While Medicare Advantage (MA) plans have long offered extra benefits, including dental, vision and hearing coverage, CMS released new guidance in April of this year that dramatically expanded the scope of supplemental benefits. Beginning coverage year 2019, plans for the first time can offer adult day care, alternative medicine, home aids and other services that […]
From cyber bullying to school shootings, the issues that today’s mom must tackle are more complex than ever before. At the 2018 Path to Purchase Expo, Katherine Wintsch, CEO & Founder of The Mom Complex, a market research group focused on helping brands understand moms, gave a keynote titled “Pain Points Millennial Moms Want Brands to […]
Collaboration is becoming critical to shopper marketing success and CPG revenue growth. Smithfield Foods evidenced this at the 2018 Path to Purchase Expo in a presentation they gave with agency partner, Edge Marketing. The seminar shared the story of how through strategic collaboration, Smithfield Foods’ shopper marketing department grew from the execution of only 12 […]
Though shopper marketing only recently entered the marketing mainstream, most CPGs recognize that it’s an important move away from short-term trade marketing to a more strategic marketing approach designed around building long-term brand, retailer and shopper value. Despite this recognition, spending on the practice has plateaued, as the recession halted early shopper marketing development and […]
The 2019 Final Call Letter brought significant new changes to Medicare Advantage (MA) benefits in 2019, including the elimination of the meaningful difference requirements and benefit uniformity flexibility, as well as a reinterpretation of supplemental benefits. Combined, these changes offer the biggest opportunity to MAOs in years. In the past, supplemental benefits could only be […]
The Model Documents released by CMS each year offer instructional guidance and standardized document templates for the member materials that must be distributed each fall by Medicare Advantage, Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug, Prescription Drug, and 1876 Cost Plans. On July 24th, the 2019 ANOC and EOC Standardized Models were released, which reinforce the new policies of the Final […]
“Ready – set – repeat!”…that seems to be the mantra of many shopper marketing teams as they methodically award funding to retail accounts with grandfathered budgets and “anniversaried” programs. While running the same predictable programs may have sufficed in the past, as private labels saturate the shelves and technology revolutionizes retail, brands must deliver programs that […]
Thanks to personalization tech giants like Amazon, Netflix and Facebook, consumers are used to being served up content and suggestions that align seamlessly with browsing histories, “likes” and other content or products they recently engaged with online. For this reason, people today expect closer, more personalized relationships with brands—most especially CPG brands. But for an industry […]
A recent survey from Change Healthcare found that 80% of payers are currently incorporating interventions around the social determinants of health into their population health management initiatives. In fact, in March of 2018, a group of commercial payers and other healthcare organizations formed a coalition called Aligning for Health (AFH) to explore how addressing the […]
Media agencies are being forced to restructure their operating models as consumer goods companies launch enterprise-wide cost management and zero-based budgeting programs that demand transparency into planning, spending and performance. In the past, day-to-day agency activity was often veiled from the customer. The customer allotted the agency a certain amount of budget for a certain […]