Opella’s Chief Growth Officer on Healthcare Marketing

Marketing in a highly regulated industry doesn’t have to be boring. 

Brands that are able to shift their mindsets away from purely functional messaging towards more emotionally resonant storytelling can better prioritise human connection in their marketing strategy – creating marketing campaigns that actually stand out while still achieving regulatory compliance.

Taking on tired stereotypes in healthcare marketing is Alberto Hernandez, Chief Growth Officer at Opella – the producer of healthcare products such as Dorflex, Doliprane and Buscopan. 

Having first taken on the Chief Growth Officer role at Opella in 2022, Alberto is helping Opella build what it refers to as Fast Moving Consumer Health – scientific rigour combined with customer obsession – in order to meaningfully connect with customers.

How do you challenge standard healthcare playbooks when operating in such a heavily regulated sector?

Here's what I believe: regulation is not the enemy of great marketing. Rigour doesn’t mean you need to play it safe. Compliance is non-negotiable, of course.

But while our industry puts all its focus on regulation risk, we're walking straight into another big one. The risk of failing to connect with consumers at all.

That's exactly why we're building what we call Fast Moving Consumer Health, or FMCH: the scientific rigour of healthcare paired with the speed, relevance and consumer obsession of a great FMCG brand. 

Think about how we build clinical credibility today. It's careful, it's evidence-backed, it's grounded in real proof points - mode of action, speed, tolerability.

That work is essential and it isn't going anywhere. Our recommendations from healthcare professionals, our clinical citations, our regulatory guardrails: these are the foundation.

But foundations aren't the house. And too often we mistake the foundation for the finished building.

Historically, the industry has put the mechanism of action on a billboard and wondered why nobody feels anything or acts.

The FMCH mindset says: keep the science exactly as rigorous as it is. Then do the additional work of finding the cultural truth that makes people care.

One example I love is from our leading pain brand Dorflex in Brazil.

We ran a campaign called ‘The Paid Relief’ that went on to win a Cannes Lion. Now, the easy path, the path we could have defaulted to, would've been another pain-relief commercial. Someone with a backache, a shot of the product, a claim about efficacy, done.

With Dorflex we did something braver. We identified that informal workers in Brazil, people without paid leave but also people by nature with boundless energy who never stop, were living with pain and not taking enough rest to recover.

So, in addition to having a claim about how well the product works, what we did was pay those workers to take a day off.

The science behind the product didn’t change one bit. The efficacy claims stayed exactly the same. What changed was the storytelling … from “here’s what our product does” to “here’s how deeply we understand your life and can help”.

That’s it. Same rigour, radically different connection. And it didn’t just win awards.

It demonstrated an empathy that no efficacy claim could ever manufacture and delivered real business results, helping us grow our presence in the category, engage millions of consumers and build stronger connections with our audience.

This is what I mean by FMCH. Dorflex asked: what does our audience in Brazil actually need, in order to be helped?

We met them, where they were, with a concept that resonated. It’s that “Challenger Mindset” we have embedded across our brands that allows us to rip up the traditional healthcare marketing playbook and operate like leading creative brands outside our sector.

We benchmark not with our peers, but with the best in creativity – whether that’s in sports, beauty, tech or culture.

How can campaigns such as this evolve to combat widespread misinformation? 

We are living through an epidemic of information without understanding. Think about it. People no longer necessarily begin their health journey with a doctor.

They begin with TikTok, Reddit, Google, AI and social feeds. The information is everywhere. The understanding? Not so much.

What this has resulted in is four in five people globally don't feel confident making health decisions. Two in three leave treatable symptoms untreated.

Here's my honest take. The tools have changed. Human nature hasn't. People have always wanted the same thing when they're worried about their health: someone to help them understand what's going on and what to do next.

LLMs, social algorithms and online search have increased the volume of health information and changed where that conversation happens. But that hasn’t increased confidence or clarity.

