah, it was like 15 people. And it was really far from my house, so I live in Bergen county. And I was really second guessing. I'm like, should I go all the way down here? What is really this? It is a guy I met on LinkedIn and I'm traveling like 50 miles to go sit with somebody who I don't even know is not a bottle, but turns out it totally legitimate and really great conversation and connected me to wonderful people like you.

05:25
Daniel Nestle
Thank you. I mean, same here. It's like, I mean, but I didn't have to go two hours, it's 25 minutes from my house. But I was thinking about that and just like the cavalcade of characters that was at that dinner and it was very like a real weird smattering of people and how fortuitous that, you know, this woman I've never met is sitting right there like caddy cornered and I overhear, blah, blah, agency, something, pr. And I'm like, my eyes, like I perked up. You know, when you're, when you start your own business, especially as a consultant in our profession, you know, you want to connect with the people who know what you're going through and exactly, you know, like attracts like. So very glad we connected there. But let's talk about you. Like, so how did you get to that dinner?

06:13
Daniel Nestle
What's the background? What's the story at a high level of Alicia Gibson Wright and all those awards and stuff? We don't have to know exactly, but what got you into healthcare? Why healthcare? Communications. And what got you to that dinner? Eventually, yeah.

06:29
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Well, I'll start by telling you I had no idea that I would be doing pr. When I started my career, it was in the newsroom. I was a stringer at the Miami Herald. Newspaper down, obviously in Miami, just out of college from Savannah State University. Big hbcu. So I was, you know, I just knew I was gonna be a reporter. And I did that for several years until it dawned on me that maybe there's something else out there. I mean, reporting the dark side. Let me tell you, reporting can be dark because you are questioning everything, everyone. It's a tough job and big hats off or high five to those who can stay in it for a really long time. But for me, I was just wondering if there was something else.

07:21
Aleisia Gibson Wright
I mean, you're not getting a ton of money from it unless you're on cnn, broadcast or something like that. But if you're a writer, you're in it because it's your life's passion, it's the work you really wanna do. So for me, I was just young enough and questioning enough to say, is this, you know, the end? All for me. And it just took one meeting of a really, like, stylish Girl who had, like, the quintessential pointed toe, high heeled stiletto shoes and all this style. And I was like, oh, my God, what do you do for a living? She's like, oh, I'm in pr. So I was like, okay, guess where I'm going to pr, too. I want what you got.

08:06
Daniel Nestle
Was that in Miami or was that on?

08:07
Aleisia Gibson Wright
That was in Miami. No, that was still. That was just out of my. At the end of my career as a writer. But I ended up taking her up on her offer to bring me in and introduce me to some other PR folks. And I did that. I ended up at a stalwart agency in Miami. Ruben, Barney and Burger is what it was called back in the day. I think it's RBB now. But anyway, I landed a role there in their corporate and healthcare division. And it was primarily crisis work. So I was doing a lot of crisis, but crisis on the healthcare side. And I loved it. I loved it. So I was moving up really quickly. So I was like, I'm too big and too good for this place. Not really.

09:02
Daniel Nestle
Especially if you have a. Especially if you have a. Like, if the crisis bug gets you. You know, there's. It takes a particular type and it does, you know, I never did catch that bug when I was in the agency, but I enjoyed it when I was not in the agency, if that makes any sense. I kind of enjoyed being in some crisis communications one when I was on corporate. When I was in a corporate role. But not all. Not all. Like, it depends on where the crisis is coming from and what it's about, but because there were a couple that I really would have preferred never to have dealt with. But there's a certain kind of, like, you know, dopamine rush.

09:41
Aleisia Gibson Wright
There really is. And literally, Dan, this was like, back in the day, I had a pager. I had a pager strapped to my side. And this wasn't like, situation. There's a difference between a crisis and a situation, right? Yeah, this was hardcore crisis. This was. Okay, there's a reporter standing on the front steps. What do I do? Paige? Alicia. And I'm like, whoa. I was like, are you sure you wanna call me? But there's a strange sort of dopamine bolus that you get from it. And I really liked it. And you're right, you can either do it, keep a calm head, or you can't. But I liked it. And more than just the issues or crisis part of it, I really liked the healthcare aspect of it. So.

10:31
Aleisia Gibson Wright
And with that, I moved to New York and, you know, set up three interviews and I'm like, okay, well, I'm getting one of them, however it goes. And I got one of them. And from there, I mean, I've been. That was, oh my gosh, 2000. So I've been up here for 25 years. Yeah, still in it.

10:51
Daniel Nestle
It flies right by, believe me. And when we met, I was half joking about how we had never crossed paths before because I've been in PR and comms for at least that long. And I mean, although my career took a little bit of a winding road to get there. And I was in Japan for the first, most. For the largest part of it, actually. You know, until. Until 2010 or so, actually. You know, now come think of it, I'm almost at the point where I have to say, where I can't say I've been in Japan for more than half of my professional career because it's almost like I've been here now. Oh, that's disheartening.

11:32
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Anyway, really, that is really interesting, doing PR in Japan.

