The just-wrapped-up election season reinforced that it’s the message, along with the way it’s delivered, that can sway an audience. It also was a case study in how facts can be manipulated, or outright ignored.
There’s no room for any of that in healthcare and the way it’s marketed. It’s an industry whose core is the work to heal people when they’re sick and prevent illness. One could argue it’s the most important industry out there. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t room to be smart, clever and engaging.
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Our annual Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards, announced this month, spotlight the smart campaigns that are some combination of patient education, advocacy and product promotion. Even the most whimsical of the winners selected make an impact not because of that whimsy but because of the seriousness of the underlying message.
There is information to impart and just as importantly, misinformation to combat. There are the drugs, services, routine testing and medical devices that hospitals, insurers and companies offer, all with an eye toward improving people’s health and organizations’ results. It is a business, after all.
The challenge now — for the providers, insurers, manufacturers, advocacy groups and the creative teams working with them — is to not let public health slip backward. The jabs in the past months at established healthcare policies and programs elevate worries about access to care and its cost, the role of devices, technology and medicines including vaccines.
Healthcare and its players — all its players — need to protect patients. As the nation enters a period of great uncertainty about healthcare, among other things, it’s time for the people with medical training across the industry to raise their collective voice and mount their own campaign to not undo what already has been accomplished.