Then, factor in that around half of the health information people see online is inaccurate, misleading or incomplete, I’d argue health has become harder to navigate, not easier.

If we're serious about closing the confidence gap, health literacy has to evolve in three ways:

• Show up where the confusion lives. That means the feeds, the search results, the AI conversations, not just the doctor's waiting room. If that's where people start, that's where we need to be.
   
• Be radically simple. And this is VERY difficult for our industry… but if people can’t understand it quickly, they won’t act at all.
   
• ‘Edutain’. Education is essential, but it has to be delivered in a way people actually want to listen to. 
   
• Help people decide what’s right for them. Even if sometimes, that’s not treating with OTC products or one of our brands.

Here’s a real example. Doliprane, one of France’s most iconic brands, not just in pain relief, has been encouraging people for three years through its communication to use pain relief responsibly rather than simply consuming more of it.

We asked people to stop and think before reaching for more. To drink water, to sleep, to offer a teething toy to their crying baby first.

This might seem counterintuitive, but it worked. We saw 3.4 million people improving their health literacy, gain in brand love, a 21% increase in purchase intent and market share growth.  

When you help people make a better decision, even one that isn't “buy more”, they reward you with something far more valuable than a single sale. They reward you with trust. And trust in the long-term is how you grow the business.

How do you embed ‘Crazy, Elevated Creativity’ into a company's business model beyond standard advertising campaigns?

Our Crazy Elevated Creativity programme was created to institutionalise bold, creative thinking, not leverage it occasionally and not just in marketing.

It’s a mindset that directs how teams think and work every day and has meant creativity has become our growth engine. 

To make creativity structural, we focus on a few core principles:

• Look beyond your own industry. We challenge teams to draw inspiration from technology, entertainment and culture, not just healthcare. And we hire from these industries too. The best ideas rarely come from staring at our own category. We also look for partners that challenge us – the best agencies, creatives and external thinkers. 
   
• Reframe business problems as creative problems. When you approach a challenge expecting an unexpected solution, you give teams permission to think differently.
   
• Protect bold ideas from the pull of consensus. Average work is often the byproduct of too many well-meaning compromises. Sometimes the boldest thing a leader can do is defend an idea before it gets watered down.

It's about rewiring the system to make space for bold thinking that becomes a reality and drives growth.

The more relatable, entertaining and emotionally resonant your message is, the more likely people are to listen to the science behind it.

Creativity isn't the opposite of credibility; it's often the doorway to it. When you make someone feel something, you earn the right to teach them something. And in healthcare and self-care especially, that is crucial.

How do non-traditional partnerships help brands break through traditional category boundaries?

You cannot buy authentic cultural relevance. Not with the biggest media budget in the world. You have to earn it. And you earn it by showing up in spaces where consumers least expect you in a way that genuinely connects.

Another Cannes Lion-winning campaign this year came from our US brand, Aspercreme. We wanted to talk about active aging and pain, a subject that could easily have slipped into the same tired formula.

A former pro athlete, a reflective voiceover, a slow-motion jog into the sunset. We didn't do that. Instead, we signed an unprecedented name, image and likeness (NIL) deal with Tom Cillo, a 58-year-old college football player. Yes, a 58-year-old rookie. Then we tapped into legendary rock culture with “Spinal Tap” to bring humor and energy to something as ordinary as pain relief.

The result was a campaign that felt human, funny and completely unexpected. 

Unexpected pairings like this create earned media hype by giving people something to talk about, generating coverage and conversation beyond what you put out there.

They also deliver stronger ROI, as cutting through the noise often means working smarter with your budget rather than simply spending more. And most importantly, they can drive category breakthroughs by taking a topical, sometimes overlooked health product and placing it at the centre of culture. 

In my view, breaking through traditional category boundaries isn't about the size of your budget. It's about the boldness of your thinking and the willingness to defy the conventions everyone else is too comfortable to challenge. 

The brands that win aren’t only the ones who show up where they’re expected. They’re the ones brave enough to show up where they’re not.