Anyone know what’s going on with Centene’s marketing leadership? Why are the Head of Marketing and VP of Medicaid Marketing both leaving? Is the department downsizing or is something else going on?
15 replies (most recent on top)
@16f AI output is just like the old saying, there are three types if lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics. Just add AI to the list.
@15r And that right there is the real concern with AI. Whomever is the AI developer (or build according to executive’s wants) is bound to build in their own data biases.
@15r I actually remember it from the original appointment, because I have such a hair trigger for “data-driven.”
Paragraph 2 https://investors.centene.com/2022-03-22-CENTENE-APPOINTS-SARAH-LONDON-AS-CHIEF-EXECUTIVE-OFFICER
@152 I agree with your overall sentiment, but have not seen anyone at Corporate actually want to be data-driven or data-informed. What they want is data to support the decision they already made and the biases they already have.
@14y Coming from analytics in DXE, I saw this same pattern well beyond marketing. Corporate invested in tools and capabilities without giving anyone the authority to coordinate them across the business. Meanwhile, goals and strategies shifted multiple times a year, leaving teams chasing moving targets. No one seemed to have a consistent definition of what success actually looked like. Activity was measured, but whether anything improved was another question.
One thing I really wanted to land before I left was the OKR/KPI work. Not another reporting exercise, but a way to connect business objectives to measurable outcomes and identify the levers that actually influence performance. If enrollment is declining, retention is suffering, or markets are spending more to accomplish less, we should know what’s contributing to it, what we can influence, and whether our actions are making a difference.
I always thought we were approaching this backwards. Start with the desired business outcome, work backward to the capabilities and changes needed to achieve it, then establish the measures that tell us whether we’re getting there. Instead, it often felt like we were trying different initiatives and figuring out afterward how to demonstrate their value. With constantly shifting priorities, that was probably a pretty stacked deck.
Everyone wanted to be “data-driven,” but the organization wasn’t ready to operate that way. I’ve always preferred “data-informed.” Data provides evidence, but people still need the business context, institutional knowledge, authority, and judgment to understand what it means and act on it.
It looks like there’s finally an appetite to get serious about that. But with consultants? They can certainly help, but they can’t easily replace the institutional knowledge of people who understand the business, its history, and what actually happens in the markets. I’ve worked alongside some of these same consulting organizations on complicated initiatives before. I’ve seen that movie, and it can get messy.
This is an operating model problem, not a technology problem. Losing the people who understand how the pieces connect, only to pay outsiders to rediscover what was already known, is a pretty expensive way to land that plane.
But I genuinely wish them the best.
Centene shouldn't have a marketing department. Communications, sure, but not marketing. Centene is not a business unit; it doesn't generate revenue. And the people they staff there (for many years now), don't understand the business or try to serve business goals. Every three years, and new crew of well-intentioned middle-managers come in, build a generic, lowest common denominator brand campaign that no one wants or needs, then force the markets to use it. They don't help, and markets don't want what they create, so they resort to mandating it.
If you work at Corporate Marketing and you haven't (1) worked in a market, (2) read multiple state contracts, and (3) participated in an RFP, then you don't know what our business needs.
When you schedule weekly check-in calls where your specialist, manager, and director are all there to meet with one market employee, and it takes you more than a year to NOT deliver the campaigns you said you could, and each of you email the markets separate asking for the same updates we talked about in the meeting (PLUS the BISI team), and none of you are actually producing anything, you just send stuff to expensive national vendors... you are the problem. Centene would be more successful if you weren't here and stopped wasting everyone's time.
@sf I’m sure it’s on SOMEbody’s goals… the ones that no one ever pays attention to until the day before they’re due. And “cascading” goals aren’t real always late, because leadership doesn’t really lead. Or do much of anything except react to crises and escalate a bunch of stuff.
Or at least that’s how I’ll always remember it.
@q6 nobody - because Marketing is not CURRENTLY responsible for anything member facing.
That’s part of the issue at Centene. Up until recently teams could spin up functions on their own without regard for what would make sense more broadly speaking. We have no true member orchestration or retention hub - those responsibilities are spread across business lines, clinical, health plans, even operations. It makes no sense. “Marketing” gets blamed and I get why - logic would tell you marketing owns this stuff. But as the world exists today they don’t. As it exists tomorrow………who knows?
Funny enough, the failure to fix all of the above likely contributed to (but wasn’t the whole reason for) the exits of the two you mentioned. Instead they ALSO were spinning up work that nobody asked for AND without consulting other teams or concerning themselves with what would make sense for the broader world. It’s an epidemic around here!
I heard our logo and brand are changing to one unified brand for all LOB and states like United
Marketing and communications is moving from health plans to corporate. I imagine some decisions were made regarding which health plan VPs will be leading the newly corporate teams from the health plans. I just hope it happens after 12/11 when I leave for VSP.
@me I’ll put it another way. This is really how the entire organization should be evaluated.
Who in Centene’s marketing leadership is accountable for demonstrating measurable improvements in member outcomes that justify the organization’s headcount, costs, and layers of management, and what specific evidence proves those outcomes would deteriorate with half the resources?
Anyone who needs to know the answer to the first and last questions isn’t asking the middle one.
@e4 I’ve worked with a lot of marketing folks and the ones at Centene were mostly clueless about things. I don’t think anyone there really knows what they’re doing. 🤷♂️
@b7 Do you even know what Marketing does in the org?
I’ve wondered for years what Centene’s sizable marketing organization actually delivers relative to its cost.
Across Centene, Ambetter, Wellcare, and the state plans, where’s the measurable return? Not impressions, clicks, or campaign reports. Are members better informed about their benefits, accessing care, completing screenings, managing chronic conditions, or avoiding gaps in coverage?
With headcount shrinking and expenses under scrutiny, a large marketing organization had better be able to demonstrate its impact on enrollment, retention, and actual member outcomes.
If leadership departures signal consolidation, I’d be asking some uncomfortable questions about duplicated functions, organizational size, and measurable value.
Because if nobody can demonstrate what all those resources accomplish for members, the departures at the top may only be the beginning.