Meet Woman Who Is Bringing Credibility And Regulation To The Wellness Industry

Sarah Greenidge founder of WellSpoken

Courtesy of Well Spoken

I am far from the first person to be critical or sceptical towards the wellness industry, or to feel overwhelmed by the deluge of conflicting information available. Caffeine—does it slow down or speed up your metabolism? Smoothies and juices—a health must or empty calories leaving you hungry? Super foods—fact or fiction? Even the "experts" provide conflicting advice. That's why Sarah Greenidge founded WellSpoken, a much-needed tool for scrutinising and regulating the wellness industry. Your correspondent caught up with Sarah to learn more about the WellSpoken mark of approval.

1. For those not familiar, in your words, what is WellSpoken and what led you to start this company?

We work with wellness brands, bloggers, publishers and ambassadors to ensure they provide consumers with the highest level of credible, authentic, evidence-based information. The WellSpoken Mark is awarded to brands that are committed to providing trustworthy information. Our assessment ensures that consumer content developed by brands meets a standard of excellence. Wellness content is defined as any piece of information that is accessible by a consumer, whether that be articles, health tips, social media posts or vlogs. If it is providing wellness information to the public—it needs to be credible. The fundamental aspect of our certification process is auditing and working with applicants to establish the internal frameworks to uphold the development of credible information, going right to the roots of content generation. The result of this two-pronged approach is a mentality shift of how wellness content should be produced and what the resulting content needs to look like. The mark is more than a seal of approval; it represents a wholehearted commitment by wellness brands and ambassadors to strive towards providing evidence-based authentic content to the public.

2. Was there a specific moment that put you over the edge to propel you to start WellSpoken?

I started off my career in medical and healthcare communications and worked with national, Pan-European and global public health, regulatory and compliance teams in organisations like the NHS, NGOs and pharmaceutical companies, to ensure that internal procedures and external communications met regulatory expectations. Throughout my career what has always captured my interest has been the need to increase public health literacy levels and the direct effect this has on an individual’s ability to achieve health and wellbeing. Coming from such a regulated healthcare space, where evidence-based information is king, I was concerned about the quality of consumer content in wellness, and that brand partnerships were largely based on popularity and not necessarily expertise. After raising these issue to a few people working in the industry, I was met with the response that the industry was ‘different’ and ‘doesn’t need to be as strict.’ It was here that the mission to tackle this mindset was conceived and a year later The WellSpoken Mark was born with a mission to restore credibility to the core of the wellness industry. The onus in wellness has always been for the public to decipher good from bad information; however, I believe that brands and influencers have a responsibility to make sure that the information they publish is of the very best standard.

3. I've heard you talk about "future proofing" the wellness industry - what does that mean and what does that entail?

With an ever-changing regulatory environment, there is an urgent need to address the industry’s reputation as a purveyor of sub-standard health and wellness information. WellSpoken was created to spearhead a revolution to make credibility the core of the wellness industry. The current lack of industry-specific legislation has meant that consumers and other stakeholders have been active players in holding wellness brands, bloggers and influencers accountable. WellSpoken is leading an industry gold-standard for credible wellness communication that reflects and extends beyond the relevant UK and EU legislation. While brands, bloggers and influencers operating within the wellness industry have a legitimate right to promote products, services and provide lifestyle information to consumers, there needs to be a balance between the needs of industry partners, professionals and the rights of consumers to have credible information.


  • Where you say it: The medium brands choose to communicate wellness messages (e.g. social media, ambassadors, blogs) need to be credible channels of communication

The WellSpoken app in action

Courtesy of Well Spoken

 4. I've heard you also discuss the need for "credible content" in this industry—can you expand on that and how we begin to police and vet our wellness content? You don't need to "name names" but talk me through some of the most absurd and untrue claims you've seen made of products and by brands?

