The shift toward health(ier) choices has been happening steadily for many years. It's not that consumers are recognizing new needs. We have fundamentally wanted to live our best lives all along. We want to look good and feel good and do the best we can for ourselves, our children and our pets. What has changed - and what will continue to change - is our expectations of how those needs can be addressed.
With every new service or new product that is launched, with every innovation we become aware of, so do we become aware of what's possible. Many of these possibilities awaken previously un-expressed unmet needs, or needs that we had not previously entertained because we didn't think they were possible to solve.
Health & Wellness Is Becoming More Holistic
When it comes to wellness, a great many categories come into play, because there are many components to health and wellness that all work together to make us healthy, physically, mentally and emotionally. When all these components are cared for and working well, it's easier for us to live our best lives. They cannot be viewed in a silo.
For example, the importance of sleep cannot be understated, and there are products to address sleep directly, but sleep can also be affected by a myriad of factors including home environment, anxiety, nutrition, and fitness.
More recently, we are also waking up to a sense of urgency about not only wellness for ourselves, but the wellness of the planet. Planetary health is about making sure that the Earth is a healthy place to live for all living beings on the planet. Consumers are increasingly recognizing that their choices in the aggregate can have an impact, not just for themselves but also for the health of the planet - which will ultimately impact our physical health.
Here are the commonly accepted components impacting health and wellness - each interacting with the next.
8 Components of Wellness
The components are all interconnected in the holistic approach for better consumer health and wellness.
- Fitness
- Nutrition
- Women's health
- Sexual health
- Mental and behavioral health
- Sleep
- Social health
- Pet health
Some interesting facts that may help you think differently about each component of health and wellness:
1. Fitness
The pandemic gave a boost to the at-home fitness industry, with both equipment and the monthly subscription service to keep you using it. A consistent fitness routine also helps with stress and anxiety, sleep, and keeping pain at bay.
Amp is among the latest fitness innovations, bringing smart strength training home through a device that adapts to your progress in real-time, tailored to each individual with the ability to hit every muscle group. The new YoctoMat is a smart yoga mat with embedded sensors to help people, from beginners to more advanced, ensure the best alignment, posture, and balance. It promises to help consumers benefit from better fitness, calm, and reduced stress.
2. Nutrition
We've all heard that old adage "you are what you eat" and "an apple a day keeps the doctor away," yet now we are increasingly better understanding the relationship between gut health and both general health and mood. Fermented superfoods, such as kimchi, sauerkraut, and kvass, will be a focus due to their gut health benefits, showing up in all kinds of food products, from fresh-packaged produce to supplements.
Also, consumers, increasingly aware of the impact of growing methods on their food choices, will begin to look at methods of growth for their produce as carefully as they look at ingredient labels. For example, tomatoes grown by Village Farms use recycled water, beneficial insects for pest control, and 97% less land than conventional field growing.
Consumers will not just make these choices to impact planetary health, but also to enjoy safer, more flavorful, and nutrient-dense food options.
3. Women's health
Women's health is a vast area ranging from feminine hygiene to osteoporosis and everything in between. We see companies trying to educate women more directly about options for common problems, such as Hologic's Novasure campaign, making women aware of an outpatient procedure to address heavy periods.
More recently, there's been a lot more attention paid to understanding menopause (and perimenopause), and, with our aging population, we expect to see more solutions addressing this target with specific solutions involving fitness, nutrition, sexual health, mental and behavioral health and sleep. Hormonal imbalances are increasingly reported in women, and sedentary lifestyles and already high consumption of multivitamins and probiotics are believed to be drivers of women's health today. Hormonal health company Mira launched a Menopause Transitions kit that includes an AI-based hormone tracking monitor for women between the ages of 35 and 60 to track four reproductive hormones to identify ovulation and menopause transition. The app also allows users to track their symptoms and associate them with hormone changes.
4. Sexual health
Sexual health is an important part of life. We've come a long way since when the only products available on drug store shelves were condoms. J&J's KY brand of personal lubricants - and the ads that supported them - helped to normalize conversation about healthy intimacy. Sexual wellness and sexual enhancement are intertwined with fitness and sleep, as well as anxiety and depression. Newer companies like Vella are working to ensure women have access to products that support their sexual health, which is a core part of overall health and wellness.
5. Mental and behavioral health
Even before the pandemic, we led increasingly always-on, stressed-out lives. The leading use case for the behavioral health tools market is anxiety and depression. The rising incidence of depression, stress, and other mental health conditions is a major factor that is expected to boost brain health supplements, with some, like Noocube, promising to support brain function and protect against electronic eye strain.
We are also more open to digital therapeutics to help with these issues. More and more options are available to consumers, such as apps based on CBT-based interventions to help manage anxiety symptoms, phobias, stress, and hypertension.
6. Sleep
Of all the components of well-being, sleep is the most foundational. Getting enough sleep improves our mood, productivity, and ability to learn. People with sleep deficiency have a greater risk of many health complications, including heart disease, kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, and obesity. Many of these overlapping components impact our ability to get a good night's sleep with anxiety, as well as nutrition and fitness to tackle obesity, a cause of sleep apnea, being particularly high on the list.
Up to 35% of adults are estimated to experience insomnia symptoms or sleep disorders, and the sleep aids market is a $30b industry in the U.S. alone.
7. Social health
We view social health as the ability to feel connected to others and society. Good social health not only means not feeling lonely but also includes feeling productive.
Enjoying social health correlates with good mental and behavioral health, possibly due to more social interactions, good fitness due to a higher activity level, and generally getting more enjoyment out of life. Cooking, arts and crafts, social fitness, and pet ownership are categories that encourage social health. As our population ages, we expect more innovation aimed at social health.
8. Pet health
The benefits of pet ownership for people of all ages are well known. Pets can bring joy and purpose to a home. In older people, pet owners show slower deterioration in daily activities than those who do not.
Keeping pets healthy and happy is therefore important to support the overall health of owners. The primary focus in pet wellness has been around nutrition, but there is also an opportunity to address the holistic wellness needs of pets, especially around fitness.
The Components of Wellness And Their Role in Marketing
Any brand wishing to participate in these areas must realize that these components of health and wellness are intertwined. A positive feeling regarding one may impact one or more other components, but this can also go the other way.
Marketers need to keep this in mind as they strive to better understand the health and wellness consumer and the consumer's expectations for a brand. Ultimately, true health and wellness, or at least the consumer's perception of it, is how these components work in concert to positively impact one's well-being.
Understanding and managing these expectations and perceptions is what consumes us as a strategic marketing and innovation agency for wellness brands. We help these brands navigate the ever-changing world of consumer health and wellness online, in-store, and most importantly, in the hearts of their consumers.
Lisa is a marketing and brand strategist with a deep experience creating, launching, and generating demand for CPG products in Canada and the U.S. She has been with Compass Marketing since its founding in 2009.
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