Ethical Challenges in Health Care Influencer Marketing

Influencers, and especially health care influencers have an incredible opportunity to advocate, educate, and inspire. However, as Winston Churchill said, “where there is great power, there is great responsibility”. The best influencers are authentic, honest, knowledgeable, and responsible about the sponsors they choose to work with. Ethical challenges include choosing sponsors that not only align with their personal brand, but choosing reputable companies in their field or area of expertise, while disclosing who the sponsors are.

For example, the FIGS Scrubs brand faced a communications crisis when an ad was released in 2020 portraying a female DO as a ditz. Many influencers, both male and female in the medical community spoke out against the ad and took the opportunity to advocate for equal respect for female physicians by sharing stories of working with, and learning from incredible female attendings and professors.

The FIGS ad is one example of an ethical dilemma that influencers, especially those in the medical community experience. FIGS is a popular and fashionable scrubs brand that widely uses influencer marketing. With the power to influence, brand ambassadors could impact the viability and reputation of the FIGS Scrubs company with their choice to speak out or not. For the influencer, speaking out could potentially cause the loss of sponsorship, but not speaking out could cause loss of credibility among their followers.

After the outpouring from the medical community against the ad, and the support from influencers for equal respect for female physicians and DOs, FIGS took the ad down and made a public apology. For health communicators, leveraging influencers is an incredible marketing tool, but one that should be done with a professional public relations and communications team.

According to the Public Relations Society of America, disclosure is the best policy. Advice we can offer to brands in how to best work with influencer marketing while staying compliant with ethical standards is to choose reputable influencers that are in line with your brand. Include information on disclosure in your brand guidelines in order to build trust among your audience as well as the influencer. For influencers, be transparent about who you are working with. It will not only help build credibility among your followers, but brands as well.