Rethinking rebranding

Recruiting sufficient psychiatrists in the UK apparently resists straightforward remedy. Crabb et al’s recent editorial Shrink rethink: rebranding psychiatry is a welcome contribution on this subject.¹ Innovative and provocative in turn, it urges that the psychiatric profession draw on expertise from the fields of advertising and public relations. We should engage with potential recruits by thinking of psychiatry as a ‘brand’.

But brands are ethereal things. Their existence is championed by some,² whereas others have written about the negative impact of brand-oriented corporate activity.³ Marketing psychiatry as a brand certainly has an attractive simplicity. Yet doing so situates the practice of psychiatry in the realm of things that are bought and sold, where it sits only uncomfortably.

The ubiquity of some brands is a marketing triumph, but emulating their tactics is not necessarily desirable. The advertising of brands seeks to sow discontent; to demonstrate to customers a gap in their life experience that a product can fill. Attempts to promote brands and products by association with certain desirable lifestyles may be effective, but also disingenuous. This approach may be acceptable for a soft drink but should be approached with caution by the medical profession.

In addition, the management priorities of the corporations that own many brands only faintly resemble psychiatry's governance structures. Psychiatry's relationship with its ‘competitors’ is more complex. If one company enters administration as a result of the crushing success of a rival, then that is capitalism ‘working’. But if by increasing psychiatry's share of trainee recruitment we substantially weaken a fellow specialty, this success is equivocal.

Arguably, acknowledged or not, psychiatry is a brand of sorts. Doctors making career decisions may be accustomed to thinking of themselves as consumers and consider their options in a transactional way. In this case the explicit branding of psychiatry makes some sense, and in recognising this possibility Crabb et al provide a valuable insight. But promoting psychiatry as a brand may mean that other ways of understanding how our specialty might appeal are overlooked. What I hope is not lost is the notion of the new recruits to psychiatry's ranks as engaged citizens, drawn to this specialty as an expression of deeply held values and as a demonstration of commitment to their community and to wider society.