'Novartis: Keep It Pumping India' Campaign by Using Aristotle's Rhetoric

Novartis is an actual credible pharmaceutical brand. It was founded in Basel, Switzerland where known as one of the most developed countries around the world in terms of the health industry, service industry and the average welfare level. They mainly reimagine medicine to improve and extend people's lives. About most health issues, they try to develop people’s awareness about these health issues. The firm was recognized as credible as one of ‘America’s Best Employers for New Graduates’ in 2021 by Forbes.

They made a lot of innovative and beneficial campaigns. One of them is called ‘Novartis: Keep It Pumping’ whose aim is to increase awareness of heart failure. Because there is little awareness about this health problem, Novartis wants to make this problem more understandable both by the patients and also by the medical communities. They introduce their campaign all around India.

Also, the media has just a little awareness of this issue too. This is an important problem because, with the help of media resources, thousands or even millions of people gain information about so many things. Media is an important factor in transferring information and communication. It means that the less knowledge the media has, the less information the public will get. And also, the more false information the media has, the more false information the public will get. Due to this low awareness, doctors are sceptical about using the term ‘failure’ even with diagnosed patients and caregivers. Heart failure is the pathophysiologic state in which an abnormality of cardiac function is responsible for the failure of the heart to pump blood at a rate commensurate with the requirements of metabolizing tissues (H. Denolin, H. Kuhn. f H. P. Krayenbuehl, F. Loogen, & A. Reale). A heart attack, on the other hand, is a serious medical emergency in which the supply of blood to the heart is suddenly blocked, usually by a blood clot. Because the term ‘failure’ sounds like a very negative term to patients and their relatives; they may get anxious so quickly. Novartis aims to change the usage of terms in their campaigns, to make the differences more understandable by society and to ease healthcare professionals’ duties. They pointed out the difference between heart failure and (sudden) heart attack in their advertisements. Thanks to this, both media and the public (audience) are kept informed of their rights. With the help of the media, Novartis aims to spread the actual information about the term of ‘heart failure’. The brand calls this as a 360-degree campaign because the heart failure conversations enlarged and more and more people have become impressed thanks to the posts on Facebook and Twitter. It means that both mass media and social media helped to increase awareness publicly. With the help of the media, Novartis’s aim has become successful in terms of awareness. Conversations about heart failure shifted from the periphery to become the focus of key discussions, generating more than 26 million impressions across Facebook and Twitter, with key doctors reporting a 15X increase in patient enquiries (SABRE Awards, Asia-Pacific, Public Education, Gold, 2019). Their worldwide audiences got informed in the right way.

The campaign called ‘Keep It Pumping’ by Novartis was published in India. The campaign introduced a drug called ‘Vymada’ in 2017 which is helpful for heart failure situations. Also, it aimed to make the difference understandable for the public between heart failure and heart attack. Novartis also used social media channels as well as media channels too, because nowadays, most people use social media accounts more and more. On social media, they try to make the difference between a heart attack, heart failure and comorbidities more clear. They used an integrated approach across patients, healthcare providers and the media. This integrated approach was utilitarian and knowledge-based; there is no fear or guilt appeal approach used. Some videos and advertisements are done using Aristotle’s pathos to clarify the negative connotation between heart attack and heart failure by advertisements; whereas also again on TV, by using ethos and logos they sponsored interviews that include well-known successful doctors. From the logos perspective of Aristotle’s rhetoric, I think it makes sense to use the right healthcare professionals. Because they have scientific knowledge and people can easily trust them; they are credible people. Using logos, they aimed for patients to get help from the right specialist. As it’s mentioned before, people may confuse heart failure and heart attack; to increase awareness about the difference; they used ethos. Also, the information that is given through newspapers is counted as logos because, through newspapers, the public gets informed in terms of statistics of the results of treatments, the ratio of patients and many more issues.

To conclude, even a very professional, rooted brand that focuses on the most important issue for humans themselves, health, uses Aristotle’s rhetoric and other public relations and advertisement resources to communicate with and reach the majority of people easily. Awareness is one of the most important concepts across most of the themes and it spread so easily just by communication; via public relations and advertisement resources.

REFERENCES

David, D. C. et. al. (2000). ABC of heart failure. PubMed Central, 320(7226), 39-42. Fortune (2020).

Novartis: Awards and Recognition (2022). https://www.novartis.com/about/awards-and-recognition#:~:text=Fortune's%20Most%20Admired%20Pharmaceutical%20Companies,pharmaceutical%20companies%20in%20the%20world.