Domestic ad spend for the pharmaceutical and healthcare category is forecast to be $11.1 billion this year, WARC notes.
What does this mean for brands, consumers and the healthcare system?
The research firm took a look.
Indeed, pharmaceutical and healthcare advertising spend in the U.S. is forecast to be sizable. And, it is expected to net 7.6% of the nation’s total ad spend – the highest in the world, per WARC Data.
As the fifth largest category behind Media & Publishing, Retail, Business & Industrial and Financial Services, pharma and healthcare is central to U.S. marketing. However, the pandemic has shaken it to its very foundations, WARC research shows.
“This category looms larger than ever following the outbreak of the pandemic,” says WARC U.S. Commissioning Editor Cathy Taylor. “We’ve seen breakthroughs, such as the emergence of telehealth and the creation and distribution of vaccines, but the pandemic has also emphasized the healthcare inequities that particularly effect non-white communities and highlighted a widespread distrust in science.”
This led WARC to help to explain why the U.S. healthcare system “is the way it is,” and what it means for future marketing of the pharma and healthcare category.
“The pandemic also laid bare the entrenched healthcare inequities facing the LGBTQ, Black, Hispanic, Latinx and Indigenous communities, as well as a widespread distrust of science,” Taylor says. “This upheaval creates a potential white space for brands to highlight purpose and, perhaps, help create system-level change.”
Against this backdrop, Taylor says pharma and healthcare brands should consider the following:
- Using the renewed power of purpose-driven corporate brands to embrace stakeholder capitalism across the system’s many constituencies.
- Helping re-orient the US healthcare industry around patient outcomes.
- Looking outside the category for ways to build deeper emotional connections.
- Shifting toward more data-driven solutions and behavioral science to drive better outcomes.
- Realizing that health and safety is currency that can be used to rebuild consumer trust across categories.
“Even though there is much work to be done to build a better, more equitable system, it’s important to remember that the competition-driven U.S. healthcare market is an immense contradiction, because it also achieves monumental successes,” Taylor notes.
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