The Great Healthcare Marketing Waste: Billions Spent, Celebrities Hired, Patients Still Left Behind
There is a question I have been asking myself for years, and the longer I work in health media, the harder it becomes to ignore. Are the biggest healthcare companies
There is a question I have been asking myself for years, and the longer I work in health media, the harder it becomes to ignore.
Are the biggest healthcare companies in America actually trying to reach the people who need them most—or have they become so comfortable with the business of marketing that they have forgotten the people behind the numbers?
I know that is a provocative question. It is supposed to be.
I have spent years producing television, film, and health-focused programming around diabetes, cancer, chronic pain, dementia, menopause, and other conditions that affect millions of people and the families who care for them. I have sat with patients who are desperate for answers. I have listened to caregivers who are exhausted. I have watched people navigate complicated diagnoses, expensive treatments, confusing medical information, and healthcare systems that often seem impossible to understand.
I have also watched the marketing machine that surrounds healthcare.
The enormous television campaigns. The famous faces. The celebrity partnerships. The glossy commercials. The advertising agencies. The media-buying firms. The consultants. The sponsorship agreements. The campaigns promising awareness, engagement, education, and impact.
And I keep coming back to the same question: With all this money, all this technology, all this data, and all these supposed experts, why does so much healthcare marketing still feel disconnected from the people it is supposed to reach?
I am not suggesting that every healthcare campaign is a failure, that every celebrity endorsement is useless, or that advertising never helps patients. It can. Good marketing can raise awareness, encourage people to seek care, and introduce patients to treatment options they did not know existed.
But I believe there is a serious conversation to be had about what happens when spending becomes the strategy, visibility becomes the definition of success, and the patient becomes an afterthought.
Because when you look at the money involved, this is not a small problem. It is an enormous industry with enormous financial incentives—and a marketing model that deserves far more scrutiny.
The Numbers Are Too Big to Ignore
Let’s begin with the scale of the spending.
According to EMARKETER, U.S. healthcare and pharmaceutical media advertising spending was projected to exceed $30 billion in 2024. Separate industry estimates put prescription-drug advertising alone at approximately $10.1 billion across television, digital, social media, print, radio, and other channels that year. Television accounted for more than $5 billion of that prescription-drug advertising total.
Those are staggering numbers.
And they are only part of the larger picture. Healthcare marketing also includes advertising directed at healthcare professionals, hospital and health-system promotion, medical-device campaigns, disease-awareness initiatives, public relations, sponsorships, promotional events, sales representatives, consultants, and other commercial activities.
A major peer-reviewed study published in JAMA examined U.S. medical marketing between 1997 and 2016. It found that total spending on medical marketing increased from $17.7 billion to $29.9 billion over that period. Marketing to healthcare professionals represented the largest share, while direct-to-consumer advertising grew substantially. <escape>[2]</escape>
The important point is not that every dollar spent is wasted. It is that the scale of the investment demands a higher standard of accountability.
If an industry spends billions to influence healthcare decisions, we should be asking some basic questions.
How many of those dollars reach the people who genuinely need the information?
How much spending produces meaningful patient education rather than simple brand recognition?
How much is measured against actual behavior, access to care, or improved understanding?
And how much is considered successful because a campaign generated impressions, clicks, media exposure, or a report filled with impressive-looking metrics?
These are not the same things.
A commercial that reaches 20 million people has not necessarily educated 20 million people. A celebrity who appears in a national campaign has not necessarily changed the behavior of the people watching. A digital advertisement that generates thousands of clicks has not necessarily helped a patient find an appropriate treatment, understand a diagnosis, or get the care they need.
Reach is not the same as relevance. Awareness is not the same as understanding. And exposure is not the same as impact.
Yet the healthcare marketing business often behaves as though those distinctions are optional.
The Healthcare Marketing Pharaohs
I sometimes think of the largest players in healthcare marketing as modern-day pharaohs.
They have enormous budgets, powerful institutions, armies of advisers, elaborate campaigns, and access to some of the most influential platforms in the world. Their advertising can dominate television, streaming services, search results, social media, and the conversations surrounding major health conditions.
They can spend more on a single campaign than a small health organization might raise in years.
Meanwhile, a patient advocacy group trying to educate people about a rare disease may struggle to fund a basic documentary. A small health company with a promising innovation may have trouble getting in front of the audience it was created to serve. An independent filmmaker trying to tell the stories of people living with a chronic condition may spend months searching for support while the industry spends millions on another campaign featuring beautiful scenery and a familiar face.
