Mat Baxter’s latest venture is punk healthcare
While living in New York at the start of the Covid pandemic, Mat Baxter crashed on black ice, rolling his car eight times. He broke his neck in three places, shattered his jaw, lost teeth and snapped an arm. Then he recuperated alone for 12 weeks while trying to run global consultancy Huge as its new CEO.
That was a turning point for one of the most divisive and accomplished figures in Australian media. After those 12 weeks, Baxter knew he was on a different path.
That path has led him to this moment: a home in Australia, a resolution to never work for anyone else again, and an equity stake in a start up that wants to revolutionise health care.
Mat Baxter
Baxter has several claims to fame in agencyland, with one of the best known that he co-founded Naked Communications in Australia with Adam Ferrier and Mike Wilson in 2004. He went on to work as Mediacom’s chief strategy officer, became global strategy and creative boss at IPG Mediabrands in New York, before moving on to the global CEO role at first Initiative and then Huge.
In an in-depth interview with Mumbrella – available as a podcast from next week – Baxter describes how and why he bought into preventive health platform Tmrw (styled as “TMRW” and said “tomorrow”) and came on board as its “disruptor in chief”.
Tmrw is the brainchild of former media executive Mark Britt, who has drawn together a founding team that includes Baxter, Karima Asaad (as Chief Creative Officer), clinical nutritionist Marko Papuckovski and entrepreneur Cameron Priest.
The project aims to revolutionise healthcare by using data to prevent illness before it arises. This fits with Baxter’s approach to life in general. He sees himself as a rebel, always pushing against prevailing orthodoxies and taking risks.
“[Tmrw] is defying the category in a way that needs to be defied. It’s clashing with the existing dynamics of the category – everything that the health category does, it’s doing the opposite,” Baxter says.
“The health category is one of the last bastions of boringness, and understandably, because you’re dealing with people’s lives.”
“That doesn’t mean they can’t be more human. It doesn’t mean that they can’t be more interested in you and be more proactive in helping you be a better version of you. I think doctors and the health industry are unnecessarily distant, unnecessarily verbose and jargonistic, and I think the consumer is tired of it.”
The Tmrw interface is not standard healthcare fare
Baxter said his journey to joining Tmrw began with the stretch of black ice on the road in upstate New York in 2020.
“I was driving my car, hit some black ice and my car slid off the road and it rolled eight times and I broke my neck in three places. I broke my jaw, I knocked my teeth out, and I snapped my arm. I’ve still got a titanium plate and pins in it.”
”When the police and the paramedics arrived, they basically were like, yeah, we’re gonna be pulling a body out. They were amazed that I was alive, and I don’t remember any of it. I was airlifted from the scene”
Because of the pandemic, Baxter was discharged from hospital within a week, left alone to run a company through the crisis.
“ My jaw was wired and I was just sent home. And so, for 12 weeks on my own in upstate New York, I basically recuperated from this accident. I had just been made the CEO of Huge and I had a whole workforce who didn’t know what was going on. We were trying to migrate to remote working … I was really injured, I was trying to juggle recovery … that was a pretty scary time.”
It was then Baxter decided to return to Australia (a resolution that took several years to fulfill). He had also discovered firsthand the inadequacy of a health system incentivised to cure rather than prevent sickness.
“Tmrw’s mission is, as simple as it sounds, to give people a brighter tomorrow. And it’s doing that in the health category, which is antithetical to a brighter tomorrow. And I speak from experience.”
His hospital treatment had cost US$695,000.
“That’s ‘health’ in America. It’s completely broken, and all about treating the symptom as opposed to preventing the underlying cause of that symptom, because you make a lot more money in treatment [than in] prevention.”
As a product, Tmrw says it will deliver broad-spectrum health assessments — including DNA analysis, gut and metabolic health checks, and incorporating a swathe of other biomarkers — in order to detect and prevent problems. AI will be used in order to interpret and integrate the results, with the idea being that the platform can dispense appropriate advice, and eventually, offer tailored supplements.
Samples of Tmrw’s OOH creative
As a brand, Tmrw is framing itself as punk healthcare, “a radically human, rebellious and AI-powered approach to wellness”. Its launch campaign was created in collaboration with Today The Brave, and features an array of non-conformist models including the gold-toothed poster boy above.
Baxter says the break from health norms in the creative appeals to him.
“[The brand] talks to you differently than you are used to when it comes to your own personal health. ”
Baxter was scheduled to submit his first biomarker test immediately after he spoke with Mumbrella.
“The health business treats you like a patient. Patients are sick. You don’t want to be a patient,” he says. “[You] want to be healthy.”
Campaign Credits:
Today The Brave
Founding Partner – Jaimes Leggett
Creative Partner – Jade Manning
Creative Partner – Vince Osmond
Head of Design – Ethan Hsu
Client Services Director – Cosmo Haskard
Head of Strategy – Alyce Gillis
Creative Operations Manager – Kate Gregson
TMRW
CEO & Co-Founder – Mark Britt
Chief Creative Officer & Co-Founder – Karima Asaad
Strategic Advisor & Co-Founder – Mat Baxter
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