18-07-2025
It's time to take the fear out of healthcare advertising and replace it with joy, hope, and authentic connection
There's rarely a week that goes by without me having a conversation with a colleague or client about the ineffectiveness of fear-based advertising. For too long, our industry has relied on tropes of fear, shame, and judgment to motivate patients and providers. A friend of mine calls this 'sadvertising.'
Health advertising's premise has been deceptively simple: 'If people just knew the dangers, they would alter their behaviors.'
We've become masters of euphemism, leveraging scare tactics under the guise of 'creating urgency.' But beneath the marketing -speak lies an uncomfortable truth. We've built a category lexicon of dark messages and imagery that perpetuates a culture of sickness instead of inspiring wellness.
In doing so, we've stifled creativity and conditioned marketers and agencies to approach too many briefs (whether consciously or not) through a fear-based lens that may grab attention in the short term, but rarely leads to lasting change.
The problem is fear isn't working.
It's time we stop creating work that holds up a mirror to what's broken and start imagining creative solutions that inspire a new vision of what's possible.
THE EVIDENCE AGAINST FEAR
Statistically, scientifically, and psychologically, fear hardly ever drives long-term impact.
The Surgeon General's warning first appeared on cigarettes in 1964, yet smoking rates continued climbing for decades. The 'war on drugs' consumed over $1T in fear-based messaging, yet overdose deaths increased, stigma spread, and healthcare systems still buckle under the strain today. Similarly, over 50% of new drug launches fail to meet forecasts, and most wellness products don't live past year one.
There's been no shortage of ways advertising has tried to guilt people into caring for their health.
We've deployed everything from anxiety-inducing warnings ('diabetes could cost you your toes') and catastrophic scenarios ('meningitis can kill in hours') to hair-raising statistics, dark imagery, stern voice-overs, and ominous soundtracks.
In healthcare, where life-and-death consequences feel immediate, fear may initially seem like the most efficient path to behavior change. But time and again, fear backfires, eroding the very trust we need to build.
The opportunity isn't in perfecting new forms of fear—it's in challenging brands to pivot toward joy.
A CREATIVE RENAISSANCE AWAITS
Earlier this month, brands across nearly every industry and continent gathered on the French Riviera to celebrate great storytelling at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. For health advertisers, it was an important moment to take a step back and ask: Can new forms of creativity help improve and save lives?
Here's where we can begin forging a better path forward.
Entertainment As A Secret Weapon Of Behavior Change
Netflix's Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones doesn't lecture viewers about longevity. It invites them into communities where people naturally live healthier, longer lives through connection and purpose.
AXA's Group Therapy campaign took a similar approach, trading fear for humor and connection. Featuring celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris in a docu-style format, it tackled mental health through empathetic storytelling, not shock value. By spotlighting shared vulnerability, it made mental health feel more relatable and more human.
Similarly, New Zealand's Cannes Grand Prix winning 'Best Place to Have Herpes' campaign. The campaign tackled taboo with humor and heart by launching a crash-course on destigmatization. It invited people to talk about the issue, laugh about it, and most importantly, take it seriously without shame.
Accessibility And Inclusion As Creative Foundation
The most powerful health campaigns meet people where they are, not where we think they should be.
Eli Lilly's recent diabetes campaigns showcase real people living full, empowered lives by emphasizing possibility over complications. Similarly, Aveeno's 'Eczema Equality' initiative celebrates diverse skin by featuring confident families and children, transforming a condition often hidden in shame into a source of authentic representation and acceptance.
Health messaging becomes most effective when building bridges, not putting up barriers. Apple's accessibility-focused campaigns, 'The Greatest' and 'The Relay,' demonstrate how brands can embed inclusivity into their core messaging.
And in a world where nearly 53% of Gen Z identify with some form of neurodiversity and 129 million Americans have pre-existing conditions, the opportunities for inclusive marketing are endless. When brands prioritize accessibility, they don't just reach more people; they create more authentic connections.
Vaseline's Vaseline Verified campaign echoed this approach by also meeting Gen Z on TikTok. By testing trending 'hacks' in real labs and educating through science, it showed how trust and transparency can outshine fear and misinformation.
Conversation Placement: The New Product Placement
We all remember when Reese's Pieces led E.T. home in 1982, launching the modern era of product placement. Since then, we've seen Heineken in James Bond films, Ray-Bans in Top Gun, and Coca-Cola in Stranger Things. Brands invest massive marketing dollars to infiltrate our entertainment with products they want us to buy.
But what if we started placing health conversations into our entertainment instead? My colleague Andre Gray calls this ' conversation placement. '
Instead of inserting sneakers into a TV series, what if we featured an attorney with HIV on Law & Order or a teenager with cystic fibrosis navigating high school drama? We've gotten a glimpse of this potential already. Everything Everywhere All at Once showed us Evelyn Wang living with ADHD, Glee gave us Artie Abrams as a wheelchair user, and The Good Doctor brought us Shaun Murphy, a surgeon with autism and savant syndrome.
'Conversation placement' tackles real health issues with real people and bridges gaps through culture and inclusion.
THE JOY IMPERATIVE
Fear feels reliable because it's easily manufactured. But fear creates lose-lose scenarios by breeding resentment toward the very health systems and behaviors we want people to embrace.
As the dust settles post-Cannes Lions, let's remember that the most meaningful creative work doesn't shock people into change; it invites them in. The path forward isn't about abandoning all urgency or glossing over real health risks. It's about communicating those realities through frameworks of hope, community, and empowerment.
When healthcare advertising embraces joy, laughter, and authentic human connection, we don't just create better campaigns—we create better health outcomes. We build trust instead of eroding it.
So, when in doubt, choose joy. Your audience (and their health) will thank you for it.
