Americans should be throwing ticker-tape parades for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and so many other agencies that are now in the crosshairs.
Instead, as President Donald Trump, “first buddy” Elon Musk, and the DOGE-ists have berated and defunded them as rip-offs, the silence of the crowd has been deafening.
An outpouring of support should be coming from all those, families included, who have benefited from NIH- and NSF-funded research. But you can’t blame Americans for not rising up in support for their essential work. First, because most of the public has little awareness of what the government does. Second, because so much of COVID science has been weaponized and politicized, alienating millions.
Putting aside the debate over pandemic recommendations, there is no dispute about whether the NIH or its counterparts understand branding and storytelling on any level, even the most basic. The reasons are manifold: institutional arrogance; confidence in endless funding sources—these agencies traditionally received bipartisan support—and what they do for a living.
The NIH focuses on nucleotides, not narratives. But both must be an essential—if not existential—part of its mission, if it (and other vital agencies) hope to sustain the role they play as America enters an age of putting microscopes under the microscope.
Marketing for federal agencies
Let me call this out. Despite a budget of nearly $50 billion, the NIH has no chief marketing officer or marketing department. The entire communications function is run by the chief of staff.
Perhaps that vacancy didn’t matter in the pre-DOGE period—although I would argue that it is a moral obligation for the agency to let taxpayers know how successful their investment has been—but it damn sure does now.
While the agency has been making us less vulnerable to disease, it has simultaneously made itself vulnerable to slash-and-burn politicians. And now it’s paying a steep price.
Now is the time to change the conversation. With marketing.
Marketers, who too often get stuck selling organic mango shampoo, crave a rich story. With the NIH, they have one. NIH funding has been instrumental in developing breakthrough cancer treatments—from targeted therapies that attack cancer cells to immunotherapies that harness the body’s immanent powers to fight cancer. It advances insights into deadly neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
But hold on, there is also a massively top-of-mind NIH contribution that coincides perfectly with its desperate straits. I’m talking about the GLP-1 breakthroughs like Ozempic and Wegovy, which can be the electrifying foundation of a marketing and communications plan to ignite the public in support of the NIH.
Without the NIH and NSF, GLP-1 drugs would probably not exist. These compounds represent the first truly effective treatments for obesity and weight loss; they also have the potential to reduce cravings and addiction, with promising signals in the fight against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. The personal and economic benefits are hard to calculate.
The NIH and NSF both funded and conducted foundational research and clinical trials into these drugs. This goes back to the initial discovery of GLP-1 as a gut hormone, to the identification of exendin-4 in Gila monster saliva (a crucial component for developing the entire category of these drugs) to continuing studies on the physiological roles of GLP-1 and its receptors, along with their effects on insulin secretion and appetite.
Furthermore—and this demonstrates the successful collaboration of government and universities—early safety and efficacy trials often took place in academic medical centers heavily supported by government funding. Millions of new waist sizes were made possible by the agencies DOGE wants to waste.
We can despair or act.
Changing minds with branding
It’s not too late to change minds. Other agencies—the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for example—must embark on comprehensive campaigns to demonstrate their indispensable value to every American. They never had to justify their existence to the public before—but they do now.
Thankfully, the branding, marketing, and media tools to change minds exist at a level of sophistication never available before. A fully integrated campaign and precision-targeted marketing using linear TV, digital media, search advertising, and the power of influencers whose lives have been changed by science—including GLP-1 drugs—can ignite millions.
Even the ideologically fiercest politicians listen to voters.
True, these agencies have inadequate budgets and wobbly finances. But many in the billionaire class have the assets and passion to fund this. After all, they already contribute enormous sums to philanthropy-related health care. Now, with these efforts on the brink of shattering, folks like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Mike Bloomberg, Laurene Powell Jobs, and so many others must stand ready to fund this urgent effort.
Data point: Tom Steyer spent over $250 million of his own money on a vanity presidential campaign. That kind of dough would easily support multiple marketing campaigns.
The right branding, marketing, and media storytellers could create an effort that is powerful, tangible, and emotional. Let’s activate the right and left brains—on the right and the left—with powerful human stories and data. Culminating with an unmissable call-to-action that drives outraged Americans to break the mailboxes and phones of Washington decision-makers.
As a strategy and marketing professional, some might say that I embody the trope that if you give a child a hammer, everything is a nail. In this case, we need to buy as many hammers as we can—and start the pounding.
While branding can’t help diabetes, it can help rescue the people looking to prevent it.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
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- How the Trump admin transformed the U.S. into the financial Wild West in a matter of weeks
- Federal budget cuts threaten to decimate America’s AI superiority—and other countries are watching
