ACh
BY BRANDCARE® • BRANDING SCIENCE℠
This issue's cover is an original Gond artwork created by
the Brandcare team. Sunlight is one of nature's most
reliable triggers of ACh after excitement of course!
The Romans did not use the word communication to describe the sending of messages. They used it to describe the act of giving something of yours to another person so completely that it became theirs too.
Perhaps that's what every agency should aspire to—not simply accepting the brief, but understanding it so deeply that it becomes their own.
In healthcare marketing, that understanding begins with a simple question.
What exactly is the physician not yet convinced of?
Sometimes conviction breaks at the treatment philosophy.
Sometimes at the therapeutic class.
Sometimes at the molecule.
And sometimes, at the brand.
That point is where diagnosis begins.
That point is where the brief should begin.
We built Conviction Architecture™ to help teams, ours and yours to identify where physician conviction breaks before communication begins.
A great brief doesn't begin with what we want physicians to hear. It begins with what they are not yet ready to believe.
→ Explore Conviction Architecture™
Rashmi Thosar
Founder & Chief Creative Officer • BRANDCARE®40%
of India's GLP-1 sales still come from just seven metros — the weight-loss boom is a big-city sprint, and monthly growth has already cooled.
BrandCare: The early adopters are spent. The next ninety percent are won on trust, not novelty.
$57Bn
is where India's nutraceutical market is headed by 2030 at 10.5% CAGR — big consumer players are buying up mid-sized wellness brands to get there, as prevention becomes an everyday habit.
BrandCare: The future P&L is branded, repeat-purchased and off-prescription. Buy the habit, not the molecule.
40.6%
of India's drug market is now chronic therapy, and it is growing faster than the whole — the pharmacy is shifting from curing illness to managing it for life.
BrandCare: Lifetime therapy is a lifetime relationship. Adherence, not acquisition, is the whole game.
The habit of restraint.
Who builds it and when
The MLR discipline of pharma, in advertising to physicians, is rigorous. Every claim calibrated to evidence. Every reference checked. Every superlative removed. The industry built this not because regulators demanded it, but because the alternative — unsubstantiated claims reaching the physicians who would act on them — was a risk nobody wanted to carry. That discipline is now a habit. It took decades to become one.
The newer frontier is OTC brands and public health messaging, where the stakes are just as high and the discipline is yet to become a habit.
This is not a theoretical concern. India's OTC market is growing at 13% annually. Eight of the top ten pharma companies have launched dedicated consumer health portfolios in the last two years. The channels are wide open — influencers, celebrity endorsements, digital pharmacy, WhatsApp health communities, direct-to-consumer social. And the cultural norms governing what gets said in those channels are still being written. That is the frontier. And frontiers, by definition, don't have established habits yet.
When it comes to responsibility in advertising, self-restraint outperforms external regulation — one, because regulators cannot match the speed of communication; two, damage control comes too late to matter; and three, even the best machinery gets overburdened and misses the critical.
In 2023-24, healthcare was the single most violative sector in ASCI's annual complaints report — the highest of any category, including betting, personal care, and real estate. Of 1,575 healthcare ads examined, 1,249 violated the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act and were escalated to the regulator. 86% of those appeared on digital platforms.
(Source: ASCI Annual Complaints Report 2023–24)In ASCI's most recent half-yearly report, of 332 healthcare ads under scrutiny, 82% violated the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act. 86% of the violative healthcare ads appeared on digital platforms. The problem is real. Regulators are always downstream of communication. The instruments of self-regulation now need to move at the speed of the problem.
(Source: ASCI Half-yearly Complaints Report 2025-26)What the recent regulatory action on surrogate advertising for prescription weight-loss drugs illustrated is precisely this. The clampdown was correct in its diagnosis. Not because anyone acted in bad faith. Because no one imagined the scale of what unrestrained demand, once built, actually looks like. Restraint is a joint responsibility — of advertisers, agencies, influencers, and the medical community. The regulator should be the last line. Not the first.
CREATIVE WORK WORTH STUDYING.
Not ranked. Not awarded. Examined — for what each one teaches about the brief that preceded it.
Tailor Test
Waist-to-hip ratio is one of the most reliable predictors of cardiovascular risk. It is also a measurement that India's neighbourhood tailors take every day — without knowing it. Acko Mumbai turned the darzee into a diagnostic touchpoint. If a customer's measurements crossed a clinical threshold, the tailor recommended a heart check-up. The creative insight was hiding in plain sight. Nearly every Indian family has a darzee. He's been holding the data all along.
WHAT IT TEACHES
The most effective health intervention is the one that doesn't feel like a health intervention. The tailor wasn't a surrogate channel. He was the right channel.
Eye Test Menu
India has three million truck drivers. One in three needs vision correction. Between 2021 and 2022, impaired driver vision contributed to 25,000 road crashes and 10,000 fatalities. The barrier wasn't access. It was intention — truck drivers had no reason to seek an eye test and no moment in their day designed to offer one. Titan Bangalore found the moment: the dhaba stop. Roadside restaurant menus became makeshift eye charts, placed at the exact point of stillness in a truck driver's day.
WHAT IT TEACHES
Health behaviour change doesn't need a new channel. It needs the right moment in an existing one.
Vaseline Verified
Social media had turned a 150-year-old petroleum jelly into a canvas for viral hacks — some effective, many harmless, some genuinely dangerous. Vaseline, Singapore took over 6,000 community-sourced uses to the Vaseline lab, tested them, and published the results. Verified hacks earned an official seal. Myths were debunked. Findings went directly back to the creators who had originated them — turning influencers from misinformation risks into verified health advocates. The brand didn't correct the conversation. It became the most credible voice in it.
WHAT IT TEACHES
In the OTC space, the right brief is not "how do we correct the record." It is "how do we become the most credible voice in a conversation already happening without us."17.10.26
is the deadline in
Indonesia
Yes, October 17, 2026, is the statutory deadline when halal certification or compliant "non-halal" labeling becomes mandatory for consumer health, traditional medicines, and cosmetics in Indonesia.
Major retail chains and pharmacies may refuse to stock non-halal items to protect their reputation. Testing and approval queues at the BPJPH can extend time-to-market by several months.
American Halal Foundation
ACh is our attempt to think about healthcare communication —
together. In the four markets we cover, care is expressed
differently. But the need to feel understood, to be treated with
honesty and transparency is common across all of them. That is the
patient. That is the physician. That is the pharmacist. That is
your audience.
We named this publication ACh - Acetylcholine, the neurotransmitter of attention and learning.
It doesn't fire on command but when something deeply matters to you, holds your interest. That's
what we are trying to be for you.
Thank you for your attention.