Thread by @TheRealHoarse

Since I’ve been sharing my pic, bio and backstory of late, might as well continue on and cover the somewhat boring professional side.

I won’t blame you for skipping this. It isn’t terribly exciting.

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I’ve done a lot of different things but for the majority of my career, I worked in marketing and communications for a variety of ad agencies and marketing consultancies.

I’ve done work for more companies than I can remember at this point.

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I mean, I’ve done work for A LOT of co’s.

AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Comcast, Time Warner, HBO, Time Inc, British Airways, GM, BMW, Gillette, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Genentech, Merck, Hilton, Sheraton, Hyatt, Avis, Aetna, Exxon, Old Navy, L’Oreal and on and on.

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The work varied but the general theme was helping companies understand their customers, develop strategies and build communications programs.

Some were long term. Some were projects. All required getting to know a business quickly and well.

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I distill information quickly, so I generally loved it. It’s fun to dive into a new industry with new dynamics and challenges and have to quickly make sense of them.

It’s fun to make sense of what makes humans tick.

I like that stuff.

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It’s less fun to deal with the bureaucracy and grind of increasingly corporate ad agencies, so about 12 years ago, the day before my son was born, I went out on my own.

I haven’t had an employer since.

Lots of clients. Some partners. No employer.

6/

If you saw my other thread about the more important part of my backstory, this all makes sense.

I’ve worked to live not lived to work for the past ten years. My son is my priority. I work around what he needs from me.

That has been financially hard but emotionally easy.

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Some of the dumbalinas from the Berniesphere got wind of a slim slice of the above and extracted the fact that I’ve done work for pharmas, an insurer and Exxon.

Apparently that’s quite earth-shattering.

Who knew routine employment was so cataclysmic?

8/

Exxon was an analytic project that lasted a month about ten years ago. They wanted to know how a couple web sites/apps were doing.

They were doing badly.

People don’t really crave a deep relationship with their gas station.

Quite the revelation, right?

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For the insurer, I helped build a strategy to launch Medicare Part D coverage.

The strategy: Medicare is confusing as f***. Nobody understands it. We should explain it.

Again, quite the revelation, no?

(note: the campaign was so successful it buried their call center in calls)

If you seen my comments on Medicare, many of them come from the experience of studying it and seniors’ feelings about it.

We need universal healthcare. A solution that carries with it great change will not fly with seniors - even if they’re Democrats. It just won’t.

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For Genentech, I helped their oncology franchise communicate with doctors.

My mother-in-law died of ovarian cancer. My grandfathers died of lung and colon cancer.

I’d work on oncology all day, every day if asked.

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For Merck, I worked on a communications plan for a newly approved treatment for advanced multiple sclerosis not responsive to other medications.

I’d work on neurological advances like that pro bono if asked.

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I worked on infrastructure planning for a biotech that developed the first real treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

A dear friend has CLL. It is an incurable blood cancer that levels a high psychological cost on sufferers.

The treatment is a medical miracle.

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I could go on and on but the gist of my pharma work is educating patients and doctors on medications that might improve or even save their lives.

The work was strategically interesting.

I not only don’t feel bad about working for pharmas, I’m proud of the work.

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Now, in parallel, if you read my other thread, you saw that I’ve had periods where I’ve been struggling so severely I couldn’t afford insurance.

Our healthcare system is broken. The entirety of the model is broken.

We desperately need and deserve universal healthcare.

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The vast majority of people who work in pharmas have zero connection to the things that are broken though.

They don’t set pricing. They don’t control access. They aren’t lobbyists. They’re people with jobs... and families. They get sick too. They struggle with bills too.

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My former father-in-law was a clinical researcher. He spent decades working on advances in the treatment of heart disease.

Yet, when his wife fell ill, he had to come out of retirement just to get her health insurance.

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That’s the thing about the populist villainizing of whole industries.

It’s moronic.

Our system is broken. But people working in businesses that develop revolutionary treatments to terrible diseases aren’t evil operatives. They’re ordinary parents, friends, neighbors.

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Getting back on track, I took a couple year break from marketing consulting.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do next.

There is a lot about marketing communications that is analogous to politics. So maybe something there.

I don’t know. We’ll see.

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As a strategist and communications planner, I happen to be good at what I do.

What to do with that, I don’t know.

Anyway, this is boring to even write so I’ll wrap it up.

If you have questions, hit me. I’ll try to answer them.

After my fantasy football draft. LOL.

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