Among the critics of advertising are those who abhor the misinformation ads present. A typical example: in the 50s, Bayer aspirin made huge gains in the market with the simple and compelling message that Bayer worked faster. Of course it doesn't, and Bayer was forced to drop the untrue claim. Still searching for a way to build market share, Bayer started boasting "extra strength" in its tablets, giving them double the strength of other brands. This was true, but only because each tablet contained twice as much aspirin. The lesson most critics took from this was that they needed to remain vigilant of advertisers, who were prepared to lie, and then evade the truth, to sell their products.
But the real lesson is something else entirely. Bayer's "extra strength" claim was true (and many products are sold using the same claim today). There was no evasion, merely the tauting of a feature that added no real value to the product. In other words, the way ads work has little to do with the information they present. I suppose everyone would agree that the policy of forbidding fraudulent ad claims is appropriate. Ad agencies especially revel in this legal restriction, because it permits them to concentrate their efforts on the real power of ads, which is to make the people watching feel that they are (or, perhaps more purposefully, ought to be) connected to the product in an essential, life-affirming, spiritual way.
Consider how much drug companies have learned from Bayer's early faux pas.
The first breakthrough drug ads on TV were for histamine blockers. The function of a histamine blocker is to stop the natural immune system response that inappropriately responds to certain irritating stimuli. They stop allergic reactions. The new drugs that appeared in the 80s were a great improvement to over-the-counter allergy pills because they weren't sedatives.
What you learned from the ads was: there's this stuff called Allegra, and there are a bunch of people playing, walking around, and smiling. Ask your doctor.
This is a powerfully effective ad, not because it told the viewer what Allegra was and what it did, but because it showed the viewer pictures of happy people and connected those images with the name of the product (the brand name). Is it wrong to draw from this presentation the message, "Allegra makes people happy"? The people in the ads walked around on strangely ethereal planes covered with fake grass, and everything was intensely colorful. Maybe the message is, "Allegra makes people high". And apparently, whatever this stuff is, it's legal, and your doctor will give it to you if you ask for it by name.
The print ads were very similar in their photography, but almost immediately a requirement was instituted that the print ads also contain a full disclosure of pertinent scientific information, especially concerning possible side effects. So on the preceeding or following page (in the best-case scenario, the reverse side of the same leaf), one could read all the facts, in tiny sans-serifed print in off-white on a colored background. But all that stuff didn't matter anyway, not to people living in the beautiful Allegra World.
Allegra competes with Claritin, which began with the same ad campaign, but recently made the unfortunate mistake of switching to an ad with Joan Lunden telling us how Claritin changed her life. To me, this makes Claritin look like the pill I should take if I want my skin to shrivel and my career to get yanked out from underneath me. Forget it: I'm taking Zyban instead.
Why? I don't know. All the ad tells me is "Now you have a choice." If it's a choice between the life-destroying Claritin and Zyban, I'll take my chances on Zyban, even though I don't know what it's for. It's a pill, it must be good for something. I've already asked my doctor.
In some matters, the less said, the better.
Which brings us to the Propecia spot. As I assume anyone who's reading this will know, Propecia is the pill that stops hair loss, can help grow hair, and is incredibly dangerous to the unborn! The nature of this danger wasn't specified until a couple months after the ads started running, when the wording of the voice-over was changed to: "Women who are or may become pregnant should not take Propecia or handle broken tablets because of a danger of certain birth defects." We still don't know how dangerous or what the exact birth defect might be, but I think this is all part of the Propecia plan. It's well-known that baldness is linked to excess testosterone, as is buying big or fast cars and being a jerk. Bald men are abuzz with testosterone, and the social stigma of baldness enrages them (hence jerkiness). The makers of Propecia know that testosterone also leads such men to high-risk behavior, like driving big or fast cars, or wearing toupés in public. To sell the pill, Propecia advertises its riskiness ("Let's give one to the dog and see what happens!"). That's what I call good market research.
(Another strange risk-taker's delight: A weight-loss drug, I think it's Meridia, features women waving their arms, pumping their fists in the air, and jumping up and down on trampolenes triumphally. The voice-over explains that results vary, that medical supervision is important in losing weight, and, finally, that the pill just might kill you. Perhaps the differences in the risk factors mentioned in the hair and weight loss drug ads are a measure of our society's concern with how people look.)
There weren't pills for these problems fifty years ago. Allergies were an annoyance, baldness merely a feature of some heads, obesity a problem to be solved by dieting, if at all. Now they are medical conditions to be cured or fixed.
After Rep. Sonny Bono (R-Calif.) died by skiing into a tree, his widow, Rep. Mary (R-Calif.) announced to reporters that she thought his death was caused by the fact that "he was addicted to pills." My imagination ran wild: Sonny took 300 sugar pills every day, and that's what killed him. It's not the drugs, it's the pills that we want. We want them now, and we want them to cure us.
The ultimate wisdom on this subject has already been offered by the Rolling Stones: what a drag it is getting old.