Operating in 70+ countries with zero room for error

[00:00:00] Terrence Wiggins:  At the end of the day, it is about the patient. Could be your mother, your father, your sister, your aunt, your uncle, right? A best friend, a neighbor. So what these physicians do really matters and like I said, save and impact patients’ lives and patients’ families. I’m in a very regulated healthcare device.

[00:00:19] I’m not in consumer packaged goods, or I’m not in tech where my company and the entire ecosystem had to make sure that we’re on brand, right? We have specific claims, we have data to back that up, and that’s important. You know, we try to work with physicians early through their career, through medical education, which is a strong opportunity to have them understand the technology and the disease states as they continue to grow and build their practice.

[00:00:43] So a physician, like a radiologist, may know how to do a diagnostic and put a catheter up, et cetera, but the technology from the company, that’s always changing, and that’s important as well. And that’s where we and marketeers come into play to explain why product A is different than product B, right? And it’s not just around features and benefits, it’s around the value proposition.

[00:01:03] And how do you do that? Through great storytelling.

[00:01:11] Jason Hemingway: Today’s guest is Terrence Wiggins, a marketing leader at Cordis Corporation. And that’s a company that’s been at the heart of cardiovascular innovation for nearly 70 years, from the first guide wire to the first drug-eluting stent. Terrence is a global medtech executive with over two decades of experience across organizations, including Stryker, Integra LifeSciences, Terumo, and Cook Medical. And he’s led teams of over 50 professionals, directed commercial strategy across billion-dollar portfolios, and overseen more than 40 product launches across 135 countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific. I mean, that’s an incredible, different set of teams. So, in this episode, we’re going to explore the critical role language plays in driving patient safety across global markets. Interesting angle. And Terrence, really good to have you on the show.

[00:02:04] Terrence Wiggins: Jason, thank you. I’m honored to be here. Thanks for tapping me on the shoulder to give me the opportunity.

[00:02:09] Jason Hemingway: Let’s get to the first question, you know, and I always like to go into, you know, people’s backgrounds and where they kind of came from. But you’ve had, Terrence, something like 20 years in medtech at Stryker, Integrer, Terumo, Cook Medical, and now Cordis more recently. What sort of started you in this world, and what keeps you in it?

[00:02:29] Terrence Wiggins: Well, thanks, Jason. You know, I like to describe myself as a career marketer. As you mentioned, I’ve been in, you know, marketing, healthcare marketing for 20+ years. And my marketing origin story actually started off with even before all those great companies, Bristol Myers Squibb. And I was there at the pharmaceutical company. And it was interesting what they did is they got all their marketers together and built a program around marketing excellence. So, imagine just being there, and I got to hear from some of these great marketers, and they were really focusing on how do we drive value propositions? How do we segment? How do we target? How do we drive a tactical plan? And again, I was just a young guy coming straight out of college, and I was like soaking this all up. And I got a passion for it. And so, you know, from there, I went to a small startup that was eventually acquired by Stryker. And then I spent 10 years at Terumo, which was awesome. Got to be able to be on top of a lot of products, manage a lot of products. At some point in my career, I was, you know, head of global marketing for Cook. And that was another wonderful experience. But I’m on to new ventures. And I’m really excited because I think what Cordis is doing and where they’re going is going to new frontiers beyond things we’ve seen before. And I’m happy to be part of this team now.

[00:03:42] Jason Hemingway: It sounds exciting. I think that sounds like a really, really good move. So, let’s look at the kind of bio universe. I’m sort of looking, and a lot of bios in some of the stuff that you’ve been doing are interventional radiologists, interventional cardiologists. I had to look these up, by the way. I mean, that’s quite a specialist to me. But they are people that are, you know, very skilled and vascular surgeons. I mean, interventional radiologists for the audience, they’re just people who kind of use CT scanning and sort of radiology and then do very, very, very low, intense, low invasive, kind of very minute kind of surgical fixes, which is incredibly interesting. Probably not for this podcast. It’s a completely different conversation from most marketing leaders. It’s very specialized. 

[00:04:32] Terrence Wiggins: You know, thinking of brand, 

[00:04:33] Jason Hemingway: what does that even mean when your audience is choosing a device mid-procedure or, you know, in that sort of world?

[00:04:41] Terrence Wiggins: I’m blessed to be in the area of healthcare marketing. What that means is, at the end of the day, it is about the patient, right, Jason? It could be your mother, your father, your sister, your aunt, your uncle, right, a best friend, a neighbor. So, what these physicians do really matters. And like I said, save and impact patients’ lives and patients’ families, right? And we are, I’m in a very regulated healthcare device, right? I’m like, I’m not in consumer packaged goods, or I’m not in, you know, tech where I really, we, you know, my company and the entire ecosystem had to make sure that we’re on brand. Right? We have specific claims. Right? We have data to back that up. And that’s important. The other piece I want to talk about, too, Jason, is, you know, we try to work with physicians early through their career, right, through medical education, which is a strong opportunity to have them understand the technology and the disease states as they continue to grow and build their practice. Right? So, a physician you mentioned earlier, like a radiologist, may know how to do a diagnostic and put a catheter up, etc, but the technology from the company, that’s always changing, and that’s important as well. And that’s where we and marketeers come into play to explain why product A is different than product B, right? And it’s not just around features and benefits, Jason. I teach my team a lot. It’s around the value proposition. And how do you do that? Through great storytelling.

