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An Interactional Perspective of Pharmaceutical Commercials
There are many arguments within scholarly articles, pharmaceutical corporations, medical institutions and the media regarding the effects of the advertisements of prescription medications on consumers. If you google “Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising (DTCPA) of prescription drugs”, over a million hits including petitions for banning and the regulation of ads, will flood your screen (Donohue 2006:659). DTCPA is defined as “any promotional effort by a pharmaceutical firm to present prescription drug information to the general public through the lay media” (Ventola 2011:669). Despite the controversy over the DTCPA, American consumers are increasingly bombarded with advertisements for depression, insomnia, diabetes, and copious amounts of other ads aimed at providing concoctions for serious diseases and our everyday ailments. Who are these ads targeted towards and what do they imply about society’s perceptions of what it means to be a healthy person in America? This article will analyze three prescription advertisements, Cymbalta, Boniva and Cialis from a sociological interactional perspective and highlight relevant aspects of gender in the realm of the pharmaceutical industry.
The United States is one of two countries where DTCPA is legal. Those who support the DTCPA debate that ads inform consumers and make patients aware of a variety of options of treatments. Those who oppose it assert that it is harmful to the public, taking into account that it elevates additional health costs, impacts the relationships between doctors and patients and has the ability to manipulate consumers by giving misleading information (Blose and Mack 2009:315). Furthermore, because stu...
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...owards different age groups and genders and shows the remarkable ways in which the industry constructs ideas of health, gender roles and tells us what it means to be a healthy person in this society. The implications that the DTCPA has on consumers can be detrimental by the manipulation of information, the elevation of inadequate health costs and the influence it may have on a relationship between a doctor and their patients. With women as the target audience, these companies have the ability to create a market for disease and shape our assumptions about genders further perpetuating the inequalities and limiting the studies that are done by concentrating on men as the primary test subjects for research. In order to make research and health issues more representative, it is imperative that these issues be addressed to be able to treat the entire society effectively.
In Melody Peterson’s “Our Daily Meds” , the history of marketing and advertising in the pharmaceutical industry is explored. The first chapter of the book, entitled “Creating disease”, focuses on how major pharmaceutical companies successfully create new ailments that members of the public believe exist. According to Peterson, the success that these drug manufacturers have experienced can be attributed to the malleability of disease, the use of influencial people to promote new drugs, the marketing behind pills, and the use of media outlets.
Direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing of pharmaceuticals has grown increasingly in the past decade. The American public views prescription drug advertising for a wide range of medical conditions, including high cholesterol, depression, allergies, and erectile dysfunction. The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates the content of these advertisements. Critics also have taken the position that the advertisements garner unearned trust from the public, are misleading, and promote unnecessary use of prescription drugs for common problems associated with aging. Proponents counter that DTC ads help eliminate stigmas associated with certain medical conditions, give patients an active role in their health care management, and encourages the doctor/patient relationship. There have been calls for bans on DTC pharmaceutical advertising, but the practice is protected under a business’s right to free speech. Regulation changes, particularly requiring the FDA to pre-approve marketing campaigns before they are released to the public, may be one way to appease opponents, while protecting the rights of pharmaceutical manufacturers to advertise to the average American consumer.
DTC advertisements aim to persuade that their possibly less effective drugs work better than other drugs rather than to inform consumers of correct information about drugs. The reason that pharmaceutical companies abuse the power of DTC advertising is because the pharmaceutical industry does not have a strong ethical code for advertising; their sales are so obsessed with profits. To solve this problem, policy makers should prohibit indiscreet DTC advertisements on air and fund more informative services about new drugs so that patients could make clever
Today’s commercials cloud the viewers’ brains with meaningless ritzy camera angles and beautiful models to divert viewers from the true meaning of the commercials. The advertisers just want consumers to spend all of their hard-earned money on their brand of products. The “Pepsi” and “Heineken” commercials are perfect examples of what Dave Barry is trying to point out in his essay, “Red, White and Beer.” He emphasizes that commercial advertisements need to make viewers think that by choosing their brands of products, viewers are helping out American society. As Rita Dove’s essay “Loose Ends” argues, people prefer this fantasy of television to the reality of their own lives. Because viewers prefer fantasy to reality, they become fixated on the fantasy, and according to Marie Winn in “Television Addiction,” this can ultimately lead to a serious addiction to television. But, one must admit that the clever tactics of the commercial advertisers are beyond compare. Who would have thought the half naked-blondes holding soda cans and American men refusing commitment would have caught viewers’ attention?
