Healthcare marketing faces unique challenges as skeptical consumers find it hard to trust much of the messaging sent their way.

• While nearly 9 in 10 US consumers (86.8%) have seen healthcare ads in the past year, only 1 in 5 trust healthcare advertising more than other types of marketing, according to a March 2025 survey from EMARKETER and StackAdapt.

This environment led prescription drug platform GoodRx to recently roll out a bold campaign featuring a snappy western cowgirl known as “The Savings Wrangler.”

“If you think of healthcare advertising, and the standard playbook of smiley, happy people or frowning people, and walking in a field, or birds chirping, and then a drug name appears on the screen, we really wanted to cut through that noise and show up in a distinct and different way,” said GoodRX CMO Ryan Sullivan on a recent episode of "Behind the Numbers."

Building on legacy

GoodRx has been a presence in the healthcare space for 14 years, but its unique position in delivering savings on medications makes it somewhat of a renegade. The brand’s peppy new heroine was developed to put a face on this outsider status, while giving pharmacy customers a sense that the brand’s got their back.

The wrangler mascot was created as a “fearless ally that's kind of an amalgam of a rebel, someone who really wants to fight against injustice in the system, but is also a heroic personality,” Sullivan said. “Someone who's really just trying to drive forward and make things better, and so we meshed those together to get this idea of a fearless ally.”

He added that the “Wild West” concept was used to connect with patients’ frustrations with a complex and pricy healthcare system.

Beyond the numbers

Consumers are inundated with pharmaceutical ads. And though audiences are skeptical, they can also be swayed to act after seeing one.

• One-third (34%) of consumers took action to do more research or ask a medical professional about a drug after seeing an ad, according to a survey in January by EMARKETER and StackAdapt.

GoodRx saw an opportunity to cut through this glut with the personality and flair of a brand persona.

The wrangler persona ropes in an older advertising tradition that marketers, especially in the pharmaceutical industry, lose sight of when they focus too hard on metrics.

“We've trained a generation of marketers that advertising has become a discipline awash in numbers and performance marketing tenets, and digital platforms, and channels,” said Sullivan. “And I do think some of the more iconic elements that have propelled advertising for more than a hundred years have been somewhat lost along the way.”

Two is better than one

To add another dimension to the campaign, Sullivan’s in-house team introduced a sidekick, the prairie dog “Dusty Pete.” Having the prairie dog speak was a key point of debate during the brainstorming stage.

“We went back and forth on this, and one of the reasons we gave him a voice is because we wanted him to have his own presence in social media,” said Sullivan.

The brand leverages social media with short videos showing “Dusty Pete” singing western-style ballads. Sullivan said the original songs are based on actual customer testimonials.

This social presence might have a greater effect than the pitch-perfect TV spot. According to the EMARKETER/StackAdapt survey, 18% of consumers took action after seeing ads on social media and video platforms, 16% after seeing a traditional TV ad.

Listen to the full episode

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