WoW Woman in FemTech | Joelle Barthel, Head of Brand at Flo
Interview by MarijaButkovic
Joelle Barthel is Head of Brand at Flo, one of the largest female health & well-being apps with 140M downloads and users from around the world.
Together with the Flo team, her aim is to deliver change by educating more women about their health - going beyond periods. Prior to joining Flo, Joelle worked on challenging beauty ideals in the global brand team of Dove and showing taboos the door as one of Elvie’s first marketing hires.
Joelle can be found mostly in London, but recently a bit of a nomad, she also spends a lot of time in Paris and her home country Luxembourg.
Joelle, tell us a bit more about you and your projects so far. What does your current job role entail?
One is about defining and strengthening our brand identity visually and verbally. This part also includes a lot of surveys and tracking brand health metrics. As we already have such a vast audience (of 35M monthly active users), it is unfortunately impossible to only let creative sense guide you. Besides, we cover many health topics that can easily be controversial - depending on cultures, geographies, ethnicities - so it is essential to define where we, as a brand, take a stand and stay neutral and only provide evidence-backed information. It isn't easy to make it right for everyone - so we’ve set-up an ‘internal compass’ that lets us define where and how to speak up.
Product Communication is another part. This part ensures consistent communication across touchpoints in and outside of the app, which also includes the communication of updates and new features. Flo is still very much being perceived as a period tracker, but we offer much more than that - such as daily well-being insights talking about the symptoms you may experience during your entire cycle, virtual assistant dialogs incl. self-assessments around some of the most common female reproductive concerns and soon a series of dialogues connected to mental health too, courses created with experts, one of the largest female communities also. However, many of our users don't know much about these features yet, but once they've found out about them, they like the information given to them. It helps them understand their bodies and minds - beyond periods - and make better decisions about their health each day, which eventually, without Flo, they would never have known about.
Diversifying marketing channels by scaling ATL / Brand communication is the last part. Users love our product but don't associate our brand with much just yet. Our most recent podcast project is one example of what we are planning to do more of. We have such a large community of users, and we want to give them the opportunity to get heard and share their stories. We also partner with some very exciting health and well-being experts (some still in the pipeline, so I can't tell much yet) - so there is a great opportunity to bring all their knowledge to the frontline. For us, it is important to educate women in an approachable way - as we define ourselves as being 'the doctor-friend' - and make health & well-being content enjoyable while remaining medically correct.
Has it been an easy industry to get into or have you had many challenges?
I remember when I joined Elvie, who only sold a smart kegel trainer by that time, people were eventually looking at me in a weird way (a company selling kegel trainer...?). And esp. when I started talking to them about the importance of training their pelvic floor muscles. :)
For me, it has always been essential to link my job to a strong purpose, and I think if I hadn't found the femtech industry, it would have found me at some point in time.
How long did it take you to be where you are now? What was the biggest obstacle?
30 years? :)
Personally, the biggest obstacles have been to continually adjust to new environments, company dynamics, and cultures. I joined the femtech industry two and a half years ago. It is impressive to see how quickly things have changed and how much more open the discussion has become about female health (eventually, I'm also a bit biased!). That being said, there are still many taboos out there, maybe less about periods - but so many elements surrounding female health e.g. think vaginal discharge!
What are the projects you are currently working on?
One really cool project is our new podcast called 'Her Body, Her Story' - a series about women's stories who made a drastic change to approaching their health that led them to a more fulfilled life. The idea is really to talk about the user's story because listening to how others have experienced things often helps people identify themselves more with specific issues and understand that what they are experiencing is normal. We also have experts coming to the show that gives each discussed issue a medical, evidence-based view, also because experiences aren't always the same for everyone.
We plan to do much more of such user-led content in the future, which will also help us to strengthen our community around female health & well-being.
Another project is the communication around the new app launch - called Flo 5.0, which is again very much the stepping stone of making Flo '' more than a period tracker".
We know for sure that we all lack some education when it comes to female health, which goes beyond our period. And we have an opportunity at Flo to create a real impact with almost 8M users opening the app every day. However, this is easier said than done because most women aren't proactively taking their leisure time to educate themselves about their health. Therefore, it is crucial to deliver any informational content in the most personalized, short, entertaining, relevant way - which Flo 5.0 is about to do. We offer users bite-sized story content that takes them only a couple of seconds a day - and within this short timeframe - they will end up feeling already so much smarter about their bodies and minds.
The communication around Flo 5.0 also led to double the number of new subscriptions this month.
What are your biggest achievements to date?
I was actually always very proud of being part of brands/products, whether Dove, Elvie, or Flo, that want to bring female beauty ideals, health, and well-being forward.
I did launch a cool blog over the past couple of weeks, which took me a lot of courage and efforts if I'm honest :)) - called Brand Avenue, with one of the most recent articles featuring kick-ass women in marketing to follow.
The idea is to provide more brand knowledge to the start-up community, as start-ups often lack ways to track, build, and improve around the brand.
What does the #WomenInTech movement mean to you?
Diversity is key. Tech is very much a network-driven industry. So it is hard for any minority group to break into it. I'm happy to see that it changes for women, but much more inclusion is needed, even beyond women.
What will be the key trends in the femtech and health tech industry in the next 5 years and where do you see it heading?
I think there will be a huge opportunity to look at female health and well-being more holistically. If users track whatever is possible, they will want to know how everything is interconnected. A single step counter may not be enough; they would like to know if their drop-in step counting has to do with their mental or physical health etc.
Who are your 3 inspirational women in health tech and / or femtech?
I definitely admire Bozoma Saint John, which is one of the kick-ass women in marketing I mention in the blog post above.
In femtech - our Kamila from Flo, Erica from Loom, Tania from Elvie, Kate from Maven... all of them and surely also their teams are great profiles that want to make the world a better place.
Download Flo here, and make sure to follow them on LinkedIn, Instagram and Twitter.
This interview was conducted by Marija Butkovic, Digital Marketing and PR strategist, founder, and CEO of Women of Wearables. She regularly writes and speaks on topics of wearable tech, fashion tech, IoT, entrepreneurship, and diversity. Follow Marija on Twitter @MarijaButkovic.