I have seen this divide firsthand.
The people closest to the problem are not always the people with the money to tell the story.
And the people with the money are not always the people who understand the audience best.
Of course, large healthcare companies have legitimate responsibilities. They must operate within regulations, protect their brands, satisfy investors, and make decisions about how to allocate resources. Pharmaceutical advertising can inform people about treatment options, and broad campaigns can be appropriate for conditions affecting large populations.
But none of that means the current model should escape scrutiny.
The question is whether the system rewards the right things.
If the people approving budgets are rewarded for brand growth, if agencies are rewarded for delivering large campaigns, if media companies earn money from selling advertising space, and if success is measured primarily by exposure and sales, then patient education can become a secondary objective—even when everyone involved claims it is the priority.
That is not necessarily a conspiracy. It is a problem of incentives.
And incentive problems can persist for years because the people benefiting from a system may have little motivation to change it.
The Celebrity Trap: Famous Does Not Always Mean Effective
One of the most frustrating things I see in healthcare marketing is the belief that hiring a famous person automatically makes a campaign more powerful.
A well-known actor. A former athlete. A television personality. A singer. Someone with millions of followers and a recognizable face.
The assumption seems straightforward: People know this person, therefore they will pay attention. If they pay attention, they will trust the message. If they trust the message, they will take action.
But those are three different steps, and none is guaranteed.
A celebrity can bring attention to a health issue. That can be valuable. A personal story about cancer, diabetes, heart disease, or another condition may encourage someone to seek information or speak to a healthcare professional.
But there is a difference between making someone look at a message and helping that person understand what the message means for their own life.
Consider the patient living with a rare disease. They may have spent years trying to find a specialist who understands their condition. They may be struggling to afford treatment. They may have a caregiver trying to coordinate appointments, medications, transportation, and insurance paperwork.
Will seeing a famous actor in a polished commercial necessarily solve any of those problems?
Of course not.
The celebrity may make the campaign memorable. But the patient may need something much more specific: a clear explanation of symptoms, access to an expert, information about treatment options, a patient support program, or a credible story from someone who has actually lived with the condition.
That is where the disconnect begins.
A celebrity’s fame can become the centerpiece of a campaign when the real opportunity is to make the patient the centerpiece.
Research reinforces the need for a more careful approach. A 2017 meta-analysis published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science examined 46 studies involving 10,357 participants. It found that the average effects of celebrity endorsements varied considerably depending on the situation and the outcome being measured. The overall results did not show a universal positive effect across measures, and celebrity endorsements sometimes performed worse than other forms of endorsement.
A separate study examining celebrity endorsements in prescription-drug advertising found no significant difference in perceived credibility or effectiveness between a celebrity-endorsed advertisement and an otherwise comparable advertisement featuring a non-celebrity.
That does not prove celebrities never work. It demonstrates something more useful: fame is not a substitute for a strategy.
The right person, message, audience, and context matter. A celebrity who has a genuine connection to a condition may help build trust. Someone whose audience closely matches the intended audience may be a sensible choice. A respected public figure sharing a personal health experience may prompt people to take action.
But a famous face alone is not a marketing plan.
If companies are paying millions for celebrity involvement, they should be able to demonstrate what that person contributes beyond name recognition.
Did the campaign reach people who were previously unaware of the condition? Did it improve understanding? Did it help people find appropriate care? Did it generate meaningful engagement with the intended patient population? Did it change behavior in a way that could reasonably be connected to the campaign?
If nobody can answer those questions, what exactly did the company purchase?
Perhaps it purchased visibility. Perhaps it purchased prestige. Perhaps it purchased a campaign that looked impressive in a boardroom presentation.
But did it purchase impact?
That is the question I want answered.
The Celebrity Becomes the Story—and the Patient Disappears
There is another problem with celebrity-driven healthcare marketing: sometimes the person promoting the message becomes more memorable than the message itself.
People remember the actor, the athlete, the music, the humor, or the scenery. They may remember that they saw an advertisement, but not what condition it addressed or what action they were encouraged to take.
This is not unique to healthcare. It is a recognized risk in advertising generally. The attention created by an endorser does not automatically transfer to the product or message.
Healthcare makes that risk especially important because the subject is not simply a pair of sneakers or a new car. It may involve a life-changing diagnosis, a difficult treatment decision, or a condition that a patient has struggled to understand for years.
