Consumer health marketing sits in an awkward middle ground. You are not running prescription-only campaigns, so the IPHA code and the heavy medical affairs sign-off machinery does not apply in the same way. But you are still promoting products with regulated claims, still answerable to the HPRA, and still bound by the ASAI code once your video hits broadcast, social, or in-store screens.
For brand and trade marketing managers at consumer health companies and pharmacy groups, this creates a practical problem. Most published guidance on healthcare video is written for pharma medical affairs teams or for medical device manufacturers navigating EU MDR. Very little of it speaks to the person launching a cough and cold campaign, refreshing a vitamins range video, or producing counter-level content for a pharmacy retail group.
This article covers what actually governs OTC healthcare video advertising in Ireland, a claims checklist you can hand to your agency at brief stage, a realistic approval timeline, and what to plan for when filming inside a working pharmacy.
Three separate frameworks apply to most consumer health video work in Ireland, and they overlap rather than sit neatly side by side. Knowing which one governs which claim saves a great deal of time later.
The Health Products Regulatory Authority regulates advertising of medicinal products, including those available without prescription. The core principle is that any advertising claim must be consistent with the product’s Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC) or, for many OTC lines, the approved package leaflet. If the claim is not in the SmPC, it does not go in the video.
The HPRA also requires that advertising for non-prescription medicines includes an indication that the product is a medicine and a clear instruction to read the label or leaflet. In video, this typically appears as an end-card supered message and a matching voiceover line. The wording is not something to improvise on set.
The Advertising Standards Authority for Ireland code applies to health and beauty claims across all commercial media, including online video and social. Section 12 of the code deals specifically with health, beauty and slimming claims. Two provisions catch consumer health advertisers repeatedly: the prohibition on discouraging people from seeking medical treatment, and the restriction around using health professionals or celebrities to endorse medicinal products.
The practical consequence for video is significant. A pharmacist appearing on camera in a branded product film is a different proposition to a pharmacist appearing in a general health education film for a pharmacy group. The first can breach the code depending on how the product is framed; the second is usually fine. Getting the distinction settled before the shoot day is far cheaper than fixing it in the edit.
Much of a consumer health portfolio is not medicinal at all. Food supplements fall under EU Regulation 1924/2006 on nutrition and health claims, which means only claims on the EU Register are permitted, and the exact permitted wording matters. Cosmetics fall under the Cosmetic Products Regulation. Some OTC lines (wound care, certain oral care products, hearing aids) are classified as medical devices and carry their own claim constraints.
One video campaign covering a multi-product range can therefore be governed by three or four different rulebooks at once. This is the single biggest source of avoidable delay in pharmacy video marketing in Ireland, and it is usually solved by mapping each product to its regulatory category at brief stage rather than at legal review.
Before a script goes to storyboard, run it against this list. Most regulatory affairs teams are working from something similar internally, so aligning early reduces the number of review rounds considerably.
You’d be surprised how often a campaign clears regulatory review comfortably and then stalls at the retail partner, purely because nobody asked the retail team for their in-store content spec at the outset.
The most common failure in consumer health video is not a rejected claim. It is a launch date set as though the project were a standard consumer campaign, with review time treated as a formality bolted onto the end.
Three months from brief to delivery is a reasonable planning assumption for a multi-product consumer health campaign with a filmed component. Single-product refreshes with existing approved claims can move considerably faster, sometimes in five or six weeks, because the substantiation work is already done.
Script rounds are the biggest variable. Two rounds is normal. Four or more usually signals that the creative concept was developed without regulatory input, and the team is now retro-fitting compliance onto an idea that cannot carry it. That is an expensive way to work.
The fix is to bring regulatory affairs into the concept conversation rather than the approval conversation. A regulatory colleague who has seen the creative territory early will tell you within ten minutes which of your three concepts is going to be a problem. That single conversation regularly saves three weeks.
Broadcast clearance is the other item people underestimate. If your campaign includes a TV ad, allow additional time for clearance, and expect that queries will come back. Build the buffer into the schedule rather than hoping for a clean first pass.
Pharmacy is a working clinical environment as much as a retail one, and shooting in one requires more planning than a standard retail shoot. Our experience across healthcare and retail environments in Dublin and Ireland-wide points to a consistent set of practical considerations.
Filming during trading hours is possible but slow, and it introduces consent complications with every customer who walks into frame. Most productions are better served by an early-morning or post-closing shoot, or by using a pharmacy that is between tenancies or a purpose-built set. Independent pharmacies are frequently more flexible than multiples, though multiples can offer better environmental consistency across a series.
