An Interesting Example of Markets, Information, Responsibility

[mosdef]

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Mosdef, some things to consider:
If the ad doesn't make sense to you or causes you anger, then you may not be the target market for the ad.

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Again, the ad doesn't make me mad - I don't think it's an inappropriate ad for the company to put up. I do think that it will be effective, and I think the reason it will be effective is that the advertiser knows that there is a cultural norm where people expect others to ensure that they get what's good for them.

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And I'm curious, did you know what a polyphenol was when you saw the ad?

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No - my initial reaction was "I know green tea is full of antioxidants, that must be an antioxidant."

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If not, did you look it up later?

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Yes.

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Because it seems to me that the part that's bothering you is the attention grabber

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No! What bothers me is that it substitutes the attention grabbing for real information. And it doesn't bother me that they've done it (they're just responding to the attitudes of their target market), what bothers me is that the target market for uninformed and lazy consumers is big enough to make this kind of ad work.

[vhawk01]

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The amount of research required to know about these topics is way beyond most people. sux but it's true.

This is why I oppose DTC marketing for pharmaceuticals. People are not remotely well enough informed to make accurate decisions.

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Thats why doctors exist. People don't need to be smart enough to make all of their own decisions. They simply need to be smart enough to choose a "chooser" who WILL make their decisions.

And if you don't think people are smart enough to even do THIS, can I recommend something off the dessert menu, and lay off the democracy?

[vhawk01]

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I'm assuming that food safety is important enough to you to research it. With this in mind, prior to the last several years, when trans fats became the hot new media topic, did you have any idea what they were?

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Nope. When I was told that they were important, and became as informed as I deemed necessary, I started researching to the extent I thought necessary when buying prepackaged foods.

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Right. And I also assume you did the research when the media first told you they were a bad thing.

The media, however, has roundly ignored polyphenols, just like it's roundly ignored any one of a number of other chemicals in food. (Take your pick, really.) Without media involvement, how does the consumer arrive at the necessity to research this in the first place?

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I usually try to find the smartest person I know who knows about the subject and ask them "What are the relevant concerns when buying X?" Then I buy it. If I die, I don't ask that person next time. He was an idiot.

[Jamougha]

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The amount of research required to know about these topics is way beyond most people. sux but it's true.

This is why I oppose DTC marketing for pharmaceuticals. People are not remotely well enough informed to make accurate decisions.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats why doctors exist. People don't need to be smart enough to make all of their own decisions. They simply need to be smart enough to choose a "chooser" who WILL make their decisions.

And if you don't think people are smart enough to even do THIS, can I recommend something off the dessert menu, and lay off the democracy?

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I agree, that's all they need to do. In practice however people pester their doctors for specific medications that they've seen advertised - if they didn't then the ads wouldn't be there - and this leads to worse health outcomes and increased costs. There have been studies in New Zealand showing the contrast with and without DTC advertising.

Another example is baby milk. It's heavily advertised in devloping countries. It's not tough to make uneducated people there want it; just portray it as what westerners use. This leads to very poor people squandering money on something they can produce themselves. In itself whatever, it's their choice, right? But many of them don't have access to clean drinking water. In the Philippines, to take a single example, WHO estimates that 16000 infants die a year as a result of diseases contracted via formula milk. Those deaths are entirely preventable, and the people dying never got to make a choice.

Regulating advertising doesn't affect the choices that consumers 'can' make, only the ones that they do make. (That is if you think free will is a good metaphor for group behaviour, which I don't any more.) It's a minor imposition on economic freedom, but I think it's worth it.

[mosdef]

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I agree, that's all they need to do. In practice however people pester their doctors for specific medications that they've seen advertised - if they didn't then the ads wouldn't be there - and this leads to worse health outcomes and increased costs. There have been studies in New Zealand showing the contrast with and without DTC advertising.

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This is a separate issue from my OP (I don't think it's a "bad" adverstisement, I think it's a "bad thing" that consumers have an attitude that makes the OP ad effective).

But as to your post here, I know what you're getting at but what it really boils down to is:

- You don't want those people to buy the drugs because you think they don't need them.
- You want to solve this "problem".
- One way to solve this problem is to make sure they don't know the product exists, therefore if we force people to be denied access to information then they can't hurt themselves with that information.

