Blog #8 Creative methods in today's advertisements

The average American is exposed to around three hundred advertisements every day.  Half of the time we do not even realize we are seeing these ads.  Advertisers have become desperate and are placing advertisements everywhere that they can from the backs of cereal boxes, before YouTube movies, and even on HD computers at the checkouts in stores.  If advertisers want to keep the consumer intrigued and interested in their products they need to be constantly innovating and making their advertisements more and more creative.  In this day in age consumers are always expecting something new and exciting, and marketers are expected to provide those ads.

            One way that advertisers are keeping up with the people today is using sex in advertisements, I feel like I have concentrated on this a lot but it’s too big to ignore.  Think about how many perfume, clothes, make-up, and even lotion advertisements don’t make you feel sexy after seeing them? Some advertisers have even gone so far to incorporate sex in an ad that has absolutely nothing to do with sex.  Dentine Ice gum company shows ads for their product and in the end many people end up kissing and falling in love, just from a simple piece of gum. It is incredibly unrealistic.  

Dentine Ice Gum Commerical  

            Another creative technique advertisers use is a constant visual symbol.  This visual symbol appears in all their ads whether is be a commercial, newspaper, or magazine advertisement.  These visual symbols often create an association for consumers to think of when they hear that company’s name.  This is a simple yet very effective technique to get consumers to remember their company and the different products that that company can offer to its consumers.  Along with creating that memory in consumer’s heads it also creates a way to generate new consumers.  Every time a person see’s an ad with this visual symbol they notice it and the more they see this symbol the more they will remember it and soon associate it with the company.  Many companies are famous for this.  Geico has the talking lizard that almost every person recognizes as the “Geico Lizard”.  Progressive Insurance has their spokes women Flo who notoriously sells people the best deal they can get when using Progressive Insurance versus another company.  The General Auto Insurance has the man “The general” dressed up as a military general who is always also saving people money on thegeneral.com.  Even clothes companies have small logos that are meant to be discreet yet everyone knows what it means.  On all Hollister clothes they have the red seagull in a viable location, Lacoste has an alligator in the same place, Abercrombie and Fitch has a moose, and Aerepostale has a butterfly. Just by simple looking at a plain white t-shirt someone is wearing, by what animal you see on his or her shirt you can tell exactly what company that shirt is from.  Many people buy plain white t-shirts, that are often more expensive, just because of the dime sized logo on the shirt.  It is a way for a consumer to show off the brand.  

Geico Commercial  

Notice the Moose Logo on this Abercrombie Shirt

 

 

Notice the Alligator logo on all these Lacoste Shirts

            One of probably the biggest creative trends today in advertisements is celebrity endorsing.  So many people in our society today are obsessed with Hollywood and all the famous people that come along with it.  Cover girl is famous for using up and coming country singer Taylor Swift to wear their make-up and say that she wears it in their telavision ads.  Weight Watchers is famous for using newly smaller Jennifer Hudson in their ads to promote weight loss.  People see how much weight she lost and they assume since she is on the Weight Watchers ad she lost all that weight with Weight Watchers and many people join in the hopes that they will look like her. The same goes for the makeup ads that have Taylor Swift, and even Queen Latifa to endorse their line for African Americans.  Advertisers will always continue to get the newest celebrities to endorse their products in the hopes that most consumers will want to use their products.   

Taylor Swift Cover Girl Commercial 

Queen Latifa Cover Girl Magazine Advertisement

 

Excellent Video showing Creative Techinques in Adversting  

 Sources:

http://www.adcracker.com/techniques/Advertising_Techniques.htm 

www.google.com/images

www.youtube.com

http://justcreativedesign.com/2008/07/30/192-of-the-best-smart-clever-creative-advertisements/ 

http://buzzmarketing.com/2010/11/26/advertising-techniques/  

Blog #7 Legalities in Pharmaceutical Advertising

According to the movie "Big Bucks, Big Pharma." experts are saying that pharmaceutical companies are “Marketing disease and pushing prescription drugs”.  This statement becomes very true if you take the time to sit down and watch television for about twenty minutes. You will see countless commercials for prescriptions that you have often never heard of, drugs that are guaranteed to fix a disease that you have never heard of. In today's day in age consumers are exposed to anywhere from three to four-hundred ad’s a day and around half of those are for medications and medical institutions, and they are often portraying the image that everyone has a problem and they are all easily cured with a simple pill.  The Pharmaceutical companies are marketing things that can often help people immensely, but also harm them just as bad. 

