The Scariest Thing in Healthcare Marketing? Being Forgettable.
I love a good horror movie. Give me the classics, a new release, even the occasional questionable sequel. And there’s always that moment when someone on screen makes a terrible decision and you find yourself yelling, “DO NOT GO IN THERE.”
Of course they go in there. That’s the point. Because horror understands something marketers sometimes forget: attention is earned.
It creates tension. It controls what you know and when you know it. It uses familiar conventions, then occasionally breaks them. And, at its best, it makes you feel something.
After more than three decades in healthcare marketing, I’ve seen campaigns die slow, painful deaths thanks to work that is technically correct, completely compliant, and utterly forgettable.
Consider this your warning.
1. Don’t kill the curiosity.
Healthcare marketing loves to explain everything immediately. The mechanism. The data. The benefit. The supporting claim. The footnote supporting the supporting claim. All before the audience has decided whether they care.
I get why we do it. We have a responsibility to be accurate. And there are MLR considerations at every turn.
But you have to earn attention before your message can do its job.
The strongest work starts with a reason to care — a frustrating truth, a surprising piece of evidence, or a question people actually want answered. Then it earns its way into the science, benefits, and proof.
If your audience needs to read 47 words before they see why they should keep going, you’ve made a great trailer for a movie nobody is watching.
2. Sameness is the real monster.
I’ve spent enough time reviewing competitive landscapes to know that sometimes the biggest threat to differentiation isn’t what a competitor is doing. It’s what everyone is doing.
Same blue palette. Same hopeful patient shot. Same broad promise of innovation. Same language about transforming care. Different logo.
Competitive analysis should tell us more than who else is in the category. What I want to know is where the category has become predictable.
- What claims keep showing up?
- What visual codes have everyone adopted?
- What words have been worn completely smooth?
- What assumptions are the entire market making?
Saying your message louder isn’t the move. It’s refusing to say it the same way. After all, differentiation starts long before the headline. It starts with having the nerve to ask, “Why are we doing this in the first place?”
3. Use data before it’s dead.
Every horror movie gives you warning signs. The lights flicker. The dog starts growling at nothing. Someone hears a noise in the basement and decides this would be an excellent time to investigate alone.
Marketing gives you warning signs, too.
High bounce rates. Weak engagement. Strong traffic with no meaningful action. One message outperforming another. A channel quietly doing all the work while the rest politely collect impressions.
And yet, people wait until the campaign is over to listen to what the numbers were trying to tell them the whole time.
Marketing data should be a decision-making tool, not simply a reporting tool. Too often, analytics become an autopsy. The campaign ends. The report arrives. Everyone gathers around to learn what happened to the body.
Useful? Sure. But I’d much rather use the data while the work is still alive.
If something isn’t working, I want us adjusting the creative. Refining the messaging. Rethinking the channel mix. Challenging the original assumption. Not getting offended by the numbers, but giving them a chance to make the work better.
4. Everyone owns the idea.
“You check the basement. I’ll go upstairs.” A terrible survival strategy. Also not a great operating model.
Healthcare marketing gets weaker when strategy, creative, media, analytics, digital, and production disappear into separate rooms and reunite three weeks later with different interpretations of the assignment.
Integration isn’t about having everyone on every call. Nobody wants that. It’s about shared thinking.
Strategy should shape the creative idea, not simply bless it afterward. Media should influence how the idea behaves in the world. Analytics should help teams decide what to test and learn. Development and production should be part of the thinking early enough to make the work better — not just possible.
Audiences don’t experience an org chart. They should experience one brand. And the work should feel like one, too.
5. Don’t be afraid of the rules.
Horror movies live on conventions, like the creepy house, the final girl, or the phone call from inside the house. But the good ones know when to break the pattern.
Our industry could use more of that. Sure, it has plenty of legitimate constraints — regulation, accuracy, fair balance, and scientific complexity. But these aren’t an excuse for boring work. “Safe” too often becomes shorthand for “familiar,” which can quickly become “invisible.”
Strong creative doesn’t fight the rules. It finds more interesting territory inside them.
That may mean an unexpected visual system, a point of view competitors have missed, or simply having the conviction to stop sanding every idea down until there’s nothing left to notice.
Because you can make something completely correct and completely irrelevant at the same time.
The scariest thing in healthcare marketing is spending the time, budget, and brainpower to make something nobody remembers. Healthcare audiences are busy, skeptical, and exposed to more information than they could possibly absorb. Being clear is essential. Being credible is nonnegotiable. But neither guarantees attention. The work still has to make somebody look.
So yes, pay attention to the warning signs. Know what’s lurking around you. Keep the team together. And when everyone in the category starts heading toward the same dark, creepy basement?
Maybe don’t follow them.
seriously