Health Care Marketing-How Agencies Are Leaning Into Data And Influencers

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By Tony Hao, Published on September 06, 2022

Recently, Ryan Kutscher and Ashley Richardson-George were featured in Ad Age sharing insights on health care marketing. Here is the section of the article they are featured in if you missed it:

“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.”