11:36
Daniel Nestle
PR and marketing, mostly, like just B2B stuff and mostly corporate side. And you know, I never did touch healthcare. It, like, forget about Japan with healthcare and pharma and those very highly regulated areas that, you know, as a foreigner with zero experience in those fields, like zero industry experience, like, I could speak Japanese, but not that kind of Japanese, so. So yeah, I never got into it. Then when I moved back here, I was in varying jobs and I never got to deal with health care. You know, tangentially, once I was involved with a healthcare product project at Edelman, but it was really just a. Just to do some web analysis of some stuff that wasn't, you know, it was part of a. I was part of a larger team working on a pitch. But.

12:24
Daniel Nestle
But yeah, it's always been fascinating to me because healthcare, you know, you think it's. It's like pharmaceuticals, but then you realize that it's a. First of all, it's far broader. And anybody who's been paying attention to anything in the last couple years is. Knows that, you know, the government involvement, regulations, everything having to do with wellness, everything having to do with, well, being designer drugs, all of that stuff falls under that umbrella.

12:59
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah, it's a vast field. And you're right, most people think drugs or pharma or hospitals. Right. But there's so many layers in between those two things from the hospital and the pharmaceutical company. There's the providers, there's the policymakers, there's the patient, there are the loved ones. That whole kaleidoscope of different audiences that are connected to healthcare. And I might not be connected to, say, a B2B product or conversation or PRogram, but everybody's connected to healthcare and everybody.

13:40
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, I never thought of that stakeholder map because that's, you know, we always talk about audiences and about how I keep saying audiences are fractured, but that's a different conversation. This. And what we're talking about here is the, the actual audiences that are important to communicate to. It's very different for a B2B company or for a consumer goods company than it is for a, you know, for a medical establishment or for a pharmaceutical. Because when you, when once you factor in patients and their loved ones, you're talking about some very different communications requirements. You know, I think a lot of folks out there listening may not grasp the complexity of what it means to communicate to different stakeholders. You know.

14:29
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah.

14:30
Daniel Nestle
And just to be able to do that in health care is, I think it's a whole different ballgame.

14:36
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah. And I'll tell you, this year, and as we move deeper into 2025, I think it's all very polarizing, and I think the landscape of health care, public relations in general, is really evolving so quickly.

14:50
Daniel Nestle
Yeah.

14:50
Aleisia Gibson Wright
You know, and a large driver of that is technology and a lot of these social issues that we're all grappling with now. On top of that, there's, of course, the patient expectations are changing. I mean, the more people are actually coming out of their pockets for healthcare costs. I mean, people have opinions, they have certain expectations for how you're gonna engage with them. And, you know, your care, your customer service person who might be your nurse is just that, just providing a customer service and that the expectation has really evolved. And, you know, it's just all a part of how we are engaging is with each other as humans nowadays.

15:33
Daniel Nestle
It's also the largest cost for any particular person outside of a home, usually. And even sometimes more than that. It's the largest thing you're going to spend money on in your lifetime is healthcare, whether it's through insurance or through care itself. Hopefully it's through the former, not the latter. But, you know, you're, you are, you know, you're vested and even care.

15:52
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Absolutely. And even not even necessarily your own personal care. But if you have a sick loved one, a husband, a, you know, wife, a mother, a child, that too, you know, really impacts how you live and it's all connected to healthcare.

16:10
Daniel Nestle
It's interesting also you mentioned patient expectations. It just made me think that, you know, I haven't thought of it from the communicator standpoint. The person who's tasked with making sense of all this and that those patient communicate those patient expectations, map it out to, and let's call it just audience behavior if you want to. But those patient expectations, as technology certainly has advanced and as they have more access to research into the Internet and to now AI and to global, to global events and what's happening out there in the world, they inevitably start to try to take care of their own health care or they second guess the professionals all the time or triple guess them. And not that's a bad thing. It's always good to vet to people that you're, you know, kind of, they're taking care of you.

17:06
Daniel Nestle
But sometimes it goes a little haywire.

17:09
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Right.

17:10
Daniel Nestle
Especially if people don't understand the context of what they're reading. And then you have this idea that you compare the fact that you are paying XYZ for some, for some sort of result and the people in, I don't know, it's always Scandinavia, the people in Scandinavia are in utopia. And you know, everything's lovely, you know, like it's never that simple. But it's up to the communicator to sort of navigate that.

17:36
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Absolutely.

17:37
Daniel Nestle
Do you have to deal with a lot of that?

17:38
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah. And I'll lean into that and say, I think the most important thing now with healthcare is the aspects of trust and understanding how important it is to not just understand what the medicine is, but to trust the source of the information of the actual product you're taking. There are a lot of questions. People, people are asking questions. It used to be back when the doctor or the nurse would tell you what you needed to do and you did it or you didn't do it. But now there's a whole two way dialogue, there's a conversation. There are lots of touch points to help people build trust or connection to a healthcare organization or even that their hcp. There's just healthcare provider healthcare. Oh yes, sorry, the jargon. Yes, the healthcare provider, which could be the nurse.

18:39
Aleisia Gibson Wright
And nowadays we've got physician's assistants who are the new doctors. You don't get that much time with your physician that much anymore. You see a PA or you see a nurse practitioner and they of course run their recommendations by the physician. But you might not even see that physician.

