Health care and marketing traditionally have been seen as immiscible as oil and water. Ever since the FTC started coming down hard on marketers making false or misleading claims through online marketing campaigns, marketers have been pegged back as to what they can and can’t say in health care marketing collateral.

On one hand, claims are the heart and soul of a strong campaign; a unique, “big idea” that captures the imagination of your target market needs a statement that will catch your prospects’ attention. On the other hand, you can’t say anything too outlandish, or you’ll be shut down. Not only that, but people have become more jaded and desensitized from over-the-top messages. Marketers all over the country are scratching their heads, trying to find new ways to slash through the clutter and utilize the power of stories. What ethical considerations must they bear in mind?

Testimonials

Both the FDA and FTC have a say with endorsements for health related products and services. The FDA regulates labels and the FTC looks at advertisements. Together, they run a fine tooth comb through every nuance of a health care marketing message to ensure that consumers aren’t being fleeced.

Marketers know that stacking on more proof in marketing messages strengthens the sales argument, but it took just a few unscrupulous spammers to ruin it for the rest of those doing the right thing. The notorious acai berry craze of the late 2000s is where something had to give. In April of 2011, the FTC filed 10 lawsuits against online affiliate marketers who made deceptive claims and micro-websites designed to dupe through the use of completely bogus testimonials.

While many marketers would view the lawsuits as heavy-handed, true professionals would be applauding the authorities for cracking down on the rotten apples. Creating false and misleading testimonials works in the short term and can generate quick sales, but it can’t be relied on to build a long-term brand that people trust. The FTC and FDA did marketers a favor by enforcing these new standards. Raising the bar for everyone meant that only the truly ethical marketers would be the last ones standing.

Facts and Figures

One of the great things about marketing in healthcare is that truly high quality products will have underwent multiple batteries of rigorous scientific tests and experiments to verify their efficacy.

Obviously here, using false statistics is a no-go. If you’re even tempted to include a table of data that’s completely falsified, hedging your bets that no one’s going to check out the figures, vaporize that thought immediately. It’s not worth appearing more credible if you’re risking your product or company image. If you’re a marketer who’s been asked to do this, it may be worth looking into new roles.

The more interesting consideration is skewing data to look more impressive than it is. You’re not actually doing anything wrong. Ethically, it can be considered a gray area. If you’re an Excel master, you can make any set of boring numbers display to create dramatic results that make before and after scenarios breathtaking. It’s more so a case-by-case basis, but the general consensus is that if you have the volume of data to play with, you should represent it in a way that highlights the results you want to showcase but make it clear that the scale of the data visualization may have been adjusted to show this.

“Typical” results

One of the biggest changes to what’s allowed now in health care marketing is using typical results when talking about the benefits of a product. Marketers here will cry foul and have done so since this rule was created. If you’re trying to create a campaign that gets attention, non-typical results can carry an entire campaign. Amazing results can turn a cold prospect into someone who can’t wait to give you his credit card.

The industry that was particularly hardest hit by this change was weight loss. According to this rule, you couldn’t use successful customers who happened to lose a lot of weight. You could only use customers who had “typical” results. Marketers argued that no matter how powerful or effective your product was, having 100 customers with typical results was less persuasive than 10 customers with non-typical, amazing results.

While it seemed like a big impediment in the beginning, marketers have found new ways to sell. It just goes to show that being an ethical marketer and playing by the book does work and finding ways to creatively promote the health product or service without making fantastical claims is possible.

The ethics of marketing in health care is an issue that continues to be revisited. Marketers play an important role in communicating the benefits of health care products to customers. While the screws are irrevocably being tightened, meaning you can only work with “typical” results, honest testimonials and real data, this serves to flush out the bottom feeders. There’s always more room at the top for ethical marketers who play by the book and challenge themselves to sell the product while respecting their customers and themselves.

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