While industry experts debate about the ferality of this year’s multi-million dollar ads and analyze everything from creative superiority to effectiveness to distinction, we want to weigh in on the value of one brand that couldn’t be further from the limelight and spectacle of Super Bowl commercials: Public Health.
A Brand Health Problem, Exacerbated
Public health, as a brand, suffers from many misperceptions. People misconstrue it for personal healthcare, or they think that it only exists to address infectious diseases (and thus, only important during pandemics), or that it is too expensive and ineffective, or that it is mostly just trying to tell them what to do, infringing on their personal freedoms.
From a brand standpoint, public health was already fighting uphill battles on multiple fronts. Then, at the beginning of this year, the Trump administration directed federal health agencies—including the CDC—to pause external communications. This directive encompassed press releases, health guidance, social media posts, and website updates. In the wake of the all ridiculous rhetoric around DEI, hundreds of public health programs are at risk of languishing.
The worst part is, the American public doesn’t even realize how profound the consequences of losing them will be. Having worked closely with public health organizations developing communications for all types of initiatives including cancer detection, diabetes prevention, food and nutrition security, and many others, we understand exactly what is at stake.
Public Health Impacts Everyday Life
On the whole, people don’t understand public health’s purpose, scope, and impact, yet it directly affects daily life in ways that often get overlooked. Among other things, Americans have public health to thank for:
Safer car rides: seatbelts and speed limits.
Safer food: restaurant inspections are particularly relevant on Super Bowl Sunday, one of the biggest revenue days for restaurants annually. Hope you enjoyed your pizza, wings, sliders, and nachos, folks.
Tobacco laws: smoke-free public spaces.
Sanitation regulations: safe drinking water and garbage removal.
It’s not about individual healthcare, but rather preventing diseases, promoting healthy behaviors, and ensuring environmental and policy conditions that support health for the entire population.
The Math Isn’t Mathing
This year, advertisers paid an average of $8 million for a 30-second Super Bowl spot. But that price only covers the broadcast time slot. We in the industry are well aware of the significant additional costs associated with actually producing the commercials, not to mention that—to get a big game time slot—Fox also requires the advertiser to spend an additional $8 million in media commitments throughout the course of the year. Here’s a great summary of the total price tag, which actually ends up being about $40 million per spot.
Approximately 50 brands secured advertising slots in this year’s Super Bowl.
$40 million x 50 advertisers = $2 billion
Now let’s assume the game’s massive viewership of 120 million people is largely American. In 2025, CDC estimates that six in ten Americans are living with at least one chronic disease, and four in ten have two or more. These conditions, which include heart disease, cancer, and diabetes, are the leading causes of death and disability in our country.
Our population is expected to grow to 350 million by the end of 2025.
350 million x 60% = 210 million Americans have at least one chronic disease
350 million x 40% = 140 million Americans have two or more chronic diseases
Yesterday, marketers gladly spent $2 billion to showcase their brands to a wide, captive audience. Among these were about 15 brands promoting things that are easy to sell and gratifying to consume, especially with the help of celebrity endorsers: alcohol, soft drinks, fast food, and junk food. All the while, a staggering number of Americans are living with (and dying from) diseases brought about from consuming too much of the same products. In contrast, public health’s ‘product’—a healthy population—is not only harder to sell, but they are much less equipped to appeal to the same wide audience, the American public.
Prevention Needs a Bigger Budget
CDC’s requested budget for the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in 2025 was $1.551 billion.
That means our country’s annual budget to equip communities to create and promote programs that screen people for cancer, build inclusive and walkable places, prevent diabetes and Alzheimer’s, provide healthy food for people experiencing situational poverty, curb environmental carcinogens, educate parents and caregivers about feeding their children healthy foods, and support our rapidly aging population is $500 million less than the budget that consumer brands just shelled out to reach 120 million people. Public health needs to reach an audience nearly three times larger.
Even before the January mandate that all communications from health agencies undergo review and approval by political appointees before public dissemination, any marketer would tell you that you need more money to communicate effectively to an audience of that size.
The ROI of Prevention
There’s no question that disease prevention should be better business. Public health initiatives provide significant economic benefits by reducing medical costs, increasing workplace productivity, and improving quality of life. Studies show that for every $1 spent on public health initiatives, the return can range from $4 to $14 in healthcare savings and improved economic productivity. When it comes to tobacco prevention, smoking cessation programs save $55 per person per year for every $1 spent on anti-smoking campaigns. Investing in chronic disease prevention saves $5-$7 per $1 spent by reducing long-term treatment costs.
Addressing these types of issues require systems-level change, large-scale advocacy, and an understanding by the general public. None of that will happen without highly effective communications.
To quickly revisit the 2025 budget for chronic disease prevention:
$1.5 billion x 5 = $7.5 billion in healthcare cost savings
With numbers like this, prevention should sell itself. But until Americans value health more than entertainment, we all need public health to do the work that consumer brands won’t.
Name a better use of federal funds than to improve the health and well-being of every person in our country? We'll wait.
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