18:58
Daniel Nestle
It's it's, you have to get an education to even understand how the system works, because the step doesn't really work the same for any one person. Like everybody has a different experience with, you know, scare quotes, the system. And you know, I, I really, I'm glad you're kind of bringing this up because I, I haven't touched on this at all in the show. Now, I think about it like the state of healthcare communications today. I mean, I know we just started talking about it, but it is reflective of this breach of trust that you see across other sectors, probably more so in healthcare than in other places, because exactly what you said, that they, you know, touches everyone and the, you know, the trust breakdown. So what do you think is the state of healthcare comp.

19:52
Daniel Nestle
Stay and let me throw in a little thing and I, I don't get political on the show. And, you know, so we don't.

19:57
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah.

19:58
Daniel Nestle
Listeners out there take this as however you will, but just factually speaking, Covid, the COVID experience, I think hit healthcare maybe hardest from both a, you know, an actual dealing with the problem standpoint, but also the collapse of trust in the system. And what have you seen going through all that? Where is the trust now? Where is this? Like, where are we now? Are we recovering? Are we doing better? Are we on the right path? What's going on?

20:34
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah, I think at the core of healthcare PR is of course, this imperative to build that trust and maintain that trust. And to your point about the COVID 19 pandemic, which, oh my gosh, it seems like a million years ago, but it wasn't that long ago. And it really sort of changed a lot about how we are, how we're living our lives today. Right. But I think that pandemic really demonstrated how quickly public trust can erode very quickly. And I think, you know, was obviously a catalyst to uncover some of the really significant longstanding health disparities issues that we have and the misinformation.

21:22
Aleisia Gibson Wright
And then there was, on top of all that, there was this misinformation about vaccines and there were these ongoing concerns about access to care and the public health organizations and the providers, they were all thrust into the spotlight and really trying to maintain credibility throughout it all. And it was difficult. And for a healthcare communicator who was also at home wearing a mask and trying to do zoom calls about really important things, a matter of life and death, understanding the impact of what these, what the pharmaceutical industry and what all of the kaleidoscope of different stakeholders have on. On individuals and families is really, it's eye opening because we before that, you know, we would. We were really focused as PR communicators.

22:23
Aleisia Gibson Wright
We were focused on getting drugs approved, making sure that, you know, the press releases were correct and it had all of the fair balance and everybody understood the risks. And you wanted to make sure that all of the audiences understood what the medication itself was going to do or was not going to do. And you just wanted to make sure you had that sort of continuity of message. But, you know, COVID 19 turned all of that stuff upside down and it really got us to really talk about, talk to people as individuals. And it really sort of shaped how we see in minority communities how they interact or uncovered how we've been interacting. They've been interacting with healthcare for a very long time. And that is out of lack of trust. And the trust goes both ways.

23:16
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Physicians didn't really trust that some of their patients would take the medication or take a medication, so they never offered it. So I think that trust goes. Goes both ways.

23:27
Daniel Nestle
Yeah. Something you said actually made me think that you said that during the COVID actually was the first. Helped us from the PR communicate. So healthcare PR people started really communicating with individuals. And I feel like just looking back at the whole thing and trying to be as dispassionate as I possibly can that one of the kind of new challenges that we faced as a communications profession, but also even wider as a society perhaps, was that this might have been the first time that the trust people that we trusted before attempted to communicate to everybody as a group rather than as disparate individuals. Your healthcare provider, your family practice, wherever it is, where you were getting your healthcare information before would give you the advice, help you solve your problems, might be, you know, set your bones, cure your disease, whatever it was.

24:38
Daniel Nestle
But here we are where every single person, at least at the very outset, right? March, February, March of 2020, February, March 2020, at the very outset, and say, you know, we're all paying attention, we're all being told this is the marching orders, broad brush for everyone. I think that's where everything started to fall apart right there. Because there is no such thing that works in the United States of America. I mean, you have. It's too many people, it's too broad of a territory. There's too many. I like this is even before politics and ideology started to get involved, which should. It should never get involved in medicine. The fact that it was even allowed to get involved in medicine is a problem for every, you know, on all sides. That should never have, you know, should never have happened.

25:31
Daniel Nestle
But you had to, you know, you had to look at this like, wait a second. The breakdown is probably because they're not talking to me anymore. They're just talking to this group or that group or whatever. And they doubled down, right? The, the experts and the leaders doubled down on things that we now know are not correct. But I don't know what they're, what they were thinking at the time. And I'm not going to make that judgment with whether they had the right, whether they were acting with the best intent or not. I, I hope that they were. But, you know, when you look back at things, you find where the flaws are, but you don't always see those in the time. At, at the time. And that's understandable. But in mass, as a communicator. Right.

26:13
Daniel Nestle
This whole idea of this mass communication really is for health, actually. It's just. It astounds me that went there and it's the first time I've ever really thought about it. But I think that I'm keen to understand how the PRofession has, what they've learned from that and how the state of healthcare comms is moving forward now.

26:37
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah, listen, I think we all make a huge mistake when we think that we can scrub cultural aspects of communications out. Culture shapes who you are. It's your values, it's your belief, it's your language, it's your customs, it's your lived experience. So would you try to scrub something like that out of something as personal as healthcare communications? You're doing your organization a disservice, you're doing patients a disservice, and you're not gonna be effective. So in healthcare marketing, I think cultural comms, I say cultural. I don't even know if that's the right word. But communication, because I always go back to this notion of inclusive marketing or inclusive communications, has now become sort of this hot button thing when in and of itself, it's just communicating effectively.

