A new research report from Ogilvy's Health & Wellness Practice points to a societal shift toward holistic healthcare "in a world where everyone is grappling with the stress of a 24/7 always-on culture."
There's plenty of doom and gloom to study, which notes that more than 2 billion people overweight; more than 80 percent of the world's teens lean toward couch-potatodom; 11-hour workdays are boosting the risk of a heart attack by more than 60 percent; and stress and social media are both taking their own tolls on health.
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And there are plenty of disconnects between the direction medicine is heading and what people are seeking to help themselves heal. Ever-increasing specialties in the medical field vie with patients' quest for a more holistic approach, and the health care industry isn't nimble enough to respond to this change in patients' needs. People are searching in five major areas: radical compassion, mind and body becoming one, social fitness, somatic spaces and the convergence of health and technology.
But if conventional medicine isn't ready to respond on these levels, others are more than ready to step into the gap: the booming wellness industry is spawning everything from "a curriculum on mindfulness in Hong Kong, to a subscription service encouraging family time, to dementia villages and human implants," the report says.
"Marketing and communications can be far more effective if we understand people from the inside out instead of the outside in," Christopher Graves, president and founder of the Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science, says in a statement. He adds, "That means understanding human personality traits, cultural cognition and deep-seated mindsets instead of sorting people by demographic only."
Terming the wellness movement "a coping strategy for life in the 21st century," the report says that the demand for holistic health will drive growth in the industry around it—transforming the way people think of and try to maintain their health.
"The wellness movement is a response to the pressure of modern life," says Brian McCarter, head of planning, Europe/Middle East/Asia at Ogilvy. "The 24/7 always-on norm is making us sick. Despite advances in medicine, people feel that something has been lost and are seeking ways to integrate a healthy mind, body and spirit. As our research has shown, we predict that we will become more self-compassionate; more body-mindful; more communal; more spatially attuned; and more open to augmenting ourselves with technology."
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