Healthy Creativity in Advertising
In today's fast-paced pressured world health and wellness has taken centre stage in people's lives. As individuals become increasingly conscious of their well-being, the market for related products and services has exploded. However, in this saturated marketplace, consumers are not just looking for products, they want meaning and authenticity.
The wellness industry is absolutely booming, worth a staggering GBP2.8 trillion worldwide, according to the Global Wellness Institute. And it is expected to grow further still with forecasts from GlobalData analytics showing the average British consumer is likely to spend GBP487 per head annually on wellness-based products and services.
We have recently seen the healthwashing of consumer products, where mainstream Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) marketers are trying to provide a healthy benefit for their products.
However, despite the expansion, consumers are becoming more discerning, prioritising brands whose messaging aligns with a more conscious mindset, which has created a shift in the marketing. Authenticity in health and wellness marketing goes beyond slick advertisements and empty promises. It involves building trust, delivering value, and genuinely caring about your customers’ wellbeing. Encouraging transparency, education and customer-centricity, creative agencies are imaginatively guiding brand clients into the wellness space.
“We have recently seen the healthwashing of consumer products, where mainstream Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) marketers are trying to provide a healthy benefit for their products. It’s similar to the greenwashing trend we saw a decade ago – neither particularly projects the advertising industry in a positive light,” says Rich Levy, chief creative officer of leading healthcare marketing agency Klick Health.
This is why creating quality wellness-based and health-accurate content requires “a commitment to scientific rigour, creative responsibility, and ethical considerations,” adds Laura Denham, SVP and executive creative producer at Klick Health. “We have to be mindful of the potential impact our content may have, or how it could shift perceptions. I also believe, by rejecting myopic thinking and including more diverse voices (both creative and expert) we can better speak to a global health community.”
“As we continue to scale globally on the heels of opening offices in London, Singapore, and São Paulo, that’s something that really reinforces our commitment to ensuring our strategic thinking and creative content are representative, diverse, and accurate.”
Authenticity in health and wellness marketing goes beyond slick ads and empty promises. It involves building trust, delivering value, and genuinely caring about your customers' wellbeing.
Klick Health was awarded Gold, Silver and Bronze awards at Cannes Lions for their recent campaigns, which aim to blur the line between the multimillion pound health and wellness industry and entertainment. These included projects like the book category winner The Congregation for podHER, The Bridge for PAWS NY in the Digital Craft for Animation competition, and Pharma Lion recipient Lifesaving Radio created for NextMed Health.
Lifesaving Radio is the world’s first AI powered healthcare radio station, designed to improve surgical accuracy and efficiency. With a growth in consumers wanting to take control of their own health, seeking out personalisation from the brands they interact with, marketing campaigns are diverting away from simple product placements, and are rather offering real life solutions that encourage a trustworthiness and sense of understanding of the consumer.
Another company to understand this shift was Partners Life, which won the Cannes Lions’ Health and Wellness Grand Prix for highlighting the importance of life insurance.
The company’s campaign, The Last Performance, was created with Special New Zealand, Auckland, and featured the death of characters from The Brokenwood Mysteries television series. Played right before the credits rolled throughout the entire latest season, the humorous timing of the commercials shed an important light on the reality of New Zealanders being one of the most underinsured populations in the world.
On the win, jury president Mel Routhier, chief creative officer at VMLY&R Chicago, commented: “It’s a product that nobody wants to think about, much less buy. It’s an idea that uses media in a brilliantly creative and innovative way, and actually finds a way to put the words entertainment and advertising side by side. You actually want to watch that thing that so many people skip.”
“Ultimately, people want to live healthily and happily,” says Denham. “We don’t just want wellness, we need it. This is a universal desire and important to us all. We are seeing this in the stories advertisers are telling, and in the content people are interested in most.”
As a global community we need to see it to believe it, and when wellness is distorted, or completely missing from advertising, it impacts culture massively.
Levy adds: “Healthcare advertising is making huge strides to be timely and relevant. Every year, we’re seeing more and more examples of unbelievable creative work that provokes action for people to take responsibility for their health.”
There’s also been a growing emphasis on authenticity, inclusivity, and holistic well-being, according to Denham. This was reinforced at Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity this year where the ideas that really stood out were about taking action and focused on impact and results. “The ideas that resonated were those that made a positive change in people’s lives,” she says.
Inclusiveness and accessibility were particularly key. The health and wellness companies and initiatives have a history of failing to include communities of non-white races or the lower class, and therefore the marketing neglected a significant proportion of the market.
Unfortunately, in an effort to seem more socially conscious and inclusive, some brands have come across as ingenuine, often causing more harm than good. The right campaigns can potentially shape cultural shifts.
“Oftentimes, ads and campaigns mirror culture back to us,” argues Denham. “Great ads are influenced by culture, but this impact isn’t unidirectional, as ads can also influence culture. This is why representation matters and why seeing a healthy and strong version of wellness in advertising is so important. As a global community we need to see it to believe it, and when wellness is distorted, or completely missing from advertising, it impacts culture massively. This can change the way communities do (or don’t) take care of themselves and prioritise wellness.”
In an interview with AdAge on the launch of Welltertainment earlier this year, Andre Gray commented: “[The industry] continues to try to treat people like they're media metrics – that we can just buy a billboard.”
Combining wellness and entertainment, the aptly named Welltertainment is a product of Havas creative agency, led by Eric Weisberg, global chief creative officer of Havas Health and You, and Andre Gray, chief creative officer of Annex88. They are signing clients that focus on important areas like diabetes, obesity, mental health, paediatric asthma and sexual wellness, and prioritises the positive storytelling of these conditions, erasing stigma and allowing marketing initiatives to educate consumers approachably.
As more companies in the health and wellness sector choose to take this path, putting the consumer’s needs first, marketing will continue to shift in a positive way, bringing advertising and culture together in a meaningful way.
This article was first published in the FOCUS 2023 issue of makers.
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