Should Celebrities Promote Expensive Health Care? | by Beatrice Nicolini | Aug, 2023

A quite unnecessary contribution to the marketing mix

It comes as no surprise that the ones with worth have the ability to promote everything. From fashion items to toothbrushes, they get up to all sorts of things. Is this unrestrained practice always necessary though, living in an already split civilization?

To discuss this matter, no better example comes to mind than the recent Kim Kardashian post on her MRI scan. The noted celebrity shared pictures of herself as she paid a visit to the startup Prenuvo, which aims to be “the future of health” with its flagship body scan able to detect diseases and provide insights on your health conditions.

In spite of the unreasonable prices of such procedure — which set the tone for rage in Kim’s comment section —, the lack of evidence on the effectiveness of Prenuvo’s scans is striking. Furthermore, the operation does not quite look like a cavity removal, but it is rather risky — due to the exposure to a strong magnetic field —, leading to the assumption that MRIs should not be underestimated nor practiced without symptoms.

Yet, no questions seem to interfere with celebrities’ marketing mix, which has been caught bolstering ambiguous health practices at various times in the past.

Many will recall the IV Vitamin Therapy boom, when celebrities such as Rihanna and Chrissy Teigen would show off their vitamin injections — whose success was later disproven.

Others will remember Gwyneth Patrol’s viral claims about her wellness routine, based on bone broth, intermittent fasting, and sauna breaks — not only inaccessible to the peasants, but hard to sustain through a 9 to 5.

Taking into account that the role of celebrity endorsement serves as an additional marketing endeavor, the concept of unbounded promotion is not unforeseen. Marketers and advertisers have, indeed, been practicing this for a long time. What the public finds cryptic is, perhaps, the apparent ease and lightness with which celebrities execute it, and with no title whatsoever — at least, for the most part.

It is in that spirit of skepticism that their cultural role is repeatedly scrutinized, rather than being subjected to criticism regarding the questionable messaging carried by the industry. It is in that messaging that the reflection ought to be made, especially when it relates to humanity.

Health Care — if intended as attention toward our bodies — can indeed be considered a human will, but since only a few can afford continuously excessive care, and as some of the practices could harm the public, there are no moral reasons to promote celebrities’ body treatments.

Such claim does not mean to be naive, when advertising money or self-promotion is involved, what value or space does ethics have, after all? Nor this should be sentenced as a ‘show-off’ case. Otherwise, celebrities’ clothes, residences, holidays, should not be allowed to appear on the screen either.

It is rather the power of emulation that should be examined. Once more, not with naiveness — influence can rise from everywhere and everyone— but rather with the idea that promoting health through weak medical practices is just the epithet of unconscious detriment.

An audience should, in fact, be marketed with integrity and entrust with celebrities who treat them as such, and although a lot gets lost in translation — especially in the communication between consumers and celebrities — both parties are somehow victims of a much more complex system.

Perhaps, it is that system — largely aware of the marketing and promotion theory — that should act as a proper rule setter. Not that celebrities are no duty-holders in this matter — Kim should not have posted her procedure. But the only certainty still stands in the prey’s role — the consumer —, as it is the one affected the most, the one who is just supposed to be hunted.