Grow Therapy and its challenger brand mindset

0:00Mollie Partesotti: Welcome to On Strategy Showcase. I'm Fergus O 'Carroll in Chicago. On Strategy Showcase is thrilled to be the official podcast partner of the EFI's worldwide. For over 55 years, EFI has been the global authority on marketing effectiveness. They lead the way with the largest, most prestigious marketing effectiveness awards across 130 markets worldwide. and their coveted Effie Index ranks the most effective brands, marketers, and agencies globally. But Effie is more than awards. They're dedicated to helping all marketers, from seasoned CMOs to those just getting started, understand what makes marketing effective by equipping them with insights, tools, and inspiration they need to succeed.

0:47Mollie Partesotti: Learn more at EFFIE.org. That's E-F-F-I-E.org. So welcome to this week's episode. We're dropping this on, I think it's going to be on Monday, the 26th of October, which means that we are only two days away from our live show at TBWA, Chiat Day in Los Angeles. You can see if you're watching on YouTube, we have our wonderful poster here for the event. It is Wednesday, October 28th at 5.30, and we're doing On the Spot, which is basically strategists talking about campaigns they love but they never worked on. We've been doing this as a live show for the last month or two, and it's been a blast. We did Austin, Texas first, and we did New York City.

1:34Mollie Partesotti: And basically what we do is we have strategists come in. They pick a campaign that they love. It can be any type of campaign. We don't give them any parameters. and then they have five minutes to pitch it to the audience and five minutes to get you to love it as much as they do. And then System 1 is there in testing the ad and sharing with us the results of the ads. And TrackSuit is there with the tracking and how the brand has been impacted. And then as the audience, we're able to use that to make our decision on what we think was the best campaign. And so the audience decides. So it's basically a fun, informal event to get the community together.

2:13Mollie Partesotti: Our strategists pitching in Los Angeles are Tom Sussman, Chief Strategy Officer at TVWA Chiattay. Lee McCann is Chief Strategy Officer for InOcean in Los Angeles. And Mark Hardy is Head of Brand Strategy for 72 and Sunny in LA. So come hang out with us. Have some fun. It's in two days. It's this Wednesday, the 28th of October at 5.30. You can get your tickets on our website at onstrategyshowcase.com backslash live tour, onstrategyshowcase.com backslash live tour. And we hope to see you there on Wednesday. We then are doing, a couple of weeks later, we're doing an event live at Wieden & Kennedy in Amsterdam.

3:02Mollie Partesotti: Now, this one is a closed event. It's a private event. But the actual episode will be aired a couple of weeks following that. And I'm excited about that conversation, too. And we'll be looking forward to that. I can't share too much more about it at this point. So back to today's episode. I'm talking today with Marshall Ball, who's been on the show before when he was at Expedia. He's SVP Marketing for Growth Therapy, and he's joined by Molly Pardesati, who is co-founder of KDSP. Now, KDSP is a relatively new shop, maybe a year, a year and a half old here in Chicago. KDSP is Kirby, Dreyer, Sullivan, and Pardesati.

3:48Mollie Partesotti: Molly was formerly the chief strategy officer at FCB here in Chicago. So Grow Therapy is a challenger brand in an established category. You've probably heard of a lot of brands like BetterHelp and others that are these aggregators of psychology services where you can do sort of, I suppose, what do they call it? Telehealth, in essence, is what it is. But Grow is a challenger brand in this category, trying to own a space that sort of separates acute critical care from other types of needs, such as personal growth and progress. I really like that sort of distinction in terms of the white space that they've created.

4:33Mollie Partesotti: It's not for something that is, it's not being positioned as something that is for, you know, a kid in your family who's suffering, a loved one who's suffering. It's for your own personal growth and help. It's almost another version of therapy that is a little more everyday. And I think it's really interesting. So, you know, one of the questions I have for the crew is, could it be defined as something other than therapy in a category that is so intense and so competitive? and I'm still sort of pondering that in my own head whether that might have made sense to sort of redefine it as a new form of almost personal coaching in a way.

