Where is all the hearing aid advertising?
I see a lot of adverts in the newspapers and on the TV for glasses. Every day there are full-page adverts in the papers and prime-time adverts on the big TV channels. Everyone is doing “Buy one get one free” offers or “Designer frames for free” etc etc. Glasses are cool, the designer frames are expensive, celebrities endorse them.
According to the Royal National Institute For The Blind there are two million blind or partially sighted people in the UK. This number does seem very low to me but that’s the only figure I could find.
Compare that two million to the estimated nine million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK.
Where are all the hearing aid adverts? Interestingly we have two big-name chains over here who sell both glasses and hearing aids, Boots and Specsavers. Both chains have regular glasses adverts but I can’t recall seeing a hearing aid advert from either, except for signs in their shop window.
Why aren’t hearing aids advertised on prime-time television? Do those nine million people even know where to go to buy a hearing aid? We are starting to see some celebrities backing campaigns to raise awareness of hearing damage – I’d like to see an A-lister advertising the latest digital model on Saturday evening TV. Maybe if adverts started showing hearing aids as being cool then maybe more people would use them and the remaining stigma would disappear. Prices would come down too as the number of units being sold went up and competition increased.
It wasn’t that long ago that glasses where painfully un-cool, you could only buy horrible looking thick lenses with unattractive frames. Now it’s all about the look and some people even wear them when they don’t need to. With some advertising hearing aids could get there too.
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That’s interesting because I see a lot of hearing aid advertising in the U.S. I’ve even had the concern that because of the advertising, people might order hearing aids through mail order without knowing there are audiologists offices that could assist them.
The RNIB does mention on its site that 12.5 million, who need to, don’t have regular eye tests, so i suspect 2 million are actually ‘registered’ blind or partially sighted, or have a significant impairment – the actual figure with any sight problem is significantly more than hearing impaired, I have seen figures that indicate 90% of UK population need glasses by 50. That is the main answer – turnover in optics exceeds that in the hearing sector by a huge margin and fashion plays a large role – Display in the shop reflects this as well. Having said that all the big nationals have done some TV advertising for hearing aids – primarily aimed at day time TV – but advertising costs are necessarily reflected in retail price so a careful balance is needed.
the revenue profit stream from hearing aids has shrunk dramatically over the last 2 years specsavers has brought in a high quality value range which has impacted massively on its competittors in the hearing aid market consequently large chains such as amplifon and hidden are in freefall as they struggle to make their business model work ,many redundancies have occurred and contract renegotiation is on the horizon for their RHADS…….hence not much money knocking around so advertising spend has fell thro the floor,and costs ie salaries are to be slashed……..long live the nhs where quality costs NOTHING