[00:06:09] Jason Hemingway: I think that resonates with any marketing leader. It’s interesting to see that, or to hear that you’re doing the same things, even in an incredibly specialist kind of area. It’s like you’re educating the market early. You’ve got some programs going out to sort of capture people from a brand perspective, really, really early. And then you’re building that value, you know, thinking about value propositions and value to the end user. And also, from your perspective, it’s keeping in mind that the actual ultimate beneficiary of all of this is actually the patient, which is a really interesting sort of thing. It’s like by proxy, which is really nice. And it lends itself to storytelling, doesn’t it? Because you can talk about the human side of what that person is doing, i.e., the patient story, you know, fixing people and all of those kinds of things. So, I think that’s great. It seems to me like a brand, although, you know, Joe Public, myself included, may not have originally heard of Cordis. It’s a brand that’s indispensable to those kinds of specialists across all, and I was looking across something like 70 different countries or 70+ countries, and they’re speaking different languages, maybe even working under different clinical standards or at least different regulatory standards across, you know, you’ve got NICE in Europe, I think, and all those kinds of things, and what is in the States? I can’t remember. I’m not a medical expert, but there’s the federal government basically has standards.

[00:07:28] The FDA. FDA. You’re right.

[00:07:29] FDA. I was going there, but I wasn’t confident that I was going there. Yeah, so the FDA, you’re right. So, how do you make sure that that brand carries the same trust and the same authority from, I don’t know, Tokyo to Philadelphia, let’s say, across the world?

[00:07:44] Terrence Wiggins: Well, I love that you mentioned Philadelphia. Go Eagles. That’s where I’m from, everybody. Sorry if I’m, you know, getting people upset from the Giants and Dallas Cowboys and the NFC East, etc. But what I want to say is, listen, you know, what I look at and what in my career, I think about what is the core story we’re trying to, you know, tell. And again, why is it different? Why is it better? Why is it differentiated? You know, for example, physicians don’t have, think of like a grocery store, right? There’s a lot of shelf space. If you take something off the shelf and replace it, it better be better than what’s there or have some type of differentiating factor. And in the U.S., right, they have ASCs and OBLs. They may not have, you know, infinite shelf space, even in academic and hospital centers as well. So, you’ve got to think about there’s a lot of different decision makers, it’s not sometimes just only the physician, it may be the inventory manager, maybe the c-suite of the hospital, and there could be an economic story to tell, right? There could be, obviously, a quality of life story to tell. There could be an ease of use, the ability to get patients in and out faster because of the technology that is being used. Now, Jason, you picked on something that I think is important because that story does have to change in a different region. Again, I have had the experience, the wonderful experience of managing global teams. And what that means is whatever our core story is, it’s got to resonate within that region because business in that region may be a little different. So, I think what we need to do as marketers, and I would encourage marketers, sales, commercial teams, is really understanding what is that region? What’s going to resonate? Having focus groups, understanding if there’s tenders or reimbursement or bringing other commercial groups together. So, in that way, you’re telling a story that sticks.

[00:09:37] Jason Hemingway: I mean, that’s really interesting. And I think, you know, when you think about that sort of, so you’re getting that kind of local expertise, ideally, and bringing it to the table and understanding local market. And you’ve got all these different, as we talked about before, those regulatory approvals, different clinical expectations, I guess, and different language requirements changing in those kinds of markets. How do you maintain, like, that global message when those rules, those markets, are sort of changeable or different?

[00:10:05] Terrence Wiggins: I don’t want to put your audience to sleep in getting, you know, under looking underneath the hoods. There’s a lot of ways to do that. I know, just very generally speaking, usually what we have is a claims matrix. So, you look at all the clinical data that’s out there, and you have it in, you know, sometimes I like to call it the Medical Device Bible or that product guide, right? And you’re trying to understand what’s already published out there, what will be published at specific trade shows, or vascular opportunities, or trade journals, and then you also try to drive, all right, for example, your marketing material, your campaigns, your brochures link back to that claims matrix. A lot of companies do it a lot of different ways, maybe they may call it many different things, but I think the most important part of that is that cross-functional alignment. Right? So, marketeers, what we want to say, we got to make sure that we connect with our legal team, our medical affairs team, our regulatory team, because again, no one looks great in an orange jumpsuit, right, so we got to make sure that we’re on brand and we are aligned and it’s fair and it’s balanced, right? So, again, as marketeers, we have to be very cognizant of the message and bring in our groups along. So, therefore, this is the product message that does resonate and is impactful, and it showcases, obviously, the value proposition.

[00:11:25] Jason Hemingway: That’s really interesting. And of course, there is a massive downside. You said orange jumpsuits kind of glibly, but you know, there’s this safety issue, and it is, you know, it’s a heavy thing. You know, you’ve got to get it right. So, let’s look at your time at Cook Medical. You led sort of, I don’t know, I think I’ve read 40 global launches across 135 different countries. And in your opinion, so, from that experience, what does a successful global launch look like? And what do the ones that have that struggle have in common? Let’s take the successful one first, and then we can look at the ones that maybe struggle a bit more after.