5:16Mollie Partesotti: But Grow Therapy is out there and as Molly said, it does have therapy in its name so they're not going to be able to change that. So this is a great conversation. The work is terrific. You can see it on our website at onstrategyshowcase.com. If you are watching this show on YouTube, you'll be able to of course see it in the show and you'll hear the spots in the audio track here if you're listening to the regular podcast. So enjoy it. It's Marshall Ball SVP Marketing and Molly Pardasati, co-founder at KDSP in Chicago. Enjoy. The new campaign is called Key Change. Grow is the brand, Marshall. Tell me what drew you into Grow and tell me what Grow actually is.

6:00Mollie Partesotti: Yeah. You know, from my vantage point, I think mental health is one of the most important categories in the country right now. And I think there's a ton of opportunity here to make a change, not just for our company, but for the way people perceive their relationship to their mental health. So that's what drew me to Grow. And I'm incredibly excited to be here. For people who haven't heard of Grow, Grow is effectively a place for people to find qualified mental health care. with therapists that take their insurance and then build momentum between sessions. And then for providers, Grow is a place to connect with new clients and then to build thriving independent practices.

6:44Mollie Partesotti: So we serve both sides of what is essentially a marketplace. It's not a category with a few people in it. It's pretty competitive, particularly as sort of an aggregator of psychological support talent and therapists. Is there sort of an angle that Grow feels it uniquely sort of occupies or can occupy?

7:06Marshall Ball: I think that's one of the incredible things about this opportunity is Marshall and the team. Obviously, there's a head-on landscape that's very direct and clear. But the bigger opportunity, I think, was seeing the white space to position grow in the category around progress instead of the more acute crisis management and the way the category speaks about it now. And so that was something that from the beginning, this brand had a very strong point of view on and felt like it was something we needed to tackle and figure out how to make that real together.

7:42Mollie Partesotti: This category has largely focused on two things. It either focuses on these really dramatic before and afters and these moments of pain and crisis. To some extent, the category is pain in the world that says you need help before you enter into it. Or it talks about things that are quite practical, like how do you find a therapist that takes your insurance? There is a huge white space, though, to speak to somebody completely different who might not present that same level of pain but could still benefit from mental health care, from support in dealing with whatever life throws at them. We felt like we could speak to that audience and ultimately reduce the emotional bar somebody felt like they needed to clear in order to find support.

8:30Mollie Partesotti: So Molly, for you guys coming in, was that white space already understood to exist or was it part of the work with your agency and with you that helped sort of shine a light on that?

8:46Marshall Ball: Marshall and team came to us with a very clear hypothesis of what the white space was. And knowing, you know, the opportunity at hand, I think our job was to figure out how do we, A, bring that to life, and how do we position that in the category that has sort of trained everybody to think of therapy as crisis management, which isn't wrong. It's fantastic. And it is, it does do that. But as we look ahead and position ourselves at Grow as a more proactive, empowering daily support that we think of in the same way, you know, exercise is inherently part of our lives every single day to be healthy.

9:30Marshall Ball: that was the big opportunity for us is to figure out how we bring that to life and how do we start to show people that finding support shouldn't require more capacity than somebody has to give.

9:44Mollie Partesotti: And we're not saying everybody belongs in therapy or everybody belongs in therapy forever, but for those people who believe they could benefit from care, we want to make sure that they can see themselves not just in this brand, but in the service we're offering. One of the things that is interesting is that this doesn't seem that it is a service or brand or an outlet for somebody who's looking to get care for someone else. It feels like it's about me. And I think that comes across pretty strongly in the work, is that this is a conversation about not about a parent getting help for their kid or for a loved one.