Imagine the alternative.
Instead of putting nearly all the emotional weight on a celebrity, what if a campaign introduced viewers to a real patient and the family navigating the condition together? What if a respected specialist explained the disease in language people could understand? What if the campaign showed viewers where to find reliable information, how to recognize symptoms, or what questions to ask their doctors?
What if the famous person served as a bridge to the information rather than the main attraction?
That is a different model.
It may not be as glamorous. It may not produce the same kind of red-carpet photographs. But it could create a more direct connection between the campaign and the people it is intended to serve.
I believe healthcare marketing needs more of that.
Not because celebrities have no place in health communication, but because patients deserve more than celebrity recognition as the primary measure of a campaign’s value.
The Agency Business: Who Benefits When the Spending Continues?
Let’s talk about the agencies.
I have worked in media long enough to understand that producing and distributing a campaign costs money. Skilled creative teams, researchers, production crews, strategists, media planners, regulatory specialists, and analysts all have a role to play. Good agencies can bring real value to healthcare companies, especially when they understand the audience and know how to communicate responsibly.
The problem is not that agencies make money.
The problem arises when the commercial structure rewards spending more reliably than it rewards results.
Consider how a large campaign may be assembled. A healthcare company hires an agency. The agency develops a strategy and creative concept. Production teams are hired. A media plan is created. Television, streaming, digital, and other advertising placements are purchased. Research and measurement may be added. Additional agencies or vendors may manage public relations, influencer relationships, analytics, and campaign optimization.
Each participant may perform legitimate work. Each may earn revenue from the arrangement.
But who is ultimately accountable for whether the right patients were reached and whether the campaign actually helped them?
In some arrangements, agencies are compensated through fixed fees, project fees, retainers, production charges, media-related fees, or other contractual structures. The details vary widely, and not every agency benefits from increasing media spend. Some contracts explicitly reward performance or efficiency.
Still, the broader question remains: Are the incentives aligned with the patient’s outcome, or primarily with the delivery of the campaign?
If a company approves a $20 million media budget, that budget creates business for the companies producing, distributing, and measuring the advertising. If the budget grows, the commercial opportunity can grow too.
But if the company discovers that a more targeted $5 million campaign reaches the most relevant patients more effectively, who benefits from the savings? The company and its shareholders may benefit. Patients may benefit if the savings are redirected toward better services, affordability, or education. But vendors whose revenue depends on the larger campaign may have less business to do.
That does not mean those vendors will deliberately waste money. It means the system may not naturally reward the most efficient approach unless the client insists on it.
This is why I believe healthcare companies should demand more than a beautiful creative presentation and a complicated report.
They should demand transparency around costs, audience quality, the assumptions behind the media plan, the limitations of the measurement, and the outcomes that matter.
They should ask whether an expensive national campaign is appropriate for a condition affecting a relatively small, clearly identifiable population.
They should ask whether the audience is being reached repeatedly without being meaningfully engaged.
They should ask whether the same budget could fund a documentary, patient education series, expert interviews, community partnerships, targeted digital content, or a combination of approaches that builds trust over time.
And they should be willing to challenge the answer when it sounds suspiciously like, “This is simply how we have always done it.”
Why the System Is So Difficult to Change
I do not believe every person in healthcare marketing is trying to protect a broken system. Many are smart, dedicated professionals who genuinely want to reach patients and communicate useful information.
But large systems develop habits. Habits become processes. Processes become budgets. Budgets become business models. And business models develop constituencies that depend on them.
When billions of dollars flow through established advertising channels, there will naturally be people and organizations invested in maintaining those channels.
Television networks sell advertising. Streaming platforms sell advertising. Agencies manage campaigns. Production companies make commercials. Consultants advise on strategy. Technology firms sell targeting and analytics. Research companies measure performance.
All of these businesses have legitimate commercial interests.
But their interests are not automatically identical to the interests of a patient who needs help.
That distinction matters.
A media company may want to sell as much inventory as possible. A patient may need a few minutes of clear, credible information about a condition. An agency may want a large campaign with a substantial production budget. A small patient population may benefit more from a targeted series featuring specialists and people who understand the condition firsthand.
The objectives can overlap, but they do not always align.
And when a system has operated the same way for years, challenging it can be uncomfortable. It can require questioning familiar vendors, renegotiating contracts, changing internal reporting structures, and admitting that an expensive campaign may not have delivered the results everyone hoped for.
