Compliance makes social media healthcare marketing hard – but creativity always wins

• Read more on medicine, marketing, and media at The Drum’s health and pharma focus

Brands in this space grapple with potential dilemmas every day, including in their work to effectively engage users online despite blockers including platform rules, and external guidelines.

First, go Meta

This all starts with platform choice: whichever you choose needs to navigate regulatory compliance, audience targeting, content moderation, and brand safety considerations. Many advertisers find their audience with Meta, used by over 3 billion people around the world.

On Meta, ads with medical terminology/imagery receive additional scrutiny (both automated and human) to ensure compliance with community standards and avoid misleading or harmful content, as laid out by the social giant’s guidelines around how we talk about health (for example: avoid close-up imagery on the health condition of a person). So, even if an advertiser is qualified by Meta to promote prescription medication, creatives need to avoid click-bait imagery of medical issues. All ads (animations, graphics, or photos) about social issues such as health may also need to add a verified ‘Paid for by’ disclaimer, or risk removal. Both animations and disclaimers can seen in ads by the likes of Pfizer, and the wider Meta ads library.

Including terms & conditions (T&Cs) within the ad itself can ensure transparency and compliance with regulatory requirements – as with traditional print ads with their (usually tiny-fonted) disclaimers. Or due to space limitations and the need for concise messaging, providing a link to T&Cs may be more practical and effective. Ultimately, whether to include T&Cs within the ad depends on the complexity of the message. If a message is complex and shortening it into a few words of copy is misleading, then more text or switching format (for example to video), might be advantageous.

Health-related targeting is over, so what now?

Health-related targeting (along with most other granular audiences) has been deprecated, so we find ourselves in the broad targeting paradigm.

Against this backdrop, we can still lean heavily on creative to find the right audience and get them to self-select by engaging. We just need to avoid calling call out personal attributes. For example, ‘asthma clinical trials in London’ would be acceptable, but ‘Do you have asthma? Find a clinical trial’ would not.

Getting creative

Ethics regulations can dictate how we speak within this vertical. Sticking with the clinical trial example, rules state that we can’t emphasize payment, but can mention compensation if available. In recent work, we’ve found that communicating only the altruistic benefits of trials performed poorly on its own versus including a reference to the compensation for volunteer time and inconvenience.

Ultimately, ads need to contain multiple messages, which can necessitate longer-than-standard ad copy to get approval while also ensuring that click-through rates remain high.

Advertisers also need to be aware of the requirements to get formal approval of all advertising collateral for compliance (“Any health-related research project [...] must have been reviewed and be in receipt of a favorable opinion from a recognized Research Ethics Committee (REC)”). This means that advertisers may not be as reactive with changing assets - even adding emojis or shortening copy needs approval. We’ve found that submitting a bank of copy and creative every few months (both iterations of existing ads and new concepts) results in bulk approvals, rather than an always-on approach where we change ads regularly. It’s also best to include full technical details in the submission documents. Reviewers are typically not marketing experts, so providing details such as character length and full mockups leads to speedier decisions.

Yet, there’s still room for creativity. User-generated content (UGC) generates 6.9 times more engagement on social media platforms than brand content, and 80% of consumers say that UGC strongly influences their purchasing decisions. The health vertical is slower to adopt trends, but pharma giants like Pfizer are testing the UGC waters. The value of UGC is proven in our recent work, where our top ads are UGC-inspired – a far cry from historic text-heavy formats. It can take time to demonstrate to clients that UGC can abide by guidelines, but a gradual pivot toward informal, authentic content reduces costs over time.

Marrying compelling messaging with a commitment to transparency and accuracy isn’t easy.

Strategic ways of working, alongside necessary compromises on best practise for regulators, is the best way to walk the tightrope between compliance and creativity.

For more analysis of the health and medicine landscapes, head over to our health and pharma in focus hub.