10:29Mollie Partesotti: It's about your own personal growth. I got to assume that that's deliberate. Three of the four spots seem to focus more on sort of interpersonal skills. And I can relate to that as a parent who raised teenagers. I know when I'm trying to figure out how exactly do I react to my kid. And this is like coaching in essence about how to react to other people that feels to me like it's a different sort of a psychological target molly am i am i picking that up wrong no you're not i think i

11:04Marshall Ball: think the the reality is we are trying to speak to anybody who is open to therapy um at the end of the day when when you think about sort of the types of events and and everyday chapters people are going through, our target audience was really focused on thinking about people in a process of becoming. And that is something that is constant and will continue on forever. And so they may be in a situation where their old playbook or their current playbook no longer fits, or they're in a growth stage or a transition stage where they need something different. So this means things like becoming a parent, a partner, navigating through a big transition or a plateau.

11:51Marshall Ball: And so I think our opportunity was to connect with people's individual lives. And to Marshall's point, be really honest about all of the challenges and triumphs in the day-to-day so that they can recognize themselves in our work. In a category where you see a lot of really specific focus on acute and very severe situations, which are fantastic, And important, this different perspective of everydayness and these little interactions with family, work, daily life allow people to see the small daily habits that can happen when you practice therapy more in an ongoing matter. And so I think the stories that we ended up launching with were selected to show a variety of those scenarios of really personal instances of daily growth and little, small, key changes.

12:53Mollie Partesotti: The category has not done a great job, I'd argue, showing the benefits of mental health support. Oftentimes, those benefits, when we hear them played back to us, are these really small moments that Molly is discussing. It is not the dramatic before and after. And we hear that played back from both clients and from the therapists that serve them. And I think that the work that KDSP did with us does an incredible job of showing those little benefits and how they come to life in somebody's everyday existence. And makes them feel eminently relatable in a way that the category, again, has historically not done.

13:31Mollie Partesotti: You've got brands out there that are certainly better known, like BetterHelp. There are other platforms and therapy platforms. I wonder, did you ever consider, given the sort of almost new space you want to create, you almost want to create a subcategory in the existing space, did you ever debate the idea of creating a different term than therapy and defining what you guys do as a different thing?

13:55Marshall Ball: I mean, it's a great question. And I think the reality is we had a lot of discussions about every element of the brand surface area we could touch. And I think that's something that actually is really special about, you know, working in this category is that the user experience and how people engage and act with the brand is everything. And so at the end of the day, clearly, this brand is named Grow Therapy. That is what we offer, and that is what the category is familiar with that we need to build awareness in. But I think that there is a ton of potential for this brand to continue to evolve how therapy and mental health is even defined, discussed, and practiced every single day.

14:46Marshall Ball: The idea of daily progress, you know, is an evolution of the way people think of therapy today. And so our job was to make sure we're building a bridge and we're showing people what that can look like, but not taking it too far where they don't understand what we offer and what we give, which is world-class therapy, accessible, covered by your insurance. And so we had to do that basic blocking and tackling first to establish our brand, its point of view, and where we can move going forward.

15:19Mollie Partesotti: And look, we don't think we need to hide what we offer and what we sell. I'd argue that specifically like millennials and some of the generations to follow them have really shown an openness and a willingness to work on their mental health. So maybe 15, 20 years ago, this is something that we would have to really noodle on. You know, how do you... And I don't mean that it's stigmatized, Marshall. I mean that the brands in the category are pretty well known. The stigma therapy is gone. I think it's embraced by probably most audiences. It just sort of serves up this idea that do you go after what the category already is defined as?

16:04Mollie Partesotti: It feels like it's maybe a tougher strategic approach than if you sort of redefined it. Because I think your message is a redefinition of how you can apply therapy or the stage at which you can apply therapy. I'm just wondering whether that opened up another way of looking at it. Yeah, I think inherently this position is a challenger position.