Marketers in this field use branding to catch the consumers attention to their products.  Branding can be defined as an emotional relationship between consumers and the product.  These marketers are purposely making consumers feel “attached” to these drugs, like they will not live a normal and healthy life without them.  Along with branding marketers also use something called a “me-too drug”.  Me-too drugs are drugs that are marketed to a large group of people on a global scale.  A perfect example of a me-too drug is Lipitor.  Lipitor is a drug made for lowering cholesterol.  Many senior citizens watch their cholesterol intake to avoid having heart problems are they age.  The Lipitor commercials often show an older aged man or women who is living a life where they do not look happy or content with their health, and as soon as they start taking Lipitor they immediately are outside smiling, in love, and finding new hobbies. This is a very untrue depiction of what a drug can really do to help someone’s health.  By changing what “high cholesterol means, you increase the profit from cholesterol lowering drugs.  When marketers make people look like their lives have immensely changed just from this medication more and more people will begin to think they need cholesterol-lowering drugs so they too can have an improved life. Notice in the link below of a Lipitor ad.  This man is now able to ride bikes by beautiful rivers with his family, his wife touches him and appears to love him more, and he appears to be having more fun in life just because of taking Lipitor.  

 Lipitor Commerical

            The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for approving all drugs before they hit the market, including stating all the warnings that each drug has.  According to the FDA they have no control what so ever over what is being advertised in the prescription drug world.  They also do not have to approve any ads with prescription drugs in them including the drug ads that have serious risks, including heart attack and strokes.  The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is in charge of all drug advertisements, to me this is obscene.  The FDA should be the ones in charge of drug ads, after all they are the ones who approve all drugs and know the risks the comes along with each drug.

            In  1985 the FDA attempted to get involved with the drug advertisements by presenting a ruling stating that all ads must state all the risks that go along with taking these medications. These warnings were often several pages long, which is too long to state in a commercial.  In 2002, after much delegation, the Secretary of Health and Human Services approved this ruling.  The ruling was edited however, stating that they did not have to state all the warnings but just the ones that seemed most important.  Marketers took this clearly with a grain of salt.  All drug commercials that air today all have warnings attached at the end and often said so fast that no one with normal hearing could ever understand.  The safety of prescription drugs is almost always misrepresented.  They usually state all the side effects and risks at the very end of the ad, when people tend to tune out of the advertisement that they were watching.  Birth control advertisements are notorious for doing this because taking birth control comes with many risks that consumers often do not know because they are not often properly informed because of how fast the warnings are stated.  

YAZ birth control commercial

            In magazine advertisements the risks and side effects are often printed at the very bottom of the page in extremely small type that you almost need a magnifying glass to read.  People often try to pose cases against the pharmaceutical companies saying they were never told the drug they were taking would have this effect on them, they often can not create a case because they are stated, just not in an easy way to hear.  

Notice how hard the warnings are to read!

             Although these companies often misrepresent the risks, side effects, drug outcomes, and lifestyles people are still buying more and more prescription drugs. The United States spent $234.1 billion on prescription drugs was $234.1 in 2008, which was nearly 6 times of the $40.3 billion the United States spent in 1990.  So the big question is why fight this industry when we are making $235 billion dollars in just one year? This industry makes a lot of money for our country and many other countries around the world.  This will continue to be a controversial industry for many more years, but as long as our country is making money, chances are not many changes will be made.  

Sources:

www.kff.org/rxdrugs/upload/3057-08.pdf

http://www.pharmaphorum.com/2010/09/17/a-history-of-the-pharmaceutical-industry/  

http://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/ 

www.fda.gov 

www.youtube.com 

www.google.com/images 

  

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080103161527.htm

http://www.naturalhealthstrategies.com/big-bucks-big-pharma.html