27:40
Aleisia Gibson Wright
You want to tailor your message depending on the audience and depending on that audience's experience in life and how they can receive your message. That's culture and that's inclusion, and that's just marketing.

27:54
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, let's just kind of hover on this for a second because, you know, I was looking forward to talking to you about cultural communications because I think it's incredible. It's critically important and it needs to be distinguished from the topic of conversation. In government circles and, you know, in corporate America, et cetera, with the dei, it's. These are related and unrelated. And, and. And I think it's really important for people to understand that what we're talking about here is not advocating for a particular policy. What we're talking about here is communicating a message by the best possible through the best possible channels. And when we say, at least you and me today here on this, on our, in our conversation, when we say inclusive communications, I mean, it's just take the word at its value.

28:49
Daniel Nestle
It's not about, you know, making judgments about where people come from or their, you know, what they look like or. It's not identity based. It's about making sure that the audiences are communicated to in the manner in which they need to be communicated to for these critically important messages. So where does that lead us? I mean, you've got communities out there and we can call them underserved communities. You can call them, you know.

29:23
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Typically under resourced, I think.

29:25
Daniel Nestle
Under resourced.

29:26
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Under resourced because.

29:27
Daniel Nestle
Under resourced communities. Exactly right. So we have those kinds of things. We also have neighborhoods that are very culture based and sort of, you know, like enclaves of, let's say there's, you know, a certain area where it's very heavily Asian or there's a. There's a certain area where it's very heavily, like fourth first generation immigrants from someplace. Right. They are all going to respond to a communication in different ways based on whatever baggage they carry, based on whatever what their culture has told them, the culture in which they grew up with. The, The. The closer they are to that original culture. Especially for immigrants, the closer they are to that original culture, the more the communication needs to be tailored for that original culture. It's a complicated. I think it's a complicated. Very. Takes a lot of skill.

30:21
Daniel Nestle
And again, it's not about a policy. It's about, all right, there's a sickness. We need to communicate this sickness. How are we gonna communicate so these people take the right measures?

30:34
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's two. A strange sort of conflation with two words. There's the DE&I and inclusive marketing conflation. DE&I is primarily workforce. It's hiring. This, you know, marketing is just marketing. And then there's this other conflation between the word culture and then minority communities. Because you can also be your culture if you are a rancher in Montana. That's a culture. And how I would reach a rancher in Montana is just how I think as a marketer, they will be receptive to hearing the message. So that is a part of their culture. So I just want to make sure that when we say culture, everybody doesn't think, you know, an immigrant or. Yeah, it's. It's a broad. It's a word. And it's a word that, you know, talks about our. Leans into our values, our beliefs, our languages are.

31:40
Aleisia Gibson Wright
And some of our customs, but those aren't necessarily relegated to race. They're just into humans.

31:49
Daniel Nestle
Thank you for giving me some more context on that, because that's exactly. I think you're. First of all, I think you're totally right. The word culture has been conflated with D, E and I in different ways. For good or for bad, it doesn't matter. It doesn't change the fact that culture, a person's background, a person's. The way in which they communicate, the language they speak, you know, the. Whether they're out there every day on the open range like a rancher, or whether they're huddled up in a city, like, with all their buddies, like some of us have been in our life, you know, like these are different cultures. They need to be communicated to, in. In ways that make sense, especially around critical issues.

32:37
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Right.

32:38
Daniel Nestle
Yeah.

32:38
Aleisia Gibson Wright
I was going to say. And just to add, access to care could be the same in an inner city as it could be in Montana. If you don't have access. How we get you the access might be different, but how we talk to you about the need for healthcare should be tailored to how you can best receive it.

33:00
Daniel Nestle
So this is the minefield that I referred to a little bit in the upfront that I think the inclination for a lot of executives or for. Or for even, you know, the public in some ways is to immediately jump to some kind of conclusion that they're not able to do cultural marketing anymore or they're not able to do, you know, cultural culture focused communications because of the way that the sociopolitical winds are blowing. And sure, I guess it is laden with landmines here and there. You certainly want to be careful, but. But we're always careful. I mean, that's the nature of who we are. It's just a matter of, no, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. This is a critical part of what we do writ large globally. We're always practicing cultural communications.

33:53
Daniel Nestle
So you're not going to put a message, put a campaign out in Japan the same way you would here, right. I mean, just because that's just good marketing. It's not good marketing.

34:08
Aleisia Gibson Wright
That's not good marketing.

34:09
Daniel Nestle
And we want, what do we want when we market, when we communicate? We want our message to hit, resonate, sink in, persuade, right.

34:16
Aleisia Gibson Wright
And be authentic and feel authentic so that, that the end user is receptive.

34:21
Daniel Nestle
Well, if we're the good guys, if you're the good guys, you want your message to be like, you know, like that. If you're, if you're the bad guys, you want to put out some nefarious message and have that, you know, have that permeate, get in there, which is a problem. But you know, ultimately we want to reach people, right? We want to resonate, reach and resonate.