16:29Marshall Ball: To your point, Fergus. challenge is a good way of looking at it. I'll position the last 15 years and 20 years of advertising and mental health as wave one. And wave one, to your point, was the ability for it to go from taboo to open conversations and people feeling comfortable with the idea of therapy, what it is and its relationship with one another. This is about wave two. And wave two is really about that perception of just for crisis to proactivity and making the best version of yourself. And so I think inherently that is a challenger brand stance. And for us to be able to come to the market and not only solve the needs of people as they think of them today, but move them upstream and move them ahead in a way where they can think about mental health as something almost proactive that they can build with, felt like a huge opportunity for us to not only advance the conversation, but create some clear distinction in the category.

17:45Marshall Ball: The brands like BetterHelp and Talkspace are established telehealth therapy. They probably have, you know, an incredibly healthy level of awareness. And so the ability for us to come in with a different point of view and express ourselves and our partnership at a different altitude felt like a really great advantage for us to enter the market with a new campaign on. At the end of the day, one of the things that we found when we talked to people that were seeing progress more proactively in a daily therapy environment or a more regular therapy environment is, you know, their ambitions were often like very specific to your question, Fergus.

18:32Marshall Ball: Like, it wasn't, you know, these big revelations of change. It was being able to respond differently to their children, being able to connect better with a partner or break a familiar pattern that is holding them up in some form or fashion.

18:51Mollie Partesotti: So one of the things that's interesting, Marshall, and this happens in a lot of categories, but particularly in categories where you're really a pure play brand sitting on a national network of therapists that, in my belief, almost all of the brands who are aggregators of this, even like BetterHelp and Psychology Today, they're all accessing the same national network of therapists, psychologists. psychiatrists, psychologists who are made available. How do you manage the brand experience? How do you sort of bring the Grow way to therapists that end up working with Grow customers? We are very fortunate to work with an incredibly talented pool of providers who decide to build their practices on the Grow platform.

19:44Mollie Partesotti: We have a rigorous vetting process for any provider who decides to do that. and that allows us to ensure that the quality bar is incredibly high. And yes, it's true, providers have the ability to practice on multiple platforms, but our product team does an incredible job at ensuring that that experience, both in session, pre-session, and post-session, allows you to build momentum on the things you are working on with your therapist.

20:12Marshall Ball: One of the things that really allows this brand to deliver and show up differently is how the brand behaves in the day-to-day with you as a patient, with you as your provider, and having that relationship where you're able to go back and see all of the different layers of things that you've discussed, things you've reflected on, and things that you want to change within your life. And so the user experience itself is a really fantastic and critical part of the overall brand experience.

20:51Mollie Partesotti: So was there an unlock that you would say, Molly, came out as a strategist going through all of this? Was there a moment where it was late one night and you were like, oh shit, this is it. This is what I need to be able to get to creative. Or maybe it was a whole team effort. Was there a moment where it all kind of came together?

21:11Marshall Ball: The change your mind, change your life idea really gave us a platform to start. And then it was all about how do we communicate that? How do we show that? And how do we allow people to come away energized, excited, and maybe potentially even empowered to take the step? Another thing that was really important as we were trying to demonstrate the small incremental daily progress that we wanted to bring to life was this thing we called glimmers. And glimmers is actually this idea of, you know, these little positive moments, little sparks of behavioral change in the day to day that are delivering a better outcome.

22:01Marshall Ball: The challenge with that, Fergus, is that that's really, really hard to communicate. The internal monologue of one's head, what somebody is thinking, things of that nature.

22:15Mollie Partesotti: And so in 30 seconds, and in 30 seconds as well.

22:20Marshall Ball: And so that that became the really critical challenge that we had to solve creatively was how do we show the work of therapy becoming visible through everyday choices? You know, the campaign reflected four spots and four ordinary moments where an old pattern takes a different turn. And there is a unifying lyric across all four of the spots, which are, I just remembered what my therapist said. And that is the moment of recollection and progress. and you see that key change happen in behavior. And in the situation of sports dad, it was after a basketball game, this father lets go of critiquing and instead chooses connection and eating dinner in that case.