It is easier to repeat a familiar formula than to rethink it.
It is easier to point to millions of impressions than to explain why those impressions did not translate into meaningful patient engagement.
It is easier to say a celebrity campaign raised awareness than to demonstrate what that awareness changed.
And it is easier to keep funding a recognizable approach than to test something that challenges the assumptions behind the existing budget.
This is how waste can persist without anyone needing to sit in a room and plan to waste money. The incentives, habits, and measures of success can be enough.
Are the Healthcare Pharaohs Really Trying to Reach Their Target Audience?
This is the question that keeps coming back to me.
Do these large healthcare companies really want to reach their target audience in the most effective way possible? Or have they become so accustomed to the scale of their marketing operations that they confuse spending with progress?
I am not suggesting that pharmaceutical companies, medical-device manufacturers, hospitals, or healthcare brands do not care about patients. Many invest in valuable research, support services, education, and access programs.
But the business question is worth asking.
If a company knows that a specific condition affects a defined patient population, why does the marketing sometimes look as though the primary objective is to reach everyone?
If the goal is to educate people living with a particular condition, why is so much attention given to general awareness when the audience may need specialized information?
If a campaign features a celebrity, why is the celebrity’s visibility sometimes treated as more important than the quality of the information the patient receives?
If a company spends millions on media, why shouldn’t it be required to show what portion of the investment reached the intended population and what happened afterward?
And if a smaller, more focused campaign could serve the intended audience more effectively, why isn’t that approach considered more often?
Some health campaigns genuinely require mass reach. Some conditions are common, some audiences are difficult to identify, and some messages benefit from broad exposure. But that does not justify applying the same marketing logic to every health problem.
A campaign for a mass-market treatment and a campaign intended to reach people with a rare, complex condition should not automatically follow the same playbook.
The audience is different. The information needs are different. The journey to diagnosis may be different. The barriers to treatment may be different.
The strategy should reflect those differences.
Healthcare marketing should begin with the patient population—not with the advertising budget.
The “Fish Out of a Barrel, Not a Lake” Principle
One of the ideas I keep returning to is simple: why spend enormous amounts of money trying to find your audience in a lake when you already know where the fish are?
I have often described the opportunity as fishing in a barrel rather than a lake.
The point is not that reaching patients is always easy. It isn’t. Privacy restrictions, fragmented healthcare data, regulatory requirements, and the sensitive nature of medical information can make audience targeting difficult. Companies must be careful not to misuse personal health data or target people in inappropriate ways.
But there are legitimate ways to build a focused health audience.
Patient advocacy organizations understand the communities they serve. Disease-specific conferences bring together people who are actively looking for information. Specialist physicians understand the questions patients repeatedly ask. Health-focused media can bring experts and lived experience into the same conversation. Educational series can be developed around a specific condition rather than relying entirely on generic brand messaging.
A company supporting a campaign about a rare neurological condition, for example, could work with reputable advocacy organizations, specialist communities, patient educators, and medical experts to create information designed around the actual needs of that population.
The campaign could include clear explanations of symptoms, diagnosis, treatment discussions, caregiver support, and questions to ask a physician. It could feature multiple patients with different experiences instead of relying on a single spokesperson to represent everyone.
The content could then be distributed through appropriate channels, with measurement focused on meaningful engagement and educational value.
This does not mean abandoning broad advertising altogether. It means recognizing that broad reach is only one tool—and not always the best one.
In a world where healthcare marketing budgets can reach billions of dollars, the more important question may not be how many people saw an advertisement.
It may be whether the right people received the right information at the right time.
The Opportunity Being Missed: Real Stories, Real Experts, Real Conversations
This is where I believe healthcare marketing has an enormous opportunity to change.
For years, the industry has invested heavily in short advertisements. A commercial has a limited amount of time to attract attention, communicate a message, establish a brand, and comply with regulatory requirements.
Those constraints are real.
But a 30-second commercial cannot do everything.
It cannot fully explain a complicated disease. It cannot give a caregiver a detailed understanding of the patient’s daily challenges. It cannot introduce several specialists and allow them to discuss the nuances of treatment. It cannot capture the emotional reality of a diagnosis while also providing practical education.
That is where longer-form storytelling can play an important role.