34:38
Aleisia Gibson Wright
And I'll just add, I mean, I think there are like five sort of critical things. When you're marketing or if you're an organization in health looking to market about your, around your medicine or your hospital's capabilities, I think it is, at the end of the day, building trust and credibility. It's about improving things like health literacy in an effort to improve outcomes. How people read information is different based on their lived experience. And you want to drive positive behavior change. You want them to listen, you want them to be receptive to what you're saying so that they or their family members are healthier in the long run. And it goes to strengthen your brand reputation.

35:31
Aleisia Gibson Wright
At the end of the day, this is your organization, this is your medication, this is whatever it is you're putting out into the sphere to be received, it's going to be tied back to your reputation. And if you can stand on the fact that you're not afraid to speak to people in a culturally relevant way or a way that resonates and you're not, you know, you're against broad brush campaigning or marketing, then I think your reputation will stand the test of time. Because the country, I mean, I'm speaking of the US right now, that the country is evolving. It's changing again. Going back to patient expectations, going, looking at sort of the demographics within this country. It's all changing and it's evolving. And you know, the Gen Zers or the Zoomers, as I think they're called, and the boomers have very different expectations.

36:33
Aleisia Gibson Wright
So we have to lean into that. And I think the only way to do that is to be receptive and open to difficult conversations or challenging points of view for how you should be communicating.

36:48
Daniel Nestle
It's funny you mentioned Gen Z. It's, it's always a It's a common topic that we talk about, but that's a. That is a cultural communication, like.

36:56
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah, that.

36:57
Daniel Nestle
It spans across identities and cultures. It's generational and. But by virtue of being part of a particular generation, you have to. You have to communicate with them in a specific way. And it's an aspect of cultural. Of cultural marketing, cultural communications. I would. I would say. You mentioned five things. Sorry, you said there's five critical things. Trust, credibility, health literacy, positive behavior, change. Oh, reputation.

37:26
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Reputation. Yes. I think I left off the fifth one. And that's, you know, the overall effort to reduce health disparities. You know, as a sicker. When one community sick, we're all kind of sick. We're all interconnected. So the end goal should always to be to reduce some of these health disparities that have been existing in our communities, our cultures, for a very long time. And it's time now to change that. And we've got the technology, we've got the reach, we've got evolved expectations on the part of patients for companies and organizations to do better. So there's an opportunity for us to really make a difference. Despite all of the rhetoric and the shenanigans I say that are going on, it takes.

38:24
Daniel Nestle
Look, it takes a certain amount. I was on a call earlier today with. With someone who's an expert in like, work. Work life. Like. Like, basically, yeah, work life. I'm not gonna say balance. She calls something different, but basically future of work. How. How we work together, all that kind of good stuff and workplace, well, being, et cetera. And, you know, were talking about it a little bit, and she said that, you know, there's. There's this issue with incoming generations of workers, right, Who. Who largely because of some of the benefits of AI for the older generations, you know, we have to figure out new ways to. To. To train them. They're missing out on the. On the training experience and you know, on the. Because they have all these tools available to them. Yeah, well, we have to figure out what's.

39:29
Daniel Nestle
All the grunt work that used to be their training ground is no longer there. So how. How do we train them? And, you know, how do we make companies kind of. How do we convince companies to be willing to invest in the future of their workforce by, you know, being willing to cut margins on these younger employees? For example. Just for example. And the reason I bring this up is not because were talking about young employees. It's because something you mentioned about disparities in access and technology Made me think about this whole thing where, okay, you have all these young people coming in who have some degree of understanding of AI and whatnot. It's frankly, it's not that hard to pick up at the basic level anyway.

40:18
Daniel Nestle
But that made me think that when we're talking about healthcare disparities across different, you know, geographies or locations or whatever, different communities, the access to technology is not, isn't, is in and of itself uneven. Right? I mean there's, there are in the, under resourced communities, for example, they don't have as much capability to just turn on their phones or their computers or their iPads or whatever it is to then play around with chat, GPT or whatever. Right? And that's just very, that's radically under, oversimplifying the situation. But what I'm getting at is when it comes to healthcare, you know, access to technology and we can even start to pivot here a little bit into AI because access to technology means ability to start to get into the benefits of AI or even, you know, and some of the drawbacks too.

41:26
Daniel Nestle
But when it comes to healthcare, I have personally found that AI has been extraordinarily helpful. I mean, I don't Even know if WebMD is still in business because the information that you get from the various platforms is so much richer and better. And you know, I'm, I just know myself that with the benefits of wisdom, age, context and understanding, I know like how far I can trust this. And then when I need to go talk to my doctor, right? So, and I know that's not the case for everybody. So I don't, folks living at home, don't try this at home, go to your doctor if you have a problem.

42:12
Daniel Nestle
But I'm just saying I am able to describe, you know, to my AI, I'm, you know, your patient, you're a healthcare consultant, your patient is a 53 year old male who is blah, blah, blah and has a pain in the shoulder. And I can give loads and loads of context because I grew up in a family that is very accustomed to complaining about health and you know, talking about what medicines they've had. You know, so I, my culture, I can get on there and I can just do all this and then the AI will come back to me and says, and say, well, these are the three things that are most likely wrong here. You know, you need to see a healthcare professional.

42:53
Daniel Nestle
But blah, blah, and you know, I showed it to my, by the way, I showed that to one of my doctors once and he was like, that's an incredible brief that you gave.