23:16And the bait was a scenario that

23:21Marshall Ball: since the campaign has come out, I've had so many friends say, woo, that one hits hard. Yeah, hit hard with me too, totally. I guess you think I don't want to see you. I just remembered what my therapist said. It's fine. You don't have to take the bait every time. I know you're busy. So I take a breath and grow. Love you, Mom. I did not take the bait. The bait was guilt-inducing martyrdom. And I did not take it. See you later! And we did not fight. And that was great.

23:59Mollie Partesotti: I just remembered what my therapist said. What did you need when you were his age? So I take a breath. And I grow. He doesn't need me to remind him to box out or shoot more or tell him what his coach should have done. Nope. You hungry? Yeah. He just needs some food. Let's do it.

24:27Marshall Ball: The bait was that scenario of a daughter meeting her mom's guilt trip with warmth and boundaries. And I think those ordinary moments allowed us to show that signal of change in an interesting way. And I think music, obviously, was the huge vehicle for us to be able to make that change visible.

24:55Mollie Partesotti: The last one, the last of the four spots is a hot dog. And it's probably the only spot that is actually focused on somebody who's suffering from a condition. But it is phenomenally well done. And it's a little different than the other ones in terms of its message structure.

25:14Marshall Ball: Yeah, it's a perfect example of somebody that has clearly, you know, been in therapy and has had some focus on that aspect of her life. She's triggered in some way where she's having some of those anxious thoughts come back. And she's able to reflect and say, all right, I remember this conversation. And she's able to reconnect with the world around her, which in that case is like a delicious hot dog and a guy, you know, popping a wheelie on a lowrider bike. I just remembered what my therapist said Notice when you're not anxious So I take a breath and I grow I'm eating this hot dog I'm not worried about nitrates at the moment I'm not checking my newsfeed I'm not thinking about how the economy Is going to totally collapse I'm noticing I'm feeling pretty good

26:14Mollie Partesotti: Let's talk a little bit about KDSP. Molly, you guys are all previously Widen and Kennedy people. How did you all come together?

26:24Marshall Ball: Yeah, I mean, so KDSP stands for Kirby, Dreyer, Sullivan, and Pardisati. And we came together and officially launched about a year ago because we believed that it was really important to have an agency that was able to truly put the brand and the work first. I think in today's world, you know, clients should be able to work directly with senior people doing the thinking and the making. And so I think one of the most important things that we loved about our experience with Grow is we were able to create a kind of partnership that we want to build. incredible business ambition, a category changing and challenging position, the most engaged client team, and the opportunity to create great work together.

27:20Marshall Ball: I think this is an example of that coming to light and a really beautiful output and us being able to work in lockstep with Marshall, Katie, and the Grow team every single day.

27:32Mollie Partesotti: You know, I think KDSP is representative of a larger change that is happening in the industry. Certainly there are clients who are going to need big, big teams to support what they're doing. But for a lot of companies, I'd argue that they're better off working with a small, tight team that is built on mutual respect and trust, where you are constantly in the bunker with the people actually doing the work. because it allows you to punch above your weight. So I think that that model is one that a lot of folks can learn from and can lean into, whether that's with KDSP or another agency. So it is Amali Pardasati.

28:18Mollie Partesotti: She is co-founder in the strategy discipline, meaning you're co-founder and you're in charge of strategy within the organization at KDSP. She's here in Chicago. Marshall Ball is SVP Marketing for Growth Therapy in New York City. Marshall also a massive pedigree dude you came from Flamers Dog right and you came before that you were at Expedia well you went Wieden at some point also right? I was I was yes yes pedigree all around thank you guys so much for coming on the show and talking about the work we'll put all the work on our website people can check it out there and people can watch this on YouTube and see the work embedded into the edit thanks for coming on today I hope you guys have a great rest of your day.

29:02Mollie Partesotti: Thanks so much, Fergus. Thank you so much. And we'll see everybody on the next episode.