A634.5.4.RB_HallMike

When I first saw the title of this assignment, I was quite excited to get into the weeds and read what the authors had to say about marketing and then do a little research myself.  This was mainly because while I understand that marketing is a requirement for business, I whole heartedly believe that marketing is evil.  Marketing makes people buy things that they don’t want or need, caters to people’s subconscious minds, and alters people’s behavior to benefit an organization/business often at the expense of the person.  My prime example of this is the medical industry in general in the US and in particular the drug industry.

25 years ago, drug companies were not allowed to sell their product commercially directly to consumers.  In other words, the incessant commercials we now see almost every commercial break didn’t exist because the law prohibited them.  1999 however, that changed and the FDA decided that it would be ok for companies to provide information about their drugs to consumers (Huh & DeLorme, 2010.  Since then, advertising increased exponentially to where it is at today with companies spending almost $5bil a year pushing their products (Huh & DeLorme, 2010).  In fact, the US and New Zealand are the only 2 countries in the world that allows prescription drugs to be advertised (“Should prescription drugs” 2013).  While most companies would argue that it provides consumers with information about available drugs out there on the market, I would argue that this might be one of the key reasons why the US is the most heavily medicated population on the planet.  In fact, sales of drugs that are advertised outsell those that are not by 9 times (“Should prescription drugs” 2013)!  The facts out there surrounding medical commercials is astounding, including: for every $1 spent in advertising, sales increase $4.20; the US currently has a $291billion a year industry in direct to consumer drug sales (“Should prescription drugs” 2013).  Clearly advertising has drastically changed the money making in the industry by “informing” consumers about their options.  As a result, Americans might be the most medicated people in the world yet are far from the healthiest.

I whole truly believe that marketing is inherently evil.  If all it did was say “Hey, I have this product and if you want to buy it this is where you can get it” then I would be alright with that.  Instead, companies spend billions of dollars researching people’s psyche to determine the best way they can get people to buy their product.  They intentionally alter messages in order to put in subliminal messages to attack our subconscious’s and in today’s advertising have been blamed for some of the recent health problems in America (people getting fat due to the rampant advertising of fast food, getting people hooked on smoking early in life prior to cigarette advertisement getting banned, bulimia and anorexia because of the models used in campaigns, etc).  Yep, no doubt about it, I really think marketing is evil…    

Huh, J., & DeLorme, D. (2010, March). Direct to consumer drug advertising. Retrieved from http://www.minnesotamedicine.com/Default.aspx?tabid=3351

Should prescription drugs be advertised directly to consumers. (2013, June 13). Retrieved from http://prescriptiondrugs.procon.org/