[00:11:59] Terrence Wiggins: Great question. And listen, out of the 40 product launches that I’ve managed in my career and hoping to manage some more, not everything’s successful, right? And that’s good because that’s where you really learn. Right? And when you have a large team, I think it’s important to make sure you have roles and responsibilities aligned. You need to communicate that as a global leader, you need to motivate and empower, right, you need to also, you know, I’m going to use the pressure word, right? You need to put a little pressure to make sure that we think outside the box and creativity, right? If we do everything that every company is doing, we’re not going to stand out. And that’s important to make sure. How do we stand out amongst the noise that’s already out there, right? We only have so much time in a day, and we’re trying to grab a physician’s attention while he’s at the scrub sink or he’s about to go into a case, and you need to be able to have a very finite story that’s clear and easy to understand. That’s also concise. But when you ask the question around launches, as I circle back, you know, I think it’s important to have, you know, preparing the market, right, anticipating what’s coming, that’s a big part of it. A lot of companies do that through social media. I know I have a lot of experience working through social media and priming the market. In addition to that, I think it’s important to prime the internal audience, making sure your commercial team, and your leaders and your sales team know, right, the pricing, the product, the features and benefits, the value proposition, what is coming, you know, from the marketing team, and the medical education team and the reimbursement team, right? And what I mean by that is launching a product is not just through marketing. I look at launching as like in the U.S., the Super Bowl of Marketing, right? There’s a lot going on. You want to put on a good event, but you have to involve so many stakeholders to make sure it’s on behalf of the company, right? And the company is doing a great job, not just marketing. And then when you look at some of the things around supply, right? That’s important. You can have the best technology, a great product and a great message, but if you don’t have supply, right, physicians can’t get their hands on it, or it goes on the back order, oh my God, I said the B word, then you’re in a lot of trouble. So, you’ve got to make sure people have access to it, and they’re trained on it as well, right? Because again, we talked about safety. You’ve got to make sure that happens. So, those are the things that are, that I think are, and there’s a lot more, Jason, but I’m just trying to say, you know, you put in a bottle, those are the formulas that really make a launch versus break a launch. Does that make sense?

[00:14:30] Jason Hemingway: I guess when you think about that, part of the second half of my question, ones that struggle, they perhaps don’t, they have probably the thing that’s common amongst them is one of those things might not be right. You know, whether it’s the, you know, the B word as you called it, or it’s, you know, supply and, you know, demand outstripping supply. If you’ve done a great job, but don’t have the stuff to be able to complete the orders, that’s not great. So, I mean, it’s a fascinating sort of area because you have, I think it’s quite complicated compared to something like a tech business where, you know, the supply is the, you know, software as a service in our case, or, you know, and that’s just there, you know, the supply is almost infinite because you just log into it, you know, that kind of thing. So, it’s very interesting. Let’s go back to one thing that I really liked that you said about storytelling and how that might have to adapt for different audiences. You talked about, you know, the CFO and maybe a surgeon, a patient, you know. I’m really interested in, you know, not only that story that you have to tell that’s different, but when those have to then work in, I don’t know, 20 or 30 languages, what’s the sort of scaffolding, the intelligence that needs to sit around all the content that you’re putting out there? Is it simply treated as translation, or is there something more to it that you have to think about?

[00:15:40] Terrence Wiggins: I think it’s important to take a step back. And I look at marketing as an ecosystem, understanding the market and the unmet needs, right? That’s a lot of where the homework really comes together. Then the rubber meets the road and the tactical and marketing plan. And the last piece where I think a lot of people forget about, but I think it’s important, is to go back and look at, did you do what you say you were going to do? What has changed or shifted because you have launched a product or entered the market? And what would you do differently? Right? So, an after-action review or performance management or some type of dashboarding that tells you, you know, like I said, what’s going on within the market. But when you ask the question around, I think let’s go back to that first step, that first step of really understanding what is the unmet marketing? What’s the business opportunity? Right? Do you have the strategic opportunities to really make a headwind inside the market? Right? Do you have the resources to do it, as far as budget and people? Do you have the right key opinion leaders that can help you get your message out there clear? So, and then also, where is the market going? Right? If you launch a market, you may have great results in year one, but the market may change because there could be some new technology that makes you obsolete. So, Jason, what I really think about is, and companies have opportunities to do what they call stage gates, right, getting market readiness, that new idea to then building the product, then releasing the product. But to answer it, to simply answer your question, the more time you can really dot your, you know, dot your I’s and cross your T’s in that state, you know, that really market readiness, market opportunity, the more successful you’re going to be when you launch, and then you adjust to what’s going on in the market.

[00:17:25] Jason Hemingway: I think it’s interesting when you go into a market, isn’t just thinking about how you’re going to communicate in that market, it’s thinking about the kind of bit at the beginning, which is, what’s the research telling you about that market? What intelligence can you gather at the beginning, as well as the intelligence of speaking the right language, and you know, communicating effectively, but it comes after, doesn’t it? Maybe that initial, you know, thinking of the plan. And I guess when you’re looking at AI, I mean, we have to talk about AI. I say this in every podcast; we’re almost contractually obliged to mention AI. And why not? It’s such a pervasive kind of thing at the moment. I think we should. And it’s what people are really interested in. When you’re launching across multiple markets at once. So, let’s say you’ve got your research, you understand what markets you’re going into, and it might be, you know, several, maybe 10, I don’t know. How does the conversation about that content readiness need to, sort of start? And does AI kind of help that, getting, or is MedTech still figuring that kind of thing out?

