The Ontario Chiropractic Association has launched a new mass campaign to show people that they shouldn’t consider seeing a professional about their nagging pain as a last resort.
The organization’s new campaign focuses on people doing “the simple things” like cooking, dancing and otherwise enjoying day-to-day life, before showing how chronic muscle and skeletal pain and mobility issues can make even easy tasks a struggle.
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The new television spot will be airing across Ontario as part of a campaign that also includes digital display and social elements, as well as a series of pre-roll videos. Send + Receive led creative on the campaign, with Cairns Oneil on media buying.
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Miguel Pacheco, director of communications and marketing at the Ontario Chiropractic Association, says this is the OCA’s first mass broadcast campaign in a number of years, having focused mostly on PR and influencer work recently.
He says the return to a mass campaign is a reflection of chiropractic becoming a more prominent part of Ontario’s healthcare system. Today, chiropractors are utilized by upwards of 20% of Ontarians, are seen as part a person’s regular healthcare team alongside people like dentists and optometrists, and are a bigger part of collaborative healthcare efforts, seeing more referrals from doctors, having a greater presence in hospitals and receiving government funding for joint projects to address pain management issues.
Despite all that, there is a perception issue when it comes to the kinds of pain and issues chiropractors treat, with many people avoiding treatment because they don’t see it as a major issue.
“We know, for example, that back pain affects over 80% of the population at some point in their lives,” Pacheco says. “At the same time, a lot of Ontarians were saying they weren’t seeing a chiropractor because they didn’t think they needed to. If a lot of people are in pain, but they still say they don’t need to get checked out, that doesn’t add up and means they are rationalizing the pain somehow.”
That’s why the campaign is focusing on making Ontarians realize the kind of things, as simple as they may be, that become obstacles when they have pain and mobility issues and how that impacts their quality of life.
“When something first happens to cause that pain, it’s top of mind,” Pacheco says. “But as time goes on, people just learn to live with it and adjust the way they live,” Pacheco says. “The one thing we wanted to showcase is that our lives are made up of a series of small moments. We’re trying to tell Ontarians that struggling through those moments isn’t normal, that you should be able to live your lives to best that you can, and you shouldn’t be thinking of a chiropractor as a last resort.”