Through my work in television and documentary production, I have seen the value of bringing real people and experts into the same environment. People living with a condition can describe what it feels like to navigate the healthcare system. Physicians can explain the science and discuss treatment options. Caregivers can describe the practical and emotional demands that often remain invisible in traditional advertising.
When done responsibly, that kind of storytelling can help audiences understand a condition in a way a short commercial may not.
Imagine a four-part documentary series focused on a specific health condition.
Each episode could explore a different part of the patient journey: understanding the diagnosis, hearing from experts, examining available treatment approaches, and exploring the realities of living with the condition over time.
The series could feature people from different backgrounds, ages, and communities. It could include caregivers, specialists, researchers, and patient advocates. It could provide a foundation for shorter videos, social content, educational clips, interviews, and community discussions.
Rather than making a single appearance the centerpiece of a campaign, the project would build a library of educational content that could remain useful over time.
The company supporting the project could receive appropriate recognition, subject to medical, legal, regulatory, and editorial safeguards. The content could be distributed through multiple channels and evaluated based on reach, completion, engagement, educational outcomes, and other relevant measures.
The point is not that documentaries should replace all advertising. They should not.
The point is that healthcare companies have more options than they often use.
A focused documentary or educational series may not be the right answer for every product or condition. But for audiences who need context, trust, and depth, it can be a meaningful part of a larger strategy.
And unlike a campaign that disappears when the media budget ends, well-produced educational content may continue to reach people long after the original production.
The Value of Targeted Health Media
One of the biggest misconceptions in marketing is that bigger automatically means better.
A national campaign might generate millions of impressions. A condition-specific program may reach a much smaller audience.
But what if that smaller audience is precisely the group the company needs to engage?
Imagine two hypothetical campaigns, each with a budget of $1 million.
The first spends heavily on broad exposure. It generates 20 million impressions, but only a small percentage of those impressions reach people who are relevant to the campaign’s objective.
The second spends $1 million on a combination of specialist-led education, patient stories, targeted distribution, and a library of reusable content. It generates fewer impressions overall but reaches a higher proportion of people actively seeking information about the condition.
Neither campaign can be declared the winner from impression counts alone. We would need to examine the audience quality, actual engagement, educational value, cost per meaningful action, and whether the intended outcomes were achieved.
That is precisely the point.
The industry should not reward a campaign simply because the numbers look large. It should examine what those numbers mean.
A million impressions can be valuable if they reach the right people and move them toward a useful action. They can be wasteful if they repeatedly expose the wrong audience to a message that offers little value.
The same principle applies to celebrity campaigns, television commercials, streaming advertisements, social media, and educational programming.
The goal should not be to maximize exposure at any cost. The goal should be to maximize meaningful impact within a responsible budget.
What Should Healthcare Companies Measure Instead?
If healthcare companies are serious about improving marketing efficiency, they need to be more demanding about how success is defined.
Impressions, views, clicks, and brand recall can provide useful information. They are not inherently meaningless. But they are only part of the picture.
Companies should consider a broader measurement framework built around the purpose of each campaign.
1. Did the campaign reach the intended audience?
Measure whether the people reached actually match the campaign’s target population, using privacy-respecting and legally appropriate methods. Broad exposure should not be confused with qualified reach.
2. Did the audience understand the message?
Where appropriate, measure whether viewers understood the condition, the intended educational message, or the next step being communicated. A person remembering a celebrity does not necessarily mean that person understood the health information.
3. Did the campaign encourage a useful next step?
Depending on the campaign, that might mean visiting a credible educational resource, discussing symptoms with a healthcare professional, learning about a screening recommendation, or accessing an appropriate support service. These outcomes should be measured responsibly and without assuming that every action is clinically beneficial for every person.
4. Was the cost proportionate to the outcome?
Companies should calculate the cost of meaningful engagement, qualified reach, or another clearly defined objective. They should compare alternative approaches rather than assuming the most expensive media plan is the most effective.
5. Did the content remain useful over time?
A television advertisement may have a short campaign life. Educational videos, expert interviews, and documentary segments may be reused in appropriate settings, subject to content updates, rights, regulatory requirements, and the need to keep medical information current.
6. Was the information responsible and balanced?
Healthcare campaigns must consider accuracy, limitations, appropriate risk communication, and the distinction between education and promotion. Content should not promise outcomes that evidence does not support or substitute marketing messages for medical advice.
7. Can the company explain what it learned?
Every campaign should generate insight that improves the next one. If a company cannot explain what worked, what failed, and what should change, it may be measuring activity rather than learning.
