It might be something most of us have never thought about before, but there are ethical considerations when it comes to chronic pain advertising – that is, how ads actually impact chronic pain sufferers. Television advertising in the modern sense finds itself competing with other forms of media, including the internet, social media and, to a lesser extent, radio, but it remains the easiest way to create brand image and recognition among consumers. To this end, advertising has changed over the years, but television commercials have remained a constant force in the advertising industry.
Indeed, treating pain is not as simple as many believe. A combination of factors, from societal and legal to ethical and beyond, have compounded the challenges physicians and advanced practice providers (APPs) face as they earnestly attempt to properly manage their patients’ pain. Clinicians must walk a tightrope most of the time to balance prescribing too much or too little pain medication, but that’s normally just the beginning of the dilemma due to the opioid epidemic that has swept the world.
The Ethical Viewpoint
Research has shown that bridging health promotion with empowerment, digital marketing and health education can positively impact disease prevention and public health. All three aim to foster healthy lifestyles, as well as the confidence and motivation necessary to take action that improves one’s health. Supplemental research has shown the effectiveness of health promotion, education and empowerment on increasing overall health outcomes and health-related behaviors, with a single two-hour educational empowerment session facilitated via Zoom having long-lasting and substantial positive effects on pain management and reduction.
As we touched on above, social media is increasingly being utilized for the promotion of health, while digital marketing in general continues to influence health-related beliefs and behaviors. Case in point: a randomized controlled study of a Facebook-based campaign targeting mental health literacy and “help-seeking attitude” for depression reported positive findings. It’s important to also note that it was during the COVID-19 pandemic that social media campaigns promoting mental health awareness gained more traction and recognition.
How Do Ads Impact Chronic Pain Sufferers?
Many folks suffering with chronic pain find it difficult to locate certain pain management clinics, despite this suffering and being desperate for solutions. There are a number of persuasive elements used in pain management ads, from patient benefits and symptoms to offers and reasons why the clinics stand out from the crowd; within these, pain management clinics often point to benefits such as quality of life, staying active and healthy, avoiding minimally invasive surgery and avoiding depression.
Here’s the thing: the magic of digital ads only comes through if they’re able to reach the right people – potential patients looking for help.
Looking for prevention, treatments, alternative therapies, medications, ways to manage symptoms and the likelihood of recurrence are just some of the frequently searched items entered into search engines by pain sufferers. In response, many pain management entities offer pain targeting solutions including real time chronic pain targeting (where an advertiser will run their campaign next to chronic pain content webpages as the patient looks at the page), chronic pain audience targeting (allowing an advertiser to target their campaign to people who have recently looked at chronic pain-related content over the past 30 to 60 days) and popular chronic pain searches (which we touched on in the beginning of this paragraph).
Why Are Ads Important?
One essential part of pain management marketing is the need to build brand awareness, and this is best accomplished with the power of social media. Through this platform, patients suffering from chronic pain can share articles and stories, exchange ideas with other people, engage with other followers and even look at reviews from other patients.
Advertisements for prescription drugs in general are pervasive in the U.S., and both healthcare providers and consumers are exposed to a copious amount of information promoting the benefits of these products. While these ads can convey useful data about treatment options, they may also contain misleading tidbits at times; vital to regulatory efforts put forth by the FDA is understanding how the audience perceives and interprets these promotional communications and, ultimately, responds to them.
In this day and age, a digital marketing agency like Grow Advertising can help with managing pain management social media accounts, as well as implement paid media experts to help optimize a Facebook ads campaign.
Authored by Brittany Cotton
Published by International Pain Foundation, iPain Blog, Team iPain
