Health care brands are navigating a pandemic-era marketplace that is requiring them to create experiences that are as easy and enjoyable to use as Amazon and Netflix. 

“Most health agencies are still living in the past,” said Michael McNamara, managing director of McKinney’s recently launched health and wellness practice, noting that many shops are under-utilizing marketing tools like data, social and technology. McNamara joined the division with the goal of modernizing the standard approach to health care advertising. 

The pandemic served to accelerate trends that had been growing for years: self-diagnosis via the internet, telemedicine visits with physicians, peer-to-peer interactions between patients online, and at-home testing for everything from allergies to infections.

That’s led drug makers and wellness companies, along with their agencies, to consider new marketing methods. They are reaching out to social media influencers, working with disease-specific informational websites and using data to pinpoint and customize communications timed to where the patient is in his or her “health journey”—from prevention to diagnosis to cure. 

“People have come to realize that patients are becoming doctors themselves,” said McNamara. “People aren’t making decisions for their health based on all experts’ help. They’re making decisions based on what they learn and what they experience.” 

The challenge for the industry is meeting the expectations of this empowered consumer. “Because patients are less willing to wait and possess more knowledge about themselves, they now have the same expectation for a medicine or a health app,” said McNamara. “The experience with that brand must be as good as it is when they use Amazon Prime and Netflix.”

Business boom

Health care is one of the most vibrant sectors in marketing today, with a growing number of agencies jumping into the space. An expanded view of “health,” which once meant prescription drugs and now encompasses everything from skin creams and fortified foods to over-the-counter vitamins, probiotics and much more, is helping to fuel this trend. 

Health care was the fastest-growing U.S. agency discipline in 2020, with an 11.7% revenue gain as demand surged for marketing services tied to the coronavirus, and it built on that strength with another double-digit gain in 2021, according to Ad Age Datacenter.

For agencies, health care was a steady source of income during the pandemic as many marketing categories, such as retail and restaurants, cut back.

Manoj Raghunandanan, president of global self care and consumer experience organization at Johnson & Johnson Consumer Health, cited the pandemic as “a major accelerator for change in addition to the massive growth of platforms for e-commerce, DTC, telemedicine and digital therapeutics, to name just a few.”

Influencing health care 

Social media is becoming a prime place to reach consumers as they look to peers for advice in managing their diseases. “Patient stories are evolving in the digital space,” said Brandi Lalanne, VP of data and insights at Houston agency MMI. “There is growing crossover in the creator space: patients who are also influencers are increasingly sharing their stories on TikTok, opening up potential for partnership with healthcare brands.”

Damian Washington, an actor, social media personality and multiple sclerosis patient, started a YouTube channel five years ago after his diagnosis and discovered that his videos with significant traffic were all related to MS—videos of him taking an IV, for example. As his name was established among MS patients, health companies began to reach out to him for educational and promotional videos. 

Medical products he has featured on his YouTube channel, which has nearly 6,000 subscribers, include Genentech’s Ocrevus, Novartis’ Kesimpta and Naltrexone. The first two products are MS drugs, while the third can treat MS symptoms, according to Washington’s channel. All of the videos on the channel featuring these drugs are educational or based on his personal experiences.

Washington would not discuss the terms of his deals but remained adamant that he only promotes products he personally uses or supports. Sometimes, he said, he does the videos for free. There is “a vulnerability I share with other people,” he said. “Frankly, people with MS don’t have other people in their lives to commiserate with, to share their concerns with, to be concerned about the latest MS news and medications, they don’t have people in their lives like that.”

He added, “being able to be seen in a world that cannot see you, by people who get through your channel, it’s deep and genuine.”  

Similarly, Dr. Vlad Coric, CEO and director of Biohaven Pharmaceutical, which focuses on neurological disease, said that some users of the company’s Nurtec ODT, a prescription drug for migraine, have declined payment when contacted by Biohaven to become part of the drug’s campaign.

Science-backed messaging

With greater access to data, marketers are also reshaping their communications to reflect a better-educated wellness consumer.

“Consumers are savvy,” said J&J’s Raghunandanan. “They want to understand the science behind the brands and products we are offering.” For example, the company shifted marketing for its Neutrogena Hydro Boost, a water-gel facial moisturizer brand, from traditional beauty shots to highlighting the science and data behind the product in Taiwan and Hong Kong—thereby involving scientific charts and graphs.

J&J noted an increase in sales following its shift in marketing, which was aided by The Cowan Agency, but declined to provide specific sales figures. 

Data is also becoming a bigger part of marketing strategies as a means to “meet people where they are physically and geographically, but also where they are in their health journey,” said Amrita Bhowmick, chief community officer at Health Union, a network of sites such as Migraine.com and BladderCancer.net founded by two former GlaxoSmithKline executives.

Agency advantage

McNamara said that McKinney’s health and wellness clients—which include Zhou Nutrition, the Alzheimer's Association and Alcon Pharma—are choosing his agency specifically because many of the shop’s staffers do not have a "traditional" health background and embrace the changing dynamic.

The future of the industry, he said, will be “Amazon Prime meets Uber meets Warby Parker. It will all be online, personalized and in your living room without barriers.”

According to Larry Mickelberg, chief commercial officer for Publicis Health, whose agencies have worked with Zzzquil, Zyrtec and the Skin Cancer Foundation, contemporary health care marketing utilizes data and technology to personalize messages to consumers when they are ready to change behavior or make a purchase. Publicis Health is able to combine patient healthcare data with lifestyle data from Epsilon, which is also owned by Publicis Groupe. 

Publicis Health cited its work with an undisclosed client that has a preventative vaccine. The vaccine is for people over a certain age, and the client wanted to identify people in this age group who should get the vaccine but haven’t yet done so. The agency was able to uncover different segments of this population based on their retail behaviors, health behaviors, online behaviors and more. 

“A lot of what we do is blocking out how the messaging works for different customers at different stages,” said Ryan Kutscher, founder of independent agency Circus Maximus. “Mapping out those customer journeys is a large part of what we do.” 

Ashley Richardson-George, partner and chief content officer at Circus Maximus, explains these customer stages with the example of social media.

“Facebook is multigenerational. Grandma is there, you are there, and your kids might even be there. Instagram is more your direct friend group and people you admire. TikTok is like a weekend in Vegas and you meet cool people that you may never see again, and LinkedIn is like work. I'm the same person all the time but how I interact on those channels might be different.”

The consumer-centric approach to health care marketing is seen as an advantage for smaller or less traditional shops entering the space, some agency executives believe. “The nature of global advertising and large-scale domestic advertising is effectively to be generic, trying to appeal to the biggest, broadest group of people, taking out attitudes and opinions that might be niche and exclusive to only a segment of your audience,” said Kutscher. “And you’re more tasked to not offend anyone.”