[00:18:26] Terrence Wiggins: I think we’re still figuring it out. Like I said, I’ve had the wonderful opportunity to be with a couple of different organizations where I’ve seen the impact of AI, or I guess the early impact of AI and opportunities where it can go. Some companies can go out and partner with other companies like Palantir or others, or they can buy, you know, AI packages, right? And make their own sort of ecosystems within AI. And I know companies are doing that. I’m aware of that. As well as marketers are leveraging AI, you know, through ChatGPT, or Gemini, or Claude, or, again, I feel like it’s happening so fast when I go on to LinkedIn, there’s always a new opportunity on how to use AI. Ultimately, I think at the end of the day, as marketeers, what I’m hearing from my peer group is we cannot not ignore AI. AI, to me, think about it, you know, 20 years ago, when there was Office Suite, and you had the Office tools and PowerPoint and Excel. You know, I was actually learning that stuff when I was in college, and now obviously have been using it. AI is like that tool for younger audiences and also for older generations to really understand it. If you do not, you will be left behind, right? Companies are figuring out ways to use AI to leapfrog in front of other companies, right? And so you need to have an AI strategy, and you need to also figure out where you can do it safely, right? Like I said, we’re regulated, but I think that’s important. Don’t forget about the technology. I think it can optimize it. You can make things faster. You can generate content. But also, that last part, Jason, you’ve got to make sure you customize it and make sure it’s your voice. I go on LinkedIn all the time, and I see LinkedIn posts from folks, and I was like, that sounded like 50 other LinkedIn posts because they’re all using ChatGPT or Claude, right? So, you’ve got to be able to customize it to make sure it’s really speaking your language and your terminology.

[00:20:23] Jason Hemingway: That’s true of any brand. I think it’s your tone of voice has to say true. You have to feel authentic. I think that’s one thing that you need to start working in, which talks to your sort of LinkedIn thing, where everybody’s putting up loads of stuff. And there’s always tells, not just EM dashes, which I think everyone kind of gets, but there’s sentence structure and all of that, which are kind of tells. But it’s interesting, nothing more so than in your market, where you have to be really careful with it because it’s regulated and people’s lives depend on it. So, in that kind of 

[00:20:52] Terrence Wiggins: vein, 

[00:20:53] Jason Hemingway: where or how do you decide? I know you said that MedTechs are thinking about how to use it rather than probably using it at a massive scale. But what would you feel, how do you decide, or what’s the decision parameters where you’d sort of feel comfortable letting AI handle, you know, content or output, let’s say, and what still needs, from your perspective, that human kind of eye or the hand on the tiller, if you will?

[00:21:20] Terrence Wiggins: The high-level response to that one, Jason, is one: when you’re using AI, be careful, making sure you understand the policies and the rules within your organization, right? You may be dealing with some confidential information, new technology that you don’t want to just upload to ChatGPT and obviously, have your secrets, right, your company secrets out there. Like I said, some companies have their own version of it, so therefore, it stays within their own ecosystem. But if you work for an organization that doesn’t, I would just make sure you understand from your leadership, your management, what’s allowed and what’s not allowed. Try to ask what their AI policy is. And if, maybe you’re running a small organization and you’re the boss, right? Maybe you’re the marketing guy, the owner, the sales guy. Again, I would say really test it a little bit, right? Because what you’re trying to do, as you mentioned earlier, is do something different, not be a part of the pack. Do you have a new idea? Or if you have some marketing sort of content creation that you need to create, you know, you can use AI to optimize it. But it always, I believe right now, still takes a human to look at it, police it, put it in your tone, massage it before you deliver it. So yes, to answer your question, make sure you really understand your company policies before you start, really, you know, going down that rabbit hole. And if you are a smaller startup or a smaller organization where you’re the boss, just be careful. There are some benefits, right? But there’s also some opportunities that you can be blindsided if you don’t know how to use it correctly.

[00:22:54] Jason Hemingway: Yeah. 100%. And I think we talk a lot about guardrails and guidelines and things like that, you know, especially when using technology to produce it, it actually can help with that. And without losing that authenticity, we’re at what I call the mid-show moment. It’s the same question usually to anyone. You’re no different in this respect. So, what was the biggest language fail that you’ve come across in your career?

[00:23:18] Terrence Wiggins: It’s really just, we talked about authenticity earlier, authenticity, right, and that is important because you want to make sure you are authentic, but not feeling like you’re scripted when you communicate to your internal stakeholders, but also to your external stakeholders too. So, when you talk about terminology or language fail, I live in a world where there’s a lot of acronyms, right? There’s a lot of, you know, big words that sometimes leaders use. I like to simplify it, but I also don’t want to come across as, well, that’s scripted. But the thing is, I thought about how I want to, you know, what I want to say and how I want to deliver it. But does that come off as scripted if it’s so, sort of, that you think about it ahead of time? So, I think about really taking like a syringe and injecting the human in it, right? For example, you could be running a meeting or running a group, and yeah, we all have goals and objectives, but just take a pause. How is this team doing? What matters to you most? And I think what I’ve learned through reading books and really just practicing it is, you know, Brene Brown and things like that, is really just asking better questions, right? It’s less about what you say. It’s really about what is really going on. And then also, “Hey, this is what I think I heard you say.” So therefore, people understand they’re being heard. That’s very important to me. And that’s something I’ve been practicing quite a bit

[00:24:40] Jason Hemingway: So, now, since your biggest language fail, it’s probably not listening properly or asking good questions. It’s quite interesting. I think better questions is something that we can all get better at, but it’s a really useful tool, I think, especially in leadership. We did our homework, here at the In Other Words podcast crew, and apparently, I’m told that you have a really good Tiger Woods story from your early days. And I just thought you might want to impart that to the audience.

