There’s a new marketing trend, and it even has it’s own catchy word: “wellthy.” It’s the idea of selling health as something that can be attained through things you buy and targeting health to those who have cash to spare on things such as $100 yoga pants, expensive running gear and cell phone apps that help people manage their health. The Financial Post detailed more about this new marketing trend in a recent article.
This article and its points are of particular interest to me, especially the idea of running appealing to those with riches, with all of the equipment and brands marketing gear to help you run better. What’s fascinating to me is that running is one of the exercises you can do anywhere, with whatever you’re wearing. People even run barefoot, so it’s not necessary to have fancy shoes.
What do you think of this trend of health as a status symbol and wealthy ideal? How can we work to make sure everyone can be healthy too, regardless of their economic standing?
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Very interesting topic. With this trend I am concerned that marketing images of healthy people as presumably wealthy with leisure time to spend working out and money to spend on exercise clothes would actually undercut the messages of health communicators that anyone can make positive changes to their lifestyle. Specifically, while these images may market exercise products, gym memberships, personal trainees, etc., I wonder if they actually make fitness seem less accessible to those who don’t see themselves in these photos, or feel that they can relate to them. An important message that public health professionals often struggle to communicate is that healthy behaviors don’t have to mean a radical revision of lifestyle, but rather can fit into the lifestyle that one already has (e.g. taking stairs more often, adding more fruits and vegetables to one’s diet); by marketing fitness as a status symbol, are these corporations undermining such messages?
I’ll play devil’s advocate here and say that every marketing campaign has to know its intended audience and play to their sympathies–and I’m guessing that people of less means probably are not reading the Financial Post so may not be affected by a campaign aimed at that (probably already healthy anyway) demographic.
Any marketing/communications campaign is more likely to succeed if it touches familiar chords with its targets. What this is likely to mean is that a given campaign will need different “dress” (to refer back to another of your posts, Whitney!) for its different audiences; fancy running shoes for the rich folks, basic Champion sweatpants for the rest of us. It is more expensive and time-consuming to create different arms of a single campaign, and that’s where public health efforts can have trouble since there isn’t often a lot of money to pay for completely different types of approaches. But this isn’t that much different from using specific photographs to appeal to different audiences–a woman in a woman’s magazine, someone of color for a publication appealing to minority audiences–or using different languages to reach folks from different backgrounds.
This has crossed my mind before, mainly in regards to the organic craze. While genuinely good for you, I've noticed people bragging about their organic food bought from Whole Foods while sneering at produce bought from Food Lion. Eating healthy has become a status symbol. There was an interesting article titled "Divided We Eat" published in Newsweek in 2010 <a href="http://(http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/11/22/what-food-says-about-class-in-america.html)” target=”_blank”>(http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/11/22/what-food-says-about-class-in-america.html) that detailed how your food signifies your social class. Produce is already seen as inaccessible due to its cost and organic produce is even more inaccessible (i.e., more expensive). The message is clear: optimal health is only for those who can afford it. And, to be honest, the cynic in me wonders if those who try to keep up with the Joneses would care about organic food if its profile was not as high and if they truly care about the health/environmental benefits of organic vs. conventional or if they only care about bragging that they are eating the finest food.I fear that this idealization of "the best" in health makes those who can't afford the best unwilling to even try to make the healthy changes that they are capable of making. After all, what use is it to try to change for the better if you're still going to be in second place?