There have been some really obvious examples of poor-quality information—everything from miracle slimming supplements to the more dangerous claims around cures for cancer and serious chronic conditions. These are very obvious examples of questionable information but for us, the real danger lies in the more subtle forms of poor quality information. From social influencers giving out-of-remit advice to brands partnering with influencers that are not appropriate. Online influencers/experts are trusted within their area of specialism, their word is often taken as gospel and their endorsement can be a hugely valuable marketing tool for brands.Consumers look at experts and influencers within the relevant field to provide advice, recommendations and guidance from a qualified, experienced and ethical standpoint. Due to this level of public trust, we believe that businesses, and the influencers and experts they engage with, should seek to ensure that their partnerships and resulting content meet the highest standards of excellence.

No matter how polished content can appear, if it is not delivered responsibly and accurately to consumers, it can be received negatively and can have an undesirable impact on the reputation of a brand. The web has created a truly global landscape, where information is freely shared without borders. While this has an enormous amount of positives—an unfortunate side effect is that corporate mistakes spread like wildfire. In 2017, we saw many of the world leading brands face the harsh consequences of sour partnerships. From backlash to boycotts, getting content wrong can have a very lasting impact on reputation. Once a groundswell of public outrage starts, it is incredibly hard to stop and to re-build trust.

There needs to be a paradigm shift in how brands think about communicating externally. Partnering with high-profile influencers is not just a means to end or simply a mechanism to generate sales or reach new audiences. Company partnerships provide consumers with a glimmer of a business’s value system. Building credibility builds rapport, brand loyalty and ultimately better-quality content.

The Well Spoken Platform

Courtesy of Well Spoken

  5. In our information-overload culture—how do you personally begin to wade through everything and weed out fact from fiction?

In order to check the credibility of any piece of content, I use a method called credibility layering, which is also the basis of our certification content audits.

When looking at wellness content, ask yourself:

  • Is it clear what sources of information were used to compile the content? Is it based on evidence or personal opinion
  • Who is the Author of the piece of content? Can you identify them and their qualifications? Is the topic they are talking within their area of expertise
  • Is the language used to communicate facts or recommendations balanced in tone (free of confusing, exaggerated or overly emotive language)? Does the content provide a clear and realistic explanation of the effects and outcomes of a particular wellness regiment?

  6.  What were some of the learnings you've had while working on this that you've found most surprising?

One of the most surprising aspects of this journey has been meeting the people behind the content we consume every day, working for brands or as individuals, and coming to the realisation that the vast majority really want to do the right thing. The issue really comes with the limited level of expertise and experience within the wellness community when it comes to working to a high information standard. The variance in qualification, experience, linguistics and clinical understanding means that the quality of content produced by this group is just as varied.

In an attempt to search for credible advisors, we have rested our laurels in those who seemingly have relevant degrees or qualifications in the areas we are interested in—including registered nutritionists, dieticians and medical doctors, who have become powerful content players in the wellness industry, all in an attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff. The challenge we face as a wellness community is that qualifications do not necessarily translate into credibility—these two things are not equivalent. We have to acknowledge that certain qualifications can hold different weightings, especially in areas such as nutrition where there are multiple associations accrediting different things.

Having an in-depth knowledge in a subject area does build a certain element of credibility, but learning how to communicate credibly to different audiences, across various platforms, understanding all of the different nuances and the power of language – is an art form in itself. Healthcare professionals can still share or give advice which is out of their remit. This is a challenging concept but one that firmly needs to be addressed. Just because someone is a qualified doctor, does not mean they are best placed to speak on all things nutrition—even doctors will admit the mandatory medical training on this subject during their degree is limited. In the same instance, a nutritionist sharing workout tips is out of remit if they are not qualified PTs.

By training brands, bloggers and influencers, on an information standard and the principles of health writing, we at WellSpoken hope to galvanise the wider wellness industry to proactively self-regulate the dissemination of accurate wellness information and to regain some of the trust that has been lost through negative press.