[00:25:04] Terrence Wiggins: Well, thank you for doing that. You know, I’m wearing a Nike shirt, which I know Tiger Woods is a sponsor of Nike. Sometimes I get the, you know, you almost look like Tiger Woods if I put on a Nike hat. Jason, I’m glad you asked that question. It’s a great story. I’ll keep it brief. And if you ever meet me personally, feel free to tap me on the shoulder, I’ll tell you the more, longer version of the story. Even before my marketing career, MedTech career, I actually had an internship opportunity with the PGA Tour, Ponte Vedra, Florida. And it was in 2001. It was a summer internship. So, I’m originally from New Jersey. I got a chance to, this is before, it was summer between my junior and senior year, right? So, I graduated, while I was moving into my senior year, didn’t graduate yet, and I had the opportunity to go down there and be working for the PGA Tour. It was a wonderful opportunity. I think there were about 30 interns at the time. I was the communication guy. So, being part of the tour, you have a lot of privileges. One, I love to golf, and I was on that driving range every single time I could, right? Number two, you got to see a lot of the players, right? These are celebrities walking around, right? Mickelson, Elder, right? Tiger, right? And so you get to see them walking around the facility, and I got access. In addition, you get to eat in the mess hall there, right, where some of the players, you know, have their lunches and their breakfasts and their opportunities. So, anyway, we fast forward, it’s around, you know, the middle of the summer. I’m a month into my internship. It’s lunchtime. I grab lunch. I’m sitting at a table with like 5 or 6 of my fellow interns, and it happens to be the Open Championship was probably about a week or a week later, and believe it or not, you know, Duval was a Jacksonville native. He got a chance to meet with the interns. Very nice. And Tiger obviously was everybody’s favorite in 2001, right? So, Tiger was at sort of at the height or the come up of his fame and publicity. And one of the interns was having this debate on who was going to win the Open Championship. Was it going to be Duval or was it going to be Woods? I opened my big mouth, and I said, “Oh, you know, I think Tiger’s over hype. And, you know, I think he’s not going to do well. And I think Duval is going to kill him, blah, blah, blah. He’s going to come in first place and everything.” And so, as I start to become more animated and more confident, I suddenly see all my interns slowly stop talking. And there was a sense of dread and concern on their faces. And I stopped, and I said, “Tiger Woods is behind me, isn’t he?” And sure enough, Jason, Tiger Woods was right behind me listening to this loudmouth 21-year-old talk crap in his house. And thank God he didn’t do anything, but he did give me a finger and point me, and I felt like, oh, my God, I’m going to lose my job, I’m going to go back to New Jersey, and there’s the end of my career. No, he didn’t do that. He was nice enough. He just pointed to me. I pointed to him, and I was, you know, I knew to shut up real quick. The tagline of that story, if you Wikipedia Duval, and if you Wikipedia the 2001 Open Championship, Duval came in number one. That was his only Open Championship that he won. And Tiger was ninth. So, I got to think, maybe I got in his head a little bit. I don’t know.

[00:28:15] Jason Hemingway: You did. You’re to blame. You ought to blame. But I mean, what a fascinating story. And it’s funny you moved swiftly away from the PGA and then into MedTech.

[00:28:23] Absolutely. I was 

[00:28:23] Terrence Wiggins: like, 

[00:28:23] Jason Hemingway: let 

[00:28:24] Terrence Wiggins: me just change industries altogether, right? And I saw Tiger a couple of times that summer. And when he went left, I went right. So, let’s just tell you, I was avoiding him at all costs.

[00:28:35] Jason Hemingway: So, let’s go even further away from the PGA and that story with the next, sort of, set of questions, which are going back to sort of the way you operate in your business. And Cordis, I know, doesn’t answer to Wall Street, but you’ve also worked inside businesses that are publicly listed. And does that change anything about how you operate?

[00:28:52] Terrence Wiggins: Yeah, I think it does. You know, I’ve worked for a company called Terumo that obviously wasn’t traded on the U.S. Stock Exchange, but did answer to financial stakeholders over in the Asia Pacific area, specifically in Japan. And even Cordis does, you know, is not available, right, their finance, it’s a private company, but they do have, obviously, a private equity group that we talk to. Obviously, they work with. And Cook Medical, a private organization based in Bloomington, Indiana, right, they don’t have to speak to, you know, the Wall Street, etc. I think there’s a difference in working for those organizations, right? A public organization, a Stryker, right, a Terumo, versus a private or a PE held. I think private and PE held can, you know, guide their own faith and destine their own ship is what I’m trying to say. Obviously, there are demands that is from the leadership team and the things they want to have happen and see. We’re all going to work to help with those goals and objectives, versus I feel like with a publicly held company, there’s a little bit more pressure, right? Because there’s a little bit more stakeholders that want to make sure they’re getting a good return, right, on their stocks and their investment as well. For me, I’ve always thrived in high environments, fast-pacing, high-impacting environment. I try to look at it as, at the end of the day, we want to make sure we have the best message because I’m very competitive myself, right? I do StrengthsFinder. Competitive is my number one strength finder. And I want to push and push my teams, whether it’s a private owned company or a public owned company, my thought is always, how can we be the best at what we do? That’s thriving. What I always want to do is have the best marketing team, or be part of the best marketing team, so therefore, we stand out in like a bunch of the competition. It’s not for everybody. Right? But it’s the how you do it. Right? And that’s important. And I’m still learning it. Right? How do you get the best out of teams? So, hopefully that’ll answer your question. I think there’s a difference. But again, it’s up to the leader how you position that.