None of these measures is perfect. Health outcomes are influenced by many factors beyond marketing, and it is often difficult to establish that a campaign directly caused a medical or behavioral outcome. But that is a reason to measure carefully—not a reason to settle for vanity metrics.
The Real Cost of Getting It Wrong
When marketing fails in another industry, a company may lose sales or market share.
In healthcare, the consequences can be more complicated.
Poorly designed campaigns can confuse patients, overemphasize branded treatments, or leave people with an incomplete understanding of their options. A campaign may generate demand without adequately communicating the limitations, risks, or circumstances in which a treatment is appropriate.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office examined direct-to-consumer prescription-drug advertising and reported that drug manufacturers spent $17.8 billion advertising 553 drugs between 2016 and 2018. It also found that Medicare and its beneficiaries spent $560 billion on drugs during that period, with more than half of that spending associated with advertised drugs. That finding does not establish that advertising caused all, or even most, of the associated drug spending. It does illustrate the scale at which marketing and treatment decisions coexist. <escape>[5]</escape>
More recent analysis has continued to examine the relationship between advertising, prescribing, and drug costs. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, summarizing research in a 2025 fact sheet, cited a Congressional Budget Office estimate that a 10% increase in direct-to-consumer drug advertising was associated with a 1% to 2.3% increase in drug spending. That is an association estimate, not proof that every additional advertising dollar causes a predictable increase in spending in every setting. <escape>[6]</escape>
These findings raise legitimate questions about how promotional spending influences demand and the allocation of healthcare resources.
The answer is not to assume that all advertising is harmful. Patients can benefit from learning about conditions and treatment options, and responsible advertising can prompt valuable conversations with clinicians.
The answer is to recognize that healthcare marketing operates in a setting where the financial consequences can extend beyond the advertiser.
If a campaign directs attention toward a particular treatment, the quality and balance of the information matter. If an advertisement encourages a patient to request a medicine, the conversation that follows should be grounded in clinical judgment, the patient’s circumstances, and the available evidence.
And if billions are spent to influence decisions, the industry should be prepared to demonstrate that those investments are serving a defensible purpose.
Why Independent Health Storytelling Deserves a Seat at the Table
I want to be clear about something: I am not arguing that independent filmmakers, documentary producers, or targeted health-media companies should automatically receive healthcare marketing budgets.
We should have to demonstrate our value, just as everyone else should.
But I believe independent health storytelling deserves a more serious place in the conversation.
Why?
Because a focused health-media project can begin with a different question.
Instead of asking, “How do we get this brand in front of as many people as possible?” it can ask, “What does this audience need to understand, and how can we tell that story responsibly?”
That difference can shape the entire production.
It changes who is invited to participate. It changes the questions asked of experts. It changes how patients are portrayed. It changes whether caregivers are included. It changes the balance between emotional storytelling and practical information.
It can also create a platform for audiences who may be overlooked by broad campaigns.
People living with rare conditions. Communities that have historically had limited access to health education. Families navigating complicated diagnoses. Women trying to understand symptoms that have been dismissed or misunderstood. Caregivers who are often expected to manage extraordinary responsibilities with little support.
These audiences do not need to be treated as a demographic line in a media plan. They need to be treated as people.
A well-designed documentary or educational series can bring those people into the conversation while giving specialists and researchers the time to explain complicated subjects.
It can also create multiple pieces of content from a single production: a longer-form series, short educational clips, expert interviews, social videos, caregiver resources, and discussion material for appropriate community settings.
That does not guarantee success. Distribution, editorial quality, audience research, medical accuracy, and appropriate measurement remain essential.
But it offers a different way to think about healthcare marketing: not simply as a series of advertisements, but as an opportunity to build a sustained educational relationship with a clearly defined audience.
What I Would Ask a Healthcare CEO Before Approving the Next Big Campaign
If I were sitting in a room with the leadership of a major healthcare company, I would not begin by asking how much money they had available for marketing.
I would ask a different set of questions.
Who exactly are we trying to reach?
What do those people already know, and what do they still need to understand?
What barriers prevent them from getting appropriate information or care?
Why is the proposed campaign the right approach for this particular audience?
What evidence supports the choice of celebrity, platform, creative concept, and media mix?
What portion of the budget goes toward production, distribution, agency services, technology, and measurement?