It doesn't sound so pretty when you phrase it that way, does it?

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It's a minor imposition on economic freedom, but I think it's worth it.

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I think control of information, and in particular restricting the dissemination of information, so that you can prevent social outcomes you don't like is more than a "minor imposition on economic freedom".

[Jamougha]

mosdef,

I've never really gotten this debating tactic of restating what someone says in a much more biased way. I understand what I'm proposing, what rights it infringes, and what the consequences will be. I think it's worth it.

I also don't think you can bring 'moral' judgments down to a couple of simple principles and then ignore everything else.

Oh yeah, just to throw a random statistic or two into the ring; WHO estimates deaths from improper breastfeeding practises, i.e. mainly formula milk, at 1.5 million a year. Deaths for war and homicide combined were estimated at less than half that in the last year for which I've seen data, 2001.

[mosdef]

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mosdef,

I've never really gotten this debating tactic of restating what someone says in a much more biased way. I understand what I'm proposing, what rights it infringes, and what the consequences will be. I think it's worth it.

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Fair enough. I still think you're saying that people need to be less aware of alternatives so they don't run the risk of picking a bad alternative.

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I also don't think you can bring 'moral' judgments down to a couple of simple principles and then ignore everything else.

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Didn't intend to.

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Oh yeah, just to throw a random statistic or two into the ring; WHO estimates deaths from improper breastfeeding practises, i.e. mainly formula milk, at 1.5 million a year. Deaths for war and homicide combined were estimated at less than half that in the last year for which I've seen data, 2001.

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Sounds like some people need to be better informed about the risks of formula milk, not have information taken away from them.

[pvn]

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The amount of research required to know about these topics is way beyond most people. sux but it's true.

This is why I oppose DTC marketing for pharmaceuticals. People are not remotely well enough informed to make accurate decisions.

[/ QUOTE ]

Thats why doctors exist. People don't need to be smart enough to make all of their own decisions. They simply need to be smart enough to choose a "chooser" who WILL make their decisions.

And if you don't think people are smart enough to even do THIS, can I recommend something off the dessert menu, and lay off the democracy?

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Judging by some of the people that are chosen through democracy, you might make an argument that people aren't very good at this. Of course, you can only do this via an aggregation fallacy, since you very likely will vote for politician X but end up with politician Y.

[pvn]

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I agree, that's all they need to do. In practice however people pester their doctors for specific medications that they've seen advertised - if they didn't then the ads wouldn't be there - and this leads to worse health outcomes and increased costs. There have been studies in New Zealand showing the contrast with and without DTC advertising.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is a separate issue from my OP (I don't think it's a "bad" adverstisement, I think it's a "bad thing" that consumers have an attitude that makes the OP ad effective).

But as to your post here, I know what you're getting at but what it really boils down to is:

- You don't want those people to buy the drugs because you think they don't need them.
- You want to solve this "problem".
- One way to solve this problem is to make sure they don't know the product exists, therefore if we force people to be denied access to information then they can't hurt themselves with that information.

It doesn't sound so pretty when you phrase it that way, does it?

[ QUOTE ]
It's a minor imposition on economic freedom, but I think it's worth it.

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I think control of information, and in particular restricting the dissemination of information, so that you can prevent social outcomes you don't like is more than a "minor imposition on economic freedom".

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Excellent post.

[BCPVP]

Mosdef,

Do you think the ad would have been just as effective if it only said "contains polyphenols"? To me it doesn't seem so. If all I saw was that, I might go "hmmm, don't know what a polyphenol is, oh well." and never think twice about the ad. Perhaps the target they're trying to reach are people that are health conscious, but are also very busy and don't have time to look up what polyphenols are, even though they are clearly a good attribute for the product. Also, healthy food advertisements seem to be saturated with the "this helps prevent heart disease" mantra, so just plastering that on the ad may not cut through the clutter that people see everyday. So I think that this ad is more indicative of the clutter in advertising than it is of people who are just too lazy to do anything for themselves.

btw, can you tell I'm a marketing major? [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]