20 Years of Health & Wellness Professionals
2020 will mark the 20th anniversary of Pulse Health & Wellness. We started with a few great clients—BlueCross BlueShield of North Carolina, Kellogg's and Procter & Gamble. The challenges these clients faced 20 years ago are the same challenges healthy brands face today: How do you communicate the benefits of your healthy brand to consumers with the trust and credibility required to drive behavior change and a purchase?
The language from our early presentations is not that much different than how we talk about the challenges of health and wellness today. In the early 2000s, we created a graphic visualizing all the different sources of information bombarding consumers—Oprah, general interest magazines like Time and Newsweek, family, friends, and so many more. All of those sources were, ultimately and unwittingly, contributing to overwhelming confusion among consumers about what was good for them and what wasn’t.
There was one source of information, however, that always delivered an authoritative and trustworthy voice—health & wellness professionals. From dietitians to nurses, nurse practitioners, physicians, and fitness professionals, these professionals have always been the heart of our business. These professionals were, and still are, the one constant in an ever-changing sea of information and nowadays, misinformation.
Even back in the early 2000s, forward-thinking marketers got it. They could see their television, radio and print campaigns becoming increasingly less influential in an increasingly fragmented media landscape—particularly with the growth of the internet.
After the financial debacle of 2008, we saw marketers sprint toward digital marketing, dumping anything and everything that had worked for them in the past. A new shiny object promised broad reach at a fraction of the price of traditional media and marketing. Who wouldn’t respond to a message that landed right in the palm of your hand? Plenty of consumers, as it turns out.
Digital advertising was a mile wide and an inch deep, and every few months there was a new, new thing to distract advertisers from the ways the previous new, new thing was starting to underperform.
Many of our clients went full bore for digital marketing. And guess what? They came back to us. Digital wasn't delivering the impact, the engagement, the trust, and the credibility they needed to market their healthy brands to consumers.
Today, on the eve of 2020, the problem is even more severe. The noise distracting consumers is louder than ever and misleading messages about health and wellness are ubiquitous. How can we expect consumers to sort through this pile of information?
The answer remains the same as 20 years ago—trusted health & wellness professionals. The category has expanded since 2000 to include innovations such as lifestyle medicine and wellness coaches, but the methodology remains the same: If you educate professionals about your brand and add value to their face-to-face interactions with patients and clients, you will earn branded recommendations of your product. It’s as simple as that.
Of course, health & wellness professional outreach doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It strengthens your direct-to-consumer marketing, including digital, by closing the deal. It turns awareness into action. A branded recommendation from a trusted health & wellness professional is, simply put, priceless.
We have seen a lot and learned a lot over the past 20 years. Our clients continue to benefit most, however, from our unwavering commitment to connecting them with the most trusted and powerful force for nutrition education and guidance—the health & wellness professional.
We can't wait to see what the next 20 years bring.