43:01
Aleisia Gibson Wright
It, you know, well, that's what it's all about. Yeah, yeah, that's part of what it is.

43:07
Daniel Nestle
It's part of what it is. Right.

43:08
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Understanding what to, how to ask what you're trying to get right, outcome you're trying to get right.

43:14
Daniel Nestle
So, so, so the question, or the kind of, where I want toss it over to you is, you know, that kind of experience that I've just described is not common. But in, you know, when we talk about access, even that level of healthcare access, I think, and I would call it healthcare access is extremely different from person to person. Community, Community, you know, whether or not you're, you have access to these tools or not is itself creating a further gap, you know, so how do you think this, you know, but, but on the other hand, the, you know, AI, some of these technology solutions are far cheaper than some of the healthcare solutions. For example, going to visit your doctor, going to do things.

44:02
Daniel Nestle
And again, I'm not suggesting you replace one with the other, but there's got to be a mix there's got to be a mix that works, that will improve the livelihoods of people. And at the very basic level, you know, these things, some of these disparities aren't that expensive to solve. And do you think that's going to play a role in access to healthcare? And I know, like, look, you're, I'm not talking about. I know you're a communicator. Right. So from your perspective as a communicator, do you think that's going to play a role? I mean, in the access to healthcare from, in the audiences and stakeholders that you care about?

44:38
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Listen, yes, and I think it could, but we've got to keep in mind that AI is really sort of regurgitating or pulling information from sources that already exist for the most part. I mean, you do have some that are adaptive and can do its own individual thinking. Apparently. I was frightened about that. But for the large part, I mean, like ChatGPT goes and it scrapes information from the web and what we know is some of that information is a lot of that information is inaccurate. So is it an opportunity to make it to supercharge efficiency? Yes, but there's also an issue of is it designed enough for people's cultures or individuals? Is it, is it enough. I don't think we're there yet. I just don't think we're there.

45:41
Aleisia Gibson Wright
I think once we are able to scrape or infuse accurate medical information into these AI tools then perhaps. But there's so many medical inaccuracies out there that live on the web and that will perpetuate through AI platforms that we can't 100% trust. I don't even know if this is the question, but it's just a thought that I had. And I don't think we have enough programmers of color or of different backgrounds to interrogate some of the information that's going into these platforms. So I think there's definitely an opportunity. I think we're just, we're still pretty far away from it.

46:31
Daniel Nestle
It's a mixed bag, however you cut it. I do think because I'm able to describe the context in such utter detail and too much detail, as my wife might tell me, you know, I get great answers from AI and I can, but I confirm with my healthcare, I'm not gonna go get, you know, I'm not gonna ask it to prescribe me a, you know, any medication because it certainly can't. But I have asked it to validate a medical, a medication regime that I'm on, for example. Huh. I have asked it. No, I've said to it, look, I, I visited my, like they say get second opinions. I, I went to AI for my second opinion once and I said, you know, your patient is a 53 year old male, blah, blah.

47:13
Daniel Nestle
And you know, went through the whole thing and I said, you know, his doctors just prescribed the following medications, you know, evaluate this medical regime or this, this medication regime. It was awesome. Like it gave me some very cool deep information and then I was like, let me check. And I went to, you know, to Mayo Clinic and other places to look and I mean spot on great information. So it's, it's good after the fact. The thing is though, that I'm educated about this and I know how to use it.

47:48
Aleisia Gibson Wright
That's the thing.

47:49
Daniel Nestle
And I'm, and I'm aware of my own healthcare situation and I, I take interest in it. That's not everybody. A lot of people have no awareness of how it works. They have very little awareness of the conditions that they are exposed to. The, the possibilities of, you know, what their healthcare outcomes and outlooks are because they don't necessarily go to see their doctors that often. They're not paying attention to Their diagnostics. And I've always been geeky about that kind of stuff. So, you know, I'm a focus group of one. And that's all. That's all.

48:27
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Well, may you live forever, Dan.

48:29
Daniel Nestle
Oh man, it's all anxiety driven. Everybody really is, you know, really is. But the point is though that I think that there's a lot of potential within technology to help address some of those disparity issues. And I think you're totally right. Where the content that is delivered by, whether it's an AI or a database or some other tool that it has to take into account the deeper aspects of the patient profile. Whether that, whether that's for pure physiological reasons, which would make sense from a medical standpoint or it's for, it's to sort of make some, I say, let's say, you know, statistical judgments or statistical kind of estimates about well, the likelihood of this person to have been to the doctor in the past year or the likelihood of this person to have been, you know, regularly or et cetera.

49:34
Daniel Nestle
So it's very, it's a little bit of minefield, but it's, I think, but I think it is doable. I don't know. Are you seeing any of that?

49:44
Aleisia Gibson Wright
I can definitely, I can see it in the future, but until we get there, we've got telehealth. So you get a little bit of both. You get, hey, that's pretty good. You'll get a little bit of both. You'll get some human interaction and you'll get some automation. So I definitely see a future. I'm a big proponent of AI. I just understanding what I know about where the country is and how people receive information. I think we just still have a really long way to go.