[00:30:53] Jason Hemingway: I think you’re right. It’s your driving and you sort of drive the same thing, regardless of operational constraints caused by how you’re structured or owned. So, we talked about the people aspect, which is, you know, let’s talk a bit about infrastructure and, you know, maybe some operational backbone technology process with things like content systems, when you’re operating across, you know, many markets. At what point do you decide you need specialist tools and intelligence and tech infrastructure rather than sort of trying to build it yourself or cobble it together? What’s your sort of thinking on that operational sort of backbone stuff?

[00:31:30] Terrence Wiggins: You know, we go back, and we talked about the three stages of marketing, right? That market assessment opportunity, then the marketing plan and then the performance management and looking back and dashboarding how’d you do? I think a lot of, in the beginning, part of the homework assignment is taking a step back, right? Just because you want, or should, or have the technology to do something, you have to ask the question, can you do that? Do you have the right resources? And what do you need to win, right? And you may not have that immediately. I remember examples where I was working for a company, and we had a commercial distribution deal. And at the end of the day, I was thinking, I have no budget for marketing. I have no budget. I don’t have the right folks to help me, really, the ecosystem to help me. And I don’t have the right channels. I worried. I remember not sleeping very well because my management team at the time said, “You have the existing budget, you’ve got to figure it out.” But over time, I think it’s important to not worry. Even if you don’t have it, it’s important to influence and build the big business case. Even if you don’t have it immediately, build the business case. Showcase to your leadership and your management team how much further you can get to the finish line and maybe over the finish line, right? It’s always nice to provide expectations beyond, right, to overexceed expectations. And so that’s what we did. Me and my team built the business case, and we went and created the ask, and the ask was buttoned up, and we got the things. So, I would say that one, build out what you think you need, make sure you ask for it, right, and you have data to support it. Even if you get a no right now, a no at this point, make sure you ask again, right? And hopefully you’ll get what you need. Or I think what you need to do is you need to lower expectations, right? If you can’t meet A, B, and C because you don’t have D, E, and F, then just say, “Hey, I can do A, and I just need these types of resources.” You wanna set yourself up to win. And I think part of that is influencing and being real and being honest about your capabilities. If not, you’re gonna upset yourself, and you’re gonna upset your leadership team.

[00:33:40] Jason Hemingway: Yeah, and I think that’s good advice. You know, if the business case is solid and you don’t get the investment, then you have to manage expectations that you can’t deliver what you said you would. 

[00:33:49] Terrence Wiggins: So, 

[00:33:49] Jason Hemingway: it’s fairly good. But let’s talk about some success that you’ve had. And when you were at Cook, you launched #FindCookRed on LinkedIn, which is actually still growing. I look, and to 15.4% engagement on LinkedIn against an 8% target, which is pretty remarkable for any campaigns that you kind of run on that, especially for a regulated MedTech company. So, can you just tell us a bit about how that came about, and what you were trying to do there?

[00:34:14] Terrence Wiggins: I’m really proud of that campaign, and I’m hoping that we can do it. I can, you know, replicate that at other companies. I’m not wearing red, so I’m not wearing the company colors, but it was actually internal. I remember going to a trade show and meeting, and some of the employees were all wearing red. And Cook’s company colors, there’s two colors. It’s a red, and it’s a little bit of a maroon on the logo. And they were at a time where they’re in the middle of launching some fantastic products, but the products weren’t there yet, right? So, there wasn’t a lot of good storytelling to tell. Again, great company, lots of great things that was happening. So, I said, “Well, what we can do is we can get awareness by just talking about the great things the company is doing and the people that are there. There’s some great people that work there.” And then why don’t we just, again, red is a very powerful color and it’s a simple technique. “Hey, listen, when we’re going to a meeting or a trade show or a medical conference or medical education event, why we as employees just wear the color red?” And then we had the #FindCookRed, meaning that you found a Cook employee, ask us what’s going on with the organization. There were a lot of great changes that were happening to really help them. And so that really went viral quite a bit. It was trending on a lot of them, you know, the medical education events. It was trending on a lot of the trade shows, and it grew globally. So, if you go on LinkedIn and you just put in  #FindCookRed, you’ll see the linkages of events. And, you know, the one story I want to say, two quick ones around the impact of it. I had a physician one time, I was at a trade show, and I was behind the booth with 4 or 5 of my colleagues, and I had a physician that was highly acclaimed. You know, he came to me, and he said, “Terrence, normally I don’t visit the exhibit floor, and I don’t want you to be bothered about what’s being sold, etc, but you guys look so well aligned and professional. I had to ask why.” And I said, you know, I told him about the campaign. I said, “Let me tell you about this new product that’s launching soon or this new product that….” So, it was like basically an opportunity to bring them in and 

