Beth Snyder Bulik
Senior Editor
The nation’s largest lab provider is coming to your living room — with both its tests and a first-ever advertising campaign.
Quest Diagnostics’ lineup of 50+ tests, from sexually transmitted disease screenings to allergy and metabolic panels, lets people skip the line at doctors’ offices and get results at home. And now it’s launching its largest inaugural consumer marketing campaign in support.
The new “Put Your ___ to the Test” campaign is rolling out in TV, out of home, digital and social media, advising people to “know your health better.” The TV commercial flips through images of foods and activities with people sneezing, running, biking, dancing and boxing along to a techno soundtrack, “Perfect Human Specimen” by Lynks.
The 30-second commercial directs viewers to the Quest Health website, where they can browse and purchase its more than 50 tests — from $39 for gout or cholesterol information to $349 suites of men’s or women’s assessments. Interested shoppers’ tests are ordered by a physician digitally, scheduled at their nearby Quest Diagnostics labs, and results are then delivered to their private MyQuest portal, said Ryan Anderson, Quest’s executive director of consumer marketing. Its biggest selling category to date? STD tests. While people can’t use traditional insurance for the Quest Health tests, they can use funds from health flexible spending accounts (FSAs).
“We’ve been the leader in diagnostic information services for decades, and what’s exciting is we’re emerging as a lifestyle brand with these efforts,” he said. “What I mean by that is, when I look at Fitbit and Noom and Purple Carrot and Ritual and these DTC health and health tech brands, we endeavor to sit alongside those brands when people think about a healthy lifestyle.”
Quest launched its direct-to-consumer diagnostics business in 2018, and it was growing at an average clip, as Anderson described it. However, the Covid-19 pandemic forced big consumer health behavioral changes with rocketing telehealth and diagnostic uses that changed its test business — and potential.
Anderson said it became clear there was “an opportunity for us to play a critical role in the consumerization of care, where people are not only wanting greater agency in their health,” but also in the technology and information they can access.
So Quest spent the past two years building out new technology and a new team, including a roster of non-healthcare consumer marketing experts, with general manager Richard Adams from JC Penney and others from Accenture, Samsung and Jet Blue. Its goal? Compete for mindshare with health and wellness brands versus traditional healthcare brands.
To do that, Quest is also taking pages from the playbooks of successful direct-to-consumer brands such as Ritual, Purple Carrot, Calm and Noom.
Looking at those brands, though, made Anderson realize Quest needed to adapt its communication style for consumers, which is part of what the new ad campaign is looking to do.
“We realized that when we’re talking directly to consumers, it’s in a more human, approachable and personable way while still conveying the trust and reliability of the nation’s largest lab provider,” Anderson said.
The revamped offering and consumer campaign, however, doesn’t mean Quest is trying to cut out physicians, as some consumer-initiated testing (CIT) might seem to do.
“While the CIT category is still relatively immature, there are messages out there saying you don’t need a doctor, there are tools where you can go it alone and very DIY in nature,” Anderson said. “That is not at all what Quest is seeking to do … in fact, we see the opportunity through education and access to one’s own information, to improve patient education and create a better dialogue with an individual and their provider.”
Quest Diagnostics reported $10.79 billion in sales for 2021, with $2.77 billion of that attributed to Covid-19 testing. In the most recent 2Q accounting, it reported $2.45 billion in sales, down 3.8% from 2Q 2021.
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