When reading the Ohmann, I got distracted by a comment that he makes when he’s discussing the rise of magazines. He explains that, increasingly, magazines like Ladies’ Home Journal refused to run ads for the old “patent medicines” that used to be a regular part of advertisers’ bread and butter. Part of the reason, Ohmann suggests, is that the magazines were trying to be respectable and thus wanted to distance themselves from products whose validity was questionable. He also says that ads for “[. . .] medicines fell out of favor mainly because they did not fit into the new domesticity that was emerging”(93). Basically, Ohmann says that advertising for patent medicines experienced a huge drop just as the magazine industry was growing.
Today, on the other hand, advertising for prescription medications is absolutely colossal. In other words, there’s been a big switch. Think about all the clever, sexy prescription brands you know. I came up with a whole list in just a few minutes: Zoloft, Viagra, Celebrex, Mirapex, Priolsec, Nexium, Detrol, Lipitor. Think about the sad little Zoloft eggs that mope around as a result of their depression. Consider the people made out of copper pipes who leak because of their overactive bladders. Then there are the cheerful middle-aged men dancing around because they (apparently no longer) suffer from impotence.
What I’m getting at is this: these branded prescriptions are marketed so aggressively that not only are we aware of their existence, they have actually become a part of our culture and mass consciousness. I mean, think about how many awful Viagra jokes we’ve all heard over the years? Half of the spam email I get has the word “Viagra” in the subject line. This is a particularly vivid illustration of what Ohmann calls the “infusion of muted commercial purposes into our repertory of meanings” (102). He mentions famous old ad slogans like “The Beer that made Milwaukee famous” and explains that “[. . .] it means something for a culture when so many of the formulaic epithets and verses that stand ready for use in any conversation were put on the tips of our tongues by ad men” (102).
But prescription drug marketing is different from beer marketing in a crucial way. Beer ads, thankfully, don’t make pretentions to educate the public. Prescription drug marketing, on the other hand, contributes—or at least purports to contribute—to public information regarding medical conditions and diseases. For instance, had you ever heard of restless legs syndrome before the makers of Mirapex started advertising? Before Prilosec (“the purple pill”) came along, did you know there was a difference between common heartburn and a condition known as acid reflux disease?
Now, there’s good and there’s bad here. I do believe that it’s good for the public to have access to medical and health information. But we need to acknowledge that drug manufacturers are not in the information business; they’re in the selling-stuff business, and drugs are their stuff. Are you depressed or impotent? Do your legs keep you awake? The drug companies want you to know, but they want you to know only because they want to treat it for you. So drug ads are sort of like those Dove “real beauty” ads: the information you get from them sounds nice, but the source of the information is problematic. One of the quotations about advertising that Ohmann uses is “Advertising aims to teach people that they have wants, which they did not realize before [. . .]” In the mode of drug marketing, we can alter this slightly to say that the drug marketing aims to teach people that they have medical conditions that they did not realize before.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not one of those people who tries to argue that people’s medical conditions aren’t real or are just “in their heads,” and I do believe that we should pursue medication and other treatment for our health issues. But it’s important to acknowledge that, in the medical information game, the stakes are greatly unequal when it’s you and me on one side and a big drug corporation on the other.
In closing, take Pfizer. Wikipedia told me that their marketing budget is three billion dollars, making them the 4th largest company in the United States in terms of marketing. Since it’s election day and politics are in the air, I’ll mention that Pfizer is also one of the 53 entities that contributed the maximum $250,000 to President Bush’s second inauguration in 2005. And this is the same company that tries to provide medical information to us, ostensibly for our benefit.
Today, on the other hand, advertising for prescription medications is absolutely colossal. In other words, there’s been a big switch. Think about all the clever, sexy prescription brands you know. I came up with a whole list in just a few minutes: Zoloft, Viagra, Celebrex, Mirapex, Priolsec, Nexium, Detrol, Lipitor. Think about the sad little Zoloft eggs that mope around as a result of their depression. Consider the people made out of copper pipes who leak because of their overactive bladders. Then there are the cheerful middle-aged men dancing around because they (apparently no longer) suffer from impotence.
What I’m getting at is this: these branded prescriptions are marketed so aggressively that not only are we aware of their existence, they have actually become a part of our culture and mass consciousness. I mean, think about how many awful Viagra jokes we’ve all heard over the years? Half of the spam email I get has the word “Viagra” in the subject line. This is a particularly vivid illustration of what Ohmann calls the “infusion of muted commercial purposes into our repertory of meanings” (102). He mentions famous old ad slogans like “The Beer that made Milwaukee famous” and explains that “[. . .] it means something for a culture when so many of the formulaic epithets and verses that stand ready for use in any conversation were put on the tips of our tongues by ad men” (102).
But prescription drug marketing is different from beer marketing in a crucial way. Beer ads, thankfully, don’t make pretentions to educate the public. Prescription drug marketing, on the other hand, contributes—or at least purports to contribute—to public information regarding medical conditions and diseases. For instance, had you ever heard of restless legs syndrome before the makers of Mirapex started advertising? Before Prilosec (“the purple pill”) came along, did you know there was a difference between common heartburn and a condition known as acid reflux disease?
Now, there’s good and there’s bad here. I do believe that it’s good for the public to have access to medical and health information. But we need to acknowledge that drug manufacturers are not in the information business; they’re in the selling-stuff business, and drugs are their stuff. Are you depressed or impotent? Do your legs keep you awake? The drug companies want you to know, but they want you to know only because they want to treat it for you. So drug ads are sort of like those Dove “real beauty” ads: the information you get from them sounds nice, but the source of the information is problematic. One of the quotations about advertising that Ohmann uses is “Advertising aims to teach people that they have wants, which they did not realize before [. . .]” In the mode of drug marketing, we can alter this slightly to say that the drug marketing aims to teach people that they have medical conditions that they did not realize before.
Don’t get me wrong: I am not one of those people who tries to argue that people’s medical conditions aren’t real or are just “in their heads,” and I do believe that we should pursue medication and other treatment for our health issues. But it’s important to acknowledge that, in the medical information game, the stakes are greatly unequal when it’s you and me on one side and a big drug corporation on the other.
In closing, take Pfizer. Wikipedia told me that their marketing budget is three billion dollars, making them the 4th largest company in the United States in terms of marketing. Since it’s election day and politics are in the air, I’ll mention that Pfizer is also one of the 53 entities that contributed the maximum $250,000 to President Bush’s second inauguration in 2005. And this is the same company that tries to provide medical information to us, ostensibly for our benefit.
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