If the video is for a pharmacy retail group rather than a brand, filming across two or three sites usually produces a more representative result than concentrating everything in one flagship store.
Pharmacies handle sensitive personal data constantly. Prescription records, patient names on dispensing labels, and consultation room activity must all be kept out of frame. A pre-shoot walkthrough with the pharmacy manager identifying what needs to be covered, moved, or avoided is essential. Any real customer appearing on camera needs a signed release, and the practical answer on most shoots is to cast the customer roles rather than rely on foot traffic.
Every pharmacy shelf is full of competitor products, and clearing them in post is costly. Plan the shelf dressing in advance: either dress a section with your own range, shoot at depths of field that render the background unreadable, or build a controlled set. This is a routine part of pharmacy retail video production in Dublin and it should be costed in at quote stage rather than discovered on the day.
If a registered pharmacist appears, their professional obligations under PSI guidance apply alongside the ASAI restrictions on health professional endorsement. Clarify early whether the pharmacist is presenting general health information, describing a service the pharmacy offers, or endorsing a specific product. Those are three different pieces of content with three different compliance profiles.
Practising pharmacists are also, understandably, not performers. Build in more takes than you would for a corporate spokesperson, keep the scripted lines short, and shoot in a way that lets you cut around delivery. The authenticity is worth the extra time.
Pharmacy interiors tend to have high-CRI-poor overhead fluorescents, reflective white surfaces, and constant background noise from tills, fridges, and robotic dispensing units. None of this is insurmountable, but it does mean allowing setup time and not assuming a run-and-gun approach will deliver broadcast-usable footage.
Not every objective needs a hero film. Matching the format to the job keeps budget proportionate and approvals manageable.
For a broader view of how healthcare organisations plan video across clinical, patient-facing, and commercial requirements, our medical and healthcare video production work covers the full range of formats and the compliance considerations attached to each.
A production company that has worked in regulated healthcare will ask you different questions to one that has not. Expect to be asked about claims substantiation, review chains, and mandatory information before anyone talks about creative treatment. That is a good sign.
Include the following in your brief:
The last point matters more than it appears. Consumer health brands frequently want an asset to work across Ireland and the UK, and sometimes across the EU. Claims permitted in one market are not automatically permitted in another, and a shoot planned with localisation in mind (clean plates for supers, modular voiceover, avoiding on-screen text baked into the picture) costs very little extra at the time and saves a full reshoot later.
The HPRA does not operate a pre-approval scheme for most non-prescription medicine advertising, so there is no submission-and-approval step in the way some markets have. Responsibility sits with the marketing authorisation holder to ensure the advertisement complies with the relevant regulations, including consistency with the SmPC and inclusion of mandatory information. In practice this means your internal regulatory affairs function is the gate, and their sign-off carries real weight.
It depends entirely on what they are doing. The ASAI code restricts the use of health professionals in ways that suggest professional endorsement of a medicinal product. A pharmacist providing general health information, or describing a service their pharmacy offers, is a different proposition to a pharmacist recommending a specific branded medicine. Settle this with your regulatory team before casting, because it shapes the whole script.
Allow around twelve to fourteen weeks from brief to final delivery for a multi-product campaign with a filmed component, including two script review rounds and final sign-off on picture-locked cuts. Simpler projects using already-approved claims can complete in five to six weeks. The determining factor is almost always how early regulatory affairs was involved, not how quickly the production runs.
No. Food supplements are governed by the EU nutrition and health claims regulation, which permits only claims on the EU Register and often specifies the wording. OTC medicines are governed by HPRA advertising controls tied to the SmPC. Both are then subject to the ASAI code. If a single video features both product types, each claim needs to be checked against the framework that applies to its own product.
Beyond standard production costs, allow for site access fees or out-of-hours arrangements, shelf dressing to manage competitor products in frame, cast for customer and staff roles where real people cannot be used, and additional setup time for lighting and sound in a challenging interior. A well-scoped quote will itemise these rather than absorb them, so you can see where the money is going and make informed trade-offs.
Consumer health video is entirely manageable once the compliance work is front-loaded. The teams who find it painful are almost always the ones who treated regulatory review as a final checkpoint rather than a design input. Map your products to their regulatory categories, build your claims substantiation before the script exists, involve your reviewers in the concept conversation, and plan your pharmacy access properly. The creative work then has room to be genuinely good, because it is not fighting the rulebook.
One Productions has produced video across healthcare, pharma, retail, and corporate sectors in Dublin and Ireland-wide, working with the review structures and compliance requirements that come with regulated categories. If you have a consumer health or pharmacy video project in planning, get in touch today for a free quote and we can talk through timelines, formats, and what the shoot would realistically involve.
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