[00:36:17] Jason Hemingway: then pivot 

[00:36:18] Terrence Wiggins: and talk about what are the things you want to talk about. One more. Another quick story. And this is a great example. I was at another trade show, and I was, you know, at that point,  #FindCookRed started trending, and people started knowing about it. And I’m in the hotel lobby, about to go to the trade show. And I had my little  #FindCookRed, you know, logo pin, and I had my little red tie, and I got a tap on the shoulder from a physician, and he says, “You must be with Cook.” 

[00:36:42] Jason Hemingway: You know, I was like, “How’d you know?” 

[00:36:44] Terrence Wiggins: Right? And well, it was all the red. And then he was like, “I see all the red around. You guys brought so many people.” We didn’t have as many people, but because we blended in with everybody that happened to wear red on that day, we were peacocking. Right? And so, I use that opportunity again to talk about the organization. So, it can be something simple like that, right, that’s not regulated, but to grab attention and then pivot the conversation on what you think is relevant is important. So, that’s my story, Jason.

[00:37:12] Jason Hemingway: I love it. I think it’s a great example of kind of you’re building out a memory structure from somebody, aren’t you? You’re giving them something to remember, which is differentiated. It’s that idea that is, they remember you and then you’re mentally available, and then when they come and talk to you, like that guy coming to the stand, you’re actually driving a bit of interest because he’s like, “Okay, I might be interested in what you’re doing now and I’m ready to talk to you, but you’ve got that mental availability there.” It’s sort of classic marketing if you really, really think about it. Fascinating. You talked about, you know, the physicians even. I was thinking about how, you know, you create content with those people who are, you know, they’re trained to be precise, and they’re probably, and you tell me if I’m wrong, they’re probably really cautious about any public statement. How do you kind of get something authentic from that audience when, you know, whether it’s a reference or whether it’s them engaging with some content or speaking on your behalf somewhere? How do you get that kind of authentic, you know, point of view from them, from somebody who’s usually very professionally guarded? I’m sure that you face that much more than lots of businesses because these people are very like, we can’t speak to you legally. It’s not easy for us to do that. Or there are ramifications, at least if we do, and say something rough.

[00:38:23] Terrence Wiggins: I think it’s about building trust. It really goes back to that. I’ll give you an example. I’m heading to New Orleans next week for a meeting called New Cardiovascular Horizons, and I can’t wait to go because I’ll be meeting with some physicians that I’ve built trust in my personal brand of having, you know, 10 years with Terumo, 5 years with Cook, right? And then, obviously, now with Cordis. So, they know me, right? And they know that I won’t ever put them in a bad light, and I want to work with them to get the best out of, you know, having them using our devices and also their support. But I think, you know, you can provide that, the company can do ad boards, advisory boards, they can contract with physicians as well, bring them into the technologies early. You know, in my past, I’ve got physician tours that I’ve provided to go to the company headquarters and meet the leaders there and talk about new products. I’ve done that, you know, more of my recent companies as well. So, I think it’s about building trust. And obviously, you have to understand what their limitations are, right? From their institution, or again, you don’t want to come off as inauthentic, right? That they’re using this product because the company is paying them. They’re using the product because they like the company, they know where the company is going, they believe in the company, and they believe in the technology. So, I think it’s really around executive building trust, and again, I’ve had some great relationships where I’ve had physicians come to me and say, “This product does not meet the needs and here’s why.” And I’ve actually used that for my engineering team and we’ve redesigned products because of that feedback, right? So, it doesn’t necessarily be, this is great. It could be, this is not great. And let me show you what I really need. So, it’s around the balance of trust on both ends.

[00:40:06] Jason Hemingway: Yeah. And trust goes both ways, I guess. And if something is going wrong, you’d rather know about it and try to fix it. And that’s a very healthy relationship to have with your customer. So, let’s think about it, as we’re sort of coming towards the end of our conversation, but once you’re getting that trust and they’re speaking on your behalf or they’re putting out content, you know, different languages, different regulatory regimes that we talked about, but that voice from the clinician is what makes it credible. From your perspective, how do you protect that voice, the company voice, if you will, as it travels around the world? How do you protect it? That tone of voice we talked about at the very beginning, but how do you keep that?