How will we know whether the campaign reached the right people?
How will we distinguish awareness from understanding and meaningful engagement?
What alternatives were considered, and why were they rejected?
Could a smaller, more focused campaign achieve the objective more efficiently?
What will remain after the campaign ends?
And finally: if the results fall short, who is responsible for explaining why—and what will change next time?
These are not hostile questions. They are basic business questions.
If a company is investing millions of dollars, it should be comfortable answering them.
And if a campaign cannot be evaluated against clear objectives, perhaps the objectives were never defined properly in the first place.
The Change I Want to See
I want to see healthcare companies become more courageous in how they approach marketing.
I want them to question the assumption that every important campaign requires a household name.
I want them to consider whether an audience would benefit more from a trusted specialist than a celebrity, more from a patient story than a polished slogan, or more from a series of useful educational resources than a short burst of advertising.
I want agencies to be rewarded for insight, efficiency, creativity, and measurable value—not simply for delivering a large campaign.
I want media companies to recognize that healthcare communication carries responsibilities beyond generating impressions.
And I want healthcare executives to ask whether their marketing budgets reflect the needs of the people they serve.
Sometimes the answer will still be a national advertising campaign. Sometimes it will be a celebrity partnership. Sometimes broad awareness is exactly what is needed.
But those choices should emerge from a clear understanding of the audience and the objective, not from habit or prestige.
I also want more room for independent voices, patient advocates, caregivers, and filmmakers who understand how to tell health stories with depth and humanity.
The people living with a condition should not be invited into the process only after the campaign has already been designed. Their experiences should help inform the questions being asked from the beginning.
That is how healthcare marketing can become more relevant, more useful, and more accountable.
My Final Question to the Healthcare Pharaohs
I have spent much of my career using film and television to tell stories about people who are navigating health challenges. Those stories have taught me that a diagnosis is never just a diagnosis.
It affects families. It affects relationships. It affects work, finances, confidence, and the ability to plan for the future. It creates questions that cannot always be answered in a 30-second commercial.
That is why I find the disconnect between the scale of healthcare marketing and the experience of so many patients so frustrating.
We have sophisticated technology. We have access to enormous amounts of information. We have world-class researchers, talented communicators, creative agencies, and media platforms capable of reaching audiences across the globe.
And yet we still have to ask whether all that spending is being directed toward the people who need it most.
Perhaps the problem is not that healthcare companies cannot reach their audiences.
Perhaps the problem is that the industry has become too comfortable measuring what is easy to count instead of what actually matters.
Impressions are easy to count. Advertising dollars are easy to count. Celebrity appearances are easy to count. Media placements are easy to count.
Understanding is harder to measure. Trust takes time. Patient education requires care. Meaningful engagement requires more than a click. And proving that a campaign contributed to a real-world outcome can be complicated.
But difficult does not mean impossible.
The healthcare industry has the resources to ask better questions and build better campaigns. It has the ability to invest in content that educates, partnerships that reach relevant communities, and measurement systems that distinguish activity from value.
The question is whether it is willing to change.
Because if billions of dollars are being spent every year, the public deserves more than the assurance that the campaign was successful because millions of people saw it.
Patients deserve to know that the industry is taking the responsibility of communicating about health seriously.
And companies deserve marketing strategies that do more than look impressive on a presentation slide.
I am not asking the healthcare industry to stop advertising. I am asking it to stop confusing spending with success.
I am asking it to question the celebrity-first approach when the evidence does not support it, to challenge familiar media plans when they are not serving the intended audience, and to recognize that the most powerful health story is not always the one told by the most famous person in the room.
Sometimes it is the story of a patient who finally understands a diagnosis.
Sometimes it is the caregiver who learns how to support a loved one.
Sometimes it is the specialist who explains a complicated subject in a way that makes sense.
And sometimes it is a small, carefully designed program that reaches the right people and gives them information they can actually use.
Those stories may not always command the biggest budgets or the most glamorous headlines.
But they may be exactly where healthcare marketing needs to look next.
So I will leave the healthcare pharaohs with one final question:
If you can spend billions of dollars marketing healthcare, why is it still so difficult to put the right information in front of the right patient—and prove that it made a difference?
I think it is time we stopped asking how much healthcare marketing costs and started asking what we are truly getting for the money.
Because the people living with these conditions are not impressions, clicks, or line items in a media plan.
They are the reason the marketing exists in the first place.
And they deserve better.