In 1985, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) passed a ruling to allow direct marketing to consumers as long as the pharmaceutical companies included warnings about possible side effects and other dangers. This change allowed for print-based marketing such as magazines, but in 1997, the FDA lessened the requirement for detailed warnings. Furthermore, the FDA ruled that TV ads containing only the main dangers of the drug were permissible, and this resulted in an inundation of the direct-to-consumer advertising on television. “One study showed that for each dollar of direct-to-consumer advertising on TV by the pharmaceutical company during 1999-2000 resulted in a return of $4.20 for each dollar spent. By 2005, the pharmaceutical industry spent over one billion on TV ads” (DeGeorge 319). Based on these facts, the advertising is paying off for these large pharmaceutical companies.
since the FDA allowed companies to advertise directly to consumers we saw an increase in
“The average American is exposed to some 500 ads daily from television, newspapers, magazines, radio, billboards, direct mail, and so on” (Fowles 2). In the lives of Americans, it is roughly impossible to avoid advertising. Advertisements are meant to capture the attention of a particular group of individuals; based on their age, desires, and motives. For example, the product Glucerna presented in a 2015 AARP magazine appeals to audiences dealing with diabetes. This 2015 AARP Glucerna advertisement attracts its audience through a variety of techniques which include satisfying the need to feel safe, aesthetic sensations, and glittering generalities.
Common sense seems to dictate that commercials just advertise products. But in reality, advertising is a multi-headed beast that targets specific genders, races, ages, etc. In “Men’s Men & Women’s Women”, author Steve Craig focuses on one head of the beast: gender. Craig suggests that, “Advertisers . . . portray different images to men and women in order to exploit the different deep seated motivations and anxieties connected to gender identity.” In other words, advertisers manipulate consumers’ fantasies to sell their product. In this essay, I will be analyzing four different commercials that focuses on appealing to specific genders.
In our society the media has the ability to get us consumers to buy products that we don't need but through advertising they allow us to feel that we must have it, in order for them to make money. They achieve this through advertisements that can be found in magazines, music videos, commercials, billboards, television/ radio and on the internet. A type of advertising that this essay will focus on are commercials. Through some commercials the cultural industry plays with our emotions to convince us we need their product. These commercials can touch people emotionally by making them tear up, laugh, feel sad etc, or can make you feel that a certain product will make you feel a certain way, or help you better your life. This essay will examine the critical theories perspectives mainly focusing on Theodor Adorno by looking at the cultural industry, and analyzing Dove, Proactiv, Ford and Apple commercials that play with our emotions.
Kaphingst, K. A. (2004). A Content Analysis of Direct-to-ConsumerTelevision Prescription Drug Advertisements. Journal of Health Communication,Volume 9: , 515–528,.
There are media commercials that are aired on television that are directed to consumers and is also found on the drug company’s website (Pfizer, 2013). A woman who is diagnosed with fibromyalgia is the main character of the commercial. She portrays the pain she is having from the fibromyalgia and after talking to her doctor and taking Lyrica, her pain has gotten better and she then portrays herself in a social setting with friends and appears pain free (Pfizer, 2013). The print advertisements directed to the public can be found in consumer magazines and websites. An advertisement found on a website that is directed to the general portrays the same woman that was seen in the media advertisement with visible information about the drug (Drugs.com, 2012). In Consulta...
In this paper, I will be discussing the effects of prescription drug advertisements in the United States. Although prescription drug advertisements
The documentary Killing Us Softly 4 discusses and examines the role of women in advertisements and the effects of the ads throughout history. The film begins by inspecting a variety of old ads. The speaker, Jean Kilbourne, then discusses and dissects each ad describing the messages of the advertisements and the subliminal meanings they evoke. The commercials from the past and now differ in some respects but they still suggest the same messages. These messages include but are not limited to the following: women are sexual objects, physical appearance is everything, and women are naturally inferior then men. Kilbourne discusses that because individuals are surrounded by media and advertisements everywhere they go, that these messages become real attitudes and mindsets in men and women. Women believe they must achieve a level of beauty similar to models they see in magazines and television commercials. On the other hand, men expect real women to have the same characteristics and look as beautiful as the women pictured in ads. However, even though women may diet and exercise, the reality...
In the operation of the healthcare system, gender plays a central role. Gender discrimination in the healthcare exists either in the field of education, workplace or while attending to the patients. Interestingly, as opposed to other areas where discrimination lies heavily to a particular gender; gender inequality in health happens to both women and men. Gender inequality in the health care service negatively affects the quality of care given and perpetuates patient biases to a gender. Also, the gender disparities in the field of health assists researchers and practitioners to study conditions and their probable manifestations within both sexes.
Advertising for Pharmaceutical products in the United Kingdom and the United States triggered frequent examination included integrated marketing communication, How they affect the audience, Social Responsibilities influence by the Advertising Standard Authority, UK, Impact of the advertisement towards the cultural in Malaysia, Globalization and Ethical Issues.