50:18
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, it's also a big function of what your fundamental issue is. I mean you're like got, God forbid you have a horrifying, terrible, you know, disease or condition. I would hope that you would be going to your, you know, to your doctor for that. But if you have a cold, you know, or you bump your shoulder and you're like that kind of hurts, you know, do a little twisty the wrong way when you're doing your sit ups. Not that's happened to me, you know, because when you get a certain age, you twisty the wrong way. That's not, that's not good. You know, that's different than, you know, hey, I found a lump or something. You know, this is very, these are very different things, but it's not that far off you know, to get that those diagnostics from.

51:12
Daniel Nestle
I mean, AI is already doing it for radiology in a lot of places and so on. Right. You know, but that's in house. Right. The doctors are using it. That's not us. You know, I'm not going to the local Walgreens and go getting into the X ray booth.

51:28
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Right.

51:28
Daniel Nestle
They don't have such a thing. And then like bringing that home and, you know, taking photos and showing it to Claude. It's, it's really. Although that would be an interesting experiment, but, you know, it's just, you know, the professionals and the knowledge that they already have. Right. But I did want to understand, though, a little bit more about cultural. The future of cultural communications. I think we've been really almost getting there. And, and my listeners know that I always talk about the fractured audiences that we have. I don't see them coalescing anytime soon. And those fractures are along multiple lines. That doesn't mean, you know, that you belong to one particular audience. It means you probably belong to 4,500 different audiences. Right.

52:17
Daniel Nestle
So in that fracturing kind of world, to base communications on culture is extremely difficult and a little bit broad, brushy sometimes, but it's a necessary input. I think it's a necessary part of the calculus that goes into deciding how to communicate with somebody. But how's that going to, you know, how do you think that's evolving into the future? And do you think that cultural communication, in the sense that we've talked about it here, is going to continue to be an important part of the comms toolkit?

52:59
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah, I absolutely think it's going to be a part of the communications toolkit, for sure. We talk a lot about storytelling in our space. Right. And in an effort, because you're right that I could show up in 45,000 different Personas. But when I see a story or I hear a story, a person who looks like me or can relate to me, and so I feel like I can relate to them, I think that's gonna be the critical turning point. Like the more we can storytell, the more we can show real people, I think that too helps us sort of hurtle over the DE and I aspect. If you're just storytelling, you're just showcasing a person's real life lived experience, that's just storytelling. And I think there's an opportunity to lean into that more.

53:58
Aleisia Gibson Wright
And I think the expectations of patients and healthcare consumers is more wanting to see themselves some aspect of themselves in who's communicating the story.

54:15
Daniel Nestle
It's highly personal.

54:16
Aleisia Gibson Wright
It's highly personal, that particular field.

54:18
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, I agree. I would just offer a caveat that especially people out there listening about when they hear the word storytelling, it hits in different ways. In fact, I just released a, a, a video the other day about how people misinterpret storytelling through a different channel that I have. But the, the thing about storytelling is, you know, it's not fiction. Like, we're not talking about fictional storytelling. We're not talking about fairy tales, we're not talking about making up. What we are talking about is building a narrative that resonates with someone that has a beginning, middle and an end that really plugs into our fundamental human nature to want information delivered to us in the form of a talk around the campfire. Right there. It's, it's hardwired in to all of us.

55:18
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Now your for you page.

55:20
Daniel Nestle
It's your for you page. That's a great way to think about. Except some of those for you pages don't have an end, which is, there's endless. So stories need to sort of go somewhere, you know, and you need to be the hero of that journey or you know, the product needs to be the hero of that journey. Whatever it is. There is a pro, like a. The caveat I was going to say is that we have to be real careful. Storytelling is so powerful that we are delivering the same set of facts to these, to every audience, you know, that require those facts. So I'm not saying that if you have a. Let's just use a product. For example, you know, if you have an iPhone and an iPhone has 50 features, right?

56:09
Daniel Nestle
You can tell a story around those 50 features, but you might leave some of them out for some audiences and some of them out for other audiences. Some of them out for other audiences. But you're all, but you're all. You will be factually using the same features, right? You know, the accessibility features, for example, are not going to be important for like 22 year olds for the most part who want to use the iPhone. Right? I mean there's always some. But the large print, the fact that you can, you know, you can read things very large doesn't really matter to people who don't wear glasses. So you know, that's just one example. Like in healthcare though, you know, most of the facts are salient to everybody and there are, you know, there.

56:54
Daniel Nestle
It's important to make sure that you tell the stories in the way that not only resonates but also delivers the same information across. So there's no disparity.

57:02
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. The continuity of the message should be there. It's just the, you know, the messenger is as important as the message in a lot of ways.

57:15
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, I mean, I think that makes sense. I don't, I don't think that's a D, E and I issue at all. I mean, I think that this is simply good communication.

57:26
Aleisia Gibson Wright
I agree 100%. I don't know where this conflation started. I wish I could go back and undo it. It just, it's exhausting, especially as a person who sort of built my new level of career as an entrepreneur, talking to people in ways in which they can receive a message. And that's just, again, PR and marketing message. Again, the message is as important as the messenger and vice versa.

57:59
Daniel Nestle
Yeah, so. So, yeah. Well, I'm just looking at the, at our timer. I can't believe we've already been talking for like an hour. So before we finally wind it down, I just, I did want to ask you. So tell me a little bit about how you're putting all this into practice now, you know, and where, where are you focusing and, you know, what is in your mind? I think the key, I think the key point that you want to deliver to your clients, to our listeners with regard to your business.

