Episode 26: Can Medicine Compete with Big Wellness? Part 1

In this episode Kate Thomas sits down with Professor Graham Dowling, former professor of marketing at the Australian Graduate School of Management and Macquarie Graduate School of Management, to cover:

• What big wellness actually means and how it has evolved beyond physical health
• How health has expanded into something mental, emotional and social in the wellness era
• Why wellness marketing has become so extraordinarily powerful
• Whether evidence-based medicine has a marketing problem
• Why science struggles to compete with simple promises and emotional branding
• Whether drug regulators are truly independent from industry influence
• The question that leads into Part 2: how would you market medicine?

Big wellness is no longer just about supplements and yoga retreats. In Episode 26, Kate and Professor Graham Dowling examine how wellness has expanded into a multi-trillion dollar industry that now encompasses mental health, emotional regulation, social connection, spiritual wellbeing, longevity and identity. The appeal is not irrational. Wellness culture offers something evidence-based medicine rarely does: a coherent story about what it means to feel well, personalised attention, emotional validation and simple actionable steps. Professor Dowling's marketing expertise brings a genuinely fresh perspective to a question Kate has been circling throughout the entire On the Mones catalogue. 

One of the central provocations of Episode 26 is the suggestion that evidence-based medicine, for all its clinical rigour, has a significant marketing problem. Science communicates in probabilities, confidence intervals, effect sizes and caveats. Wellness marketing communicates in transformation stories, before and after photos, simple mechanisms and emotional promises. Kate and her father examine why this asymmetry exists, why it matters for public health, and whether the solution is better science communication or something more fundamental. The honest answer, as the episode makes clear, is probably both. 

Professor Dowling's marketing background brings crucial insight to a question that frustrates many clinicians and researchers: why do people choose products and practices with weak evidence over treatments with strong evidence? The answer has very little to do with intelligence and a great deal to do with how human beings actually make decisions. Simple, emotionally resonant promises that offer a clear mechanism and a relatable story will consistently outperform complex, nuanced, caveated communication, regardless of the underlying evidence quality. Understanding this is not an argument for abandoning rigour. It is an argument for communicating it differently. 

Episode 26 also touches on a genuinely important and underreported area of healthcare: the question of whether drug regulators are truly independent from the industries they regulate. Kate references the Maryanne Demasi BMJ paper examining regulatory capture at the FDA and MHRA, a piece of research that raises serious questions about conflicts of interest in the approval and monitoring of pharmaceuticals. This is not conspiracy territory. It is peer-reviewed academic research published in one of the world's most respected medical journals, and it belongs in any honest conversation about why trust in medicine is complicated. 

Episode 26 ends with the question that sets up Part 2: if you were going to market evidence-based medicine the way big wellness markets its products, how would you do it? It is a question that sounds simple and turns out to be genuinely difficult, and the conversation it opens is one of the most interesting in the On the Mones catalogue. Part 2 continues the discussion with Professor Dowling, going deeper into branding, trust and what medicine could learn from wellness without compromising its integrity. 

Professor Graham Dowling is a former professor of marketing at the Australian Graduate School of Management and Macquarie Graduate School of Management, and a recognised expert in branding and corporate reputation. He is also Kate's dad, which makes this one of the more unique episodes in the On the Mones catalogue. 

If this episode has raised questions about your medications, your health decisions or navigating the gap between wellness culture and evidence-based medicine, a telehealth pharmacist consultation with Kate is a great next step. In a dedicated one-on-one session you can go through your questions, your current medications and your health concerns in plain language, without rushing. 

Book a consultation with Kate Thomas.

You can view the transcript for this episode below