Healthy Skepticism Library item: 19850

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Magazine

Finaly L
Just Like a Woman
Fashion Date uncertain 200477-78

Abstract:

Health care marketers are tripping over themselves to get to you. Are they pulling your strings?

Full text:

The year is 1954. Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Rear Window’ is a box office hit. Oprah Winfrey is born. The first successful kidney transplant is executed in Boston. And in Germany, a female gynecologist designs a new tampon – one so small, so discreet that it can be stashed in the smallest of handbags. “Designed by a woman gynecologist” is the slogan used by parent company Johnson & Johnson Inc. to market their new o.b. tampon. The company’s aim is to appeal to the masses of women loyal to brands like Tampax (which uses a tampon patent created by a man – Dr Earle Hass – in 1931), carving out new territory along gender lines. Will it work? Do women really care?

According to Martha Barletta, the Chicago-based author of ‘Marketing to Women’, the answer is yes. “For a lot of consumers, knowing a woman had a hand in design will add credibility. They want to feel their needs have really been understood. Study after study tells us women want to connect with what’s happening in ads. They want to see someone that looks representative of them and their actual lives.”

“Thinking like a woman” is precisely what many marketers of women’s healthcare products are attempting. Winning the hearts and minds of female consumers means big business – and it’s getting bigger all the time. Women are responsible for 83 percent of all consumer purchases and 95 percent of all household purchases. Their power clearly doesn’t end with their own consumption: “There is no question that [women] are the conduits to sales and the pharmaceutical companies know it”, says one former pharmaceutical company researcher who prefers to be unnamed. “It’s women who drag the kids and the husbands to the doctors. That’s why there are all these Viagra ads targeted to women”. (She adds that the Viagra advertising campaign was championed by a female-led team of marketers). Women are also constantly filing away tidbits to share with, say, the neighbour suffering from arthritis, or the girlfriend with eczema. “The pