How Healthcare Companies Can Address Inequities Through Media Investments

Agencies are taking a broader look at the media ecosystem and committing to varying degrees of equitable buying. GroupM, for example, pledged to invest $75 million to support the media collective Group Black. Dentsu Media, for its part, launched an economic empowerment practice to create equitable investment benchmarks for clients. Those are two of many examples of media agency groups stepping up, but clients' investments in equitable properties can still be as low as a few percent of the media mix. Increasing that number is especially crucial for clients in the healthcare industry. Black women are more likely than white women to die in childbirth, and Black Americans have the highest rate of cardiovascular disease. These are a few of numerous statistics that show how healthcare issues disproportionately affect historically marginalized groups. Disparities like this came to a head during the pandemic, when Covid-19 took the lives of more men than women, but Black women, specifically, died at three times the rate of men. Because of this, it’s crucial that healthcare companies carefully consider which channels they choose to advertise on and make sure media plans include not just investments in diverse-owned publications but genuine efforts to reach communities where they are. Media leaders at Publicis Health Media’s (PHM) Healthfront event told Adweek a one-size-fits-all approach to marketing will not suffice. Marketers must look beyond the resources at their disposal to expand their knowledge of audiences, including making room for qualitative research, to find out how to diversify their media mixes. “When we think of healthcare, it's imperative for us to take a deep dive into these health disparities,” said Karima Sharif, head of inclusive investments at PHM. “And when brands do jump into this area, be authentic with your messaging with your involvement. We can sniff it a mile away if it's performative. That's a no go,” she added. Create an equitable ecosystem According to Sharif, PHM thinks about equitable buying through three lenses: First, it considers diverse-owned channels like Urban One, BlackDoctor.org, Urban Health Today or MD Newsline. “These companies are Black-owned, operated and they also reach the patient population or the diverse community,” said Sharif. Second, it considers endemic brands, like BET or Telemundo, which are owned by larger companies but air content to targeted demographics. Third, it considers Big Tech—large platforms like Facebook and Twitter—which have the power to drive investment changes across the industry. “All three are very important and will help to grow that ecosystem—even though the number one way is the diverse-owned, where these are the Black content creators, these are the Black media publishers,” said Sharif. “When you're helping to provide access and a voice to these diverse-owned media opportunities, it's just going to continue to feed the engine and to grow this economy,” she said. Put your ego aside Marketers are eager to utilize as many metrics as possible to guide their campaign strategies but must consider that sometimes data is unreliable. While it can help marketers reach individuals on a one-on-one level, it can also contribute to inequities due to sample bias, according to Mike Edwards, a senior marketing director at Novartis. To combat this, he said, marketers need to balance their data sets with qualitative research and information. “As a marketer, you have to put your ego aside,” he added. “It's really not about me and what I want. It's really about understanding my customer.” Earlier in his career, Edwards worked on a sickle cell campaign where available audience data implied that a community of color might index in certain ways. Edwards disagreed with the data and pushed back on several campaign decisions because the qualitative interviews he’d done “allowed me to be equipped with so much conviction, based on other facts that were driven by our customer base,” he said. As the vp of U.S. marketing at ViiV Healthcare, a pharmaceutical company that produces HIV treatments, Virginia Harlan said that her team must consider how, for example, the Latinx, Black or transgender communities engage differently with HIV. "Everybody's stigma is quite different," she said. Leave behind homogenous media plans In the age of misinformation, large pharmaceutical companies need to get the right information out, said Sharif. How to do that appropriately requires an understanding of how to produce and deliver culturally relevant advertising in a reality where people across diverse groups have different media consumption habits. For example, the Latinx community often goes to pharmacists for information as opposed to doctors, according to Sharif. An informed advertiser seeking to reach a Latinx audience should understand this. Accounting for representation in creative work is also crucial. “Being a Black woman, when I see someone on screen that looks like me ... yes, that's going to motivate me to want to learn more, to want to engage,” she said. For pharmaceutical companies, that must start in clinical trials. ViiV ensures its trials account for diversity, which ultimately impacts its marketing strategy because it has information on hand about how different demographics responded to the trials. ViiV aired a TV commercial in Spanish in local markets. "How do you tap in and speak to that community in a way that feels authentic?" Harlan posed to Adweek. According to her, planning equitably extends all the way to "things that don't even fit in my shop and marketing—but external affairs," she said. Invest in education too Consumers are increasingly focused on brand values, ultimately pushing brands to focus on social responsibility and values. For example, T-Mobile ensures that 10% of its buys go to diverse-owned channels, Sharif noted.PHM is tasked with helping clients navigate the process in a way that is not performative, and to support this, agency employees must be trained on how to think critically about how bias impacts their daily working habits. According to Sharif, training new agency talent includes “everything from learning about the different communities, like the Black consumer, all the way down to the research that we can utilize, also down to the partners that we can utilize.” Last year, the company underwent inclusive media training in which it sponsored a panel discussion with Black doctors who spoke about how they consume information. It’s also part of the Once & For All coalition, a Publicis-wide commitment to equitable media initiatives. All of PHM's past training materials are cataloged within Marcel, so employees can view related training and PHM’s catalog of diverse-owned partners. “If our diverse communities are focused on faith-based opportunities, or they're focused on going to the barbershop as a ritual or a beauty salon,” said Sharif, "those are those trusted places. So instead of trying to drive them into a different place, we need to just meet them where they are."