58:36
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Yeah, yeah. I am leaning into the fact that I have brought many products to market as a part of big teams. I know healthcare. I know the regulated environment. I also know the importance of messaging and the importance of storytelling. And the evolving world in which we live in is doing just that. It's evolving. It's changing constantly. So I have created this company that's going to flex and be the pendulum that swings back and forth like culture does. So it is about get in where you can fit in and do the work that is important, that helps you reach the end goal, and that is to make sure that people are living healthier lives. It's also about driving revenue. And I also can't stand the fact that we leave that part of the conversation off. Being inclusive in your marketing is good business.

59:45
Aleisia Gibson Wright
It is about bringing more people under the tent. It is about keeping more people under the tent through compliance and persistence and all of those things that keep us healthy. And that's it. I feel like my company is the company for the future because I think it is going to. The culture swings back and forth and we will be there as it swings back and forth, and it is about real people, it's about real stories. It's about helping companies maximize their business opportunity by reaching more people.

01:00:24
Daniel Nestle
Yeah. And it's going to be critical going into the future for communicators, you know, like having a steady.

01:00:30
Aleisia Gibson Wright
You've got to be able to flex. You've got to be able to flex because one thing that is constant is change.

01:00:38
Daniel Nestle
I, I think that sums up a lot of the way that, you know, me and some other folks just like us who are out there who've hung out our own shingle. There's this capability to flex like never before.

01:00:53
Aleisia Gibson Wright
You learn a lot about yourself.

01:00:55
Daniel Nestle
Oh, man. And, you know, some of it's, you know, I'm not gonna, it's not easy. And, you know, there's certainly, there's a lot of anxiety and it's daunting in some ways. And maybe you don't have the right formula when you start out. Whatever it is, there's a lot of variables. But I remember 20 something years ago when I went out on my own for the first time. Very, very different situation. I couldn't, I couldn't do anything without. I mean, I could do my work, but I couldn't move my business forward unless I had a consultant to help me with this or, you know, somebody to help me with, you know, putting together my payroll or my billing systems or, you know, whatever there is.

01:01:42
Daniel Nestle
But now, I mean, between AI and whether, and all the other tools that are out there, we have a lot at our disposal that we still have to spend time with it, but it allows us to focus in on our audiences and our customers more. And, and, you know, I think the timing is, has never been better to be out on your own. And, and, you know, I'm glad that I met you and that you're out on your own. And, you know, I predict that we will collaborate on certain things. We've talked about it a little bit, you know, awesome. It'll happen. But look, Alicia, I, I am, I love talking to you.

01:02:23
Daniel Nestle
And, you know, there was a, there's a couple other things that I had on my list that I wanted to kind of reach out to you about, but we'll save it for another time. We had a, we had a little conversation on LinkedIn a while back about this whole displaced professionals situation.

01:02:38
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Oh, the displaced professionals.

01:02:40
Daniel Nestle
I didn't like the word. And you were like, you were okay with it, and I was thinking, oh, we cool to have a little disagreement on my show to show how people, how normal adult people can actually have different opinions. Opinions about something and survive.

01:02:56
Aleisia Gibson Wright
And survive.

01:02:58
Daniel Nestle
But, but we'll save that for another time. And I think I want our listeners to find you to go and to meet you. Check out Alicia Gibson Wright on LinkedIn and her name will be spelled properly in the episode title. It's not what you. It's not exactly as it sounds. Gibson Wright is. Alicia isn't. So it's Alicia Gibson Wright, GWH HealthPR.com and GW Health Public Relations. So check her out at GW Health.com look for on LinkedIn. Any other place that people can find you. Alicia, are you out speaking? Are you out like doing the circuit? Are you know.

01:03:37
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Well, I'm working on something on Thursday, but that's gotta wait for a little while. It's gonna, there's gonna be an unveiling this summer, apparently. I know. Yeah, I'll be at conferences, so I'm sure I'll see somebody in the industry at a conference and they'll say, oh, my gosh, you were on the trending Communicator. I heard you.

01:03:59
Daniel Nestle
Oh, that would be gold.

01:04:01
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Awesome.

01:04:03
Daniel Nestle
Well, we do have a lot of mutual contacts and I know, it's another reason why I was shocked we hadn't met before. But to all of our friends out there, our mutual friends, to all the folks listening out there, who our. Our friends to be, thank you very much. And Alicia, you know, I gotta have you back on. This is gonna be great. There's so much more to talk about.

01:04:24
Aleisia Gibson Wright
Well, yeah, let's talk this displaced.

01:04:28
Daniel Nestle
We'll put a pin in that one.

01:04:29
Aleisia Gibson Wright
We'll put a pin in it. Thanks so much. Oh, my gosh, thank you. This has been so much fun. I could keep going.

01:04:41
Daniel Nestle
Thanks for taking the time to listen in on today's conversation. If you enjoyed it, please be sure to subscribe through the podcast player of your choice. Share with your friends and colleagues and leave me a review. Five stars would be preferred, but it's up to you. Do you have ideas for future guests or you want to be on the show? Let me know@dantrendingcommunicator.com thanks again for listening to the Trending Communicato.