[00:40:48] Terrence Wiggins: That’s where, you know, I’m really focused in product marketing. So, I think of it this way, if I were to translate into Apple, the company Apple, right? There’s an Apple brand, and you get, whether you like it or you hate it, there is something that’s owning a spot in your head around Apple. And then I look at it where I control more of like the iPad, or the iPhone, or the Apple Watch, right? So, I really focus on the product branding and the product marketing with the devices in MedTech. That’s the biggest sort of analogy I would make. But you ask something really important because the brand itself is important. And so therefore you have to have a good branding team that really talks about what is it you, you know, from a net promoter score, what you want to do to own a spot in a company’s mind? What do you want to be seen as? Do you want to be seen as traditional? Do you want to be seen as innovative? Do you want to be seen as maybe a cost-conscious or a cost-effective player? And then once you start to understand that, and by the way, you don’t know what your brand is until you ask people what your brand is, right? Ask them what do you think about, and again, I’m going to stay in tech. What do you think about when I say the word Samsung or say the word Apple? And then you start to collect that, and you see that story may change in different regions. Same thing with MedTech. What do you think about when I say the word Johnson & Johnson,

[00:42:12] or Stryker, or Medtronic, or Boston Scientific, or Cordis or Terumo, right? And understand where you are in the minds of your customers. You may be excitedly high on the net promoter score in the Americas because maybe you’re launching a lot of new products. There’s a lot of reasons there, but maybe not so much in the Asia Pacific countries. So, I would say take a step back, understand what your brand is, and then think about it. What do you want to do, right? If it’s good, how can you make it great? And if it’s bad, how do you make it good?

[00:42:45] Jason Hemingway: I guess it’s ultimately about tailoring that brand voice for the cultural, you know, preferences of wherever you’re going to launch it, which you’ll get a little bit in your research, I guess. And as you take it out and get more feedback, you’ve got to be able to build in that kind of intelligent feedback from your customers. How you communicate with them effectively on the ground might be different from place to place. The messages might be different, you know. Okay, right. We’re getting towards the end. In the spirit of helping other marketing leaders, what is the one piece of advice you would give to another marketing leader about taking a business across the globe for the first time?

[00:43:19] Terrence Wiggins: And it goes back to storytelling. Be really intentional around the story you want to tell. Some of my inspirations, I read Seth Godin, This is Marketing, This is Strategy, Purple Cow. Another inspiring leader, I think, is Steve Jobs. I know he’s no longer with us, but I think he was a marketer, right? He was one of the greatest marketers who ever lived. Think about the, again, I talked about Apple a little bit, but think about the iPod, sorry. He came out, and he said, “A thousand songs in your pocket.” That’s it. Clear and concise. And that’s exactly what people wanted, right? Not this big Sony sort of Walkman device. Think about, you can translate that to medical technology. One clear, precise, concise message, story that people want, and then you want people to say, tell me more, right? And then you backtrack into that. So, if you’re new in to marketing, really focus on the storytelling. You know, definitely pressure test the storytelling and make sure you understand it because if you can get your customer to regurgitate that storytelling, you’ve won. Game over. But if they’re unclear, or they’re using terminology that is outside of your brain guidelines, then you are confusing them.

[00:44:36] Jason Hemingway: I love it. And I think couple that with your kind of diagnosis or kind of research phases, you’ve got a really, really good way of getting to the right kind of thing in the end, you know, the right kind of story, as it were. So, okay quick-fire. Last bit now. What’s harder? Scaling trust or operations?

[00:44:53] Terrence Wiggins: Scaling trust. Operations, I think you can, you know, you can outsource. I think you can bring some smart operation people along. But once you’ve broken trust within human sort of connections or company connections, right? When you’ve broken trust, people remember. If you’ve had a recall, right, people remember. If you’ve had a warning letter from the FDA, people remember. So, you have to build trust. That is the most, that is cornerstone for sure.

[00:45:20] Jason Hemingway: And then a book or podcast you recommend to our listeners.

[00:45:24] Terrence Wiggins: So, this is, I listen to a lot of marketing podcasts, and I’ve read a lot of marketing books. So, I’m not going to go do that because I’m sure you can go on my LinkedIn and see some of the things that I’m interested in or follow me on X. But I would say that I’m reading, my uncle bought this for me because I was going through a challenging time in my life, and it was Mel Robbins’ Let Them. And I’ve read that book, and actually, I’m 75% reading it, I’m not done. But it’s just around, let them and let me, right? I focus on control so much because I want things to be right. I want to win. I want to be competitive. But the key theme is, you know, sometimes when you push, people push back. Sometimes, it’s just the let go of control. And you know what? My life has been really cool and really fascinating by just letting them, right? So, you can look it up. Mel Robbins is a great podcaster. I listen to a lot of her stuff, too. But the book, Let Them, to me, is changing my life. And I absolutely enjoy it.

[00:46:25] Jason Hemingway: Terrence, thank you for a really fascinating conversation today. Really enjoyed it. And I wish you the very best for the future, and stay in touch.

[00:46:33] Terrence Wiggins: Jason, again, appreciate it. This is fun. Thank you. And hopefully, the audience got a little bit out of it today, and they can drive for changing their practices in the future. So, thank you so much, Jason.

[00:46:44] Jason Hemingway: It’s a pleasure. I’m sure they did.

[00:46:45] Terrence Wiggins: Bye-bye.

[00:46:46] Jason Hecmingway: Terrence, thank you again for a genuinely enjoyable conversation. I think you opened up a side of marketing that not many of us really ever see. And the importance of getting language right in your world, in the MedTech world, is really a question of patient safety. And that’s something I think every global business leader is interested to hear. So, thanks again. And that’s it for another episode of In Other Words, a podcast from Phrase. I’ve been your host, Jason Hemingway, and a big thank you to Terrence Wiggins for joining us today. If this episode made you think about what your language and content operations need to look like as your business expands into new markets, subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. And if you want to learn how Phrase helps global businesses deliver consistent, multilingual content at scale, please visit phrase.com I’ll see you next time. Thanks again for listening.