Have you seen the latest Pfizer television advertisement? It is a touching collage of the warm moments between people that are part of the healing process. This advertisement is part of a larger marketing campaign focused on ‘More Than Medication’.
This marketing campaign is a dramatic comment on emerging trends in the attitude Canadians have towards health care.
The ‘More Than Medication’ campaign includes a new website dedicated to educating the public on nutrition and herbal remedies. It does not, however, go so far as to acknowledge the role that nutritionists, naturopathic doctors or other alternative healthcare providers play in this arena.
Why not?
It would appear that the trend toward alternative healthcare in Canada, while still at the introductory stage, has been strong enough to impact mainstream traditional health care companies like Pfizer.
This marketing campaign is, at least in part, defensive of the territory that traditional healthcare companies have historically controlled. It treats the strides that alternative health care has recently made as competitive, and in doing so has missed the opportunity to recognize the synergies that exist between these two streams of healthcare.
If one lesson can be learned here, it would be that the ‘More Than Medication’ marketing campaign is an affirmation that alternative healthcare has earned serious territory on the Canadian healthcare map.
An interesting sign of things to come in healthcare marketing in Canada.
Alternative health care has definitely some role in Canadian health care – check this article about acupuncture on Life Insurance Canada. However, people may be confused by these steps. Goverment coverage is spreading into field of alternative medicine, while there is often problem to get normal treatment…Take care!Lorne
Thank you for the comment and for the insight about a fascinating milestone in Canadian health care. Thanks for sharing.
You are right that brands and organizations need to be very conscious of the impact of blog posts and the blurring of the lines between social and mainstream media.
Even blogs with low readership can show up in a Google search at a moment of truth — when a consumer is considering a purchase or a journalist is looking up opinions to back up a story.
Healthcare Marketing
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Peter.
I think people also need to get used to the idea that anything published on the Internet is potentially permanent. Even if you remove a page from a website or blog, Google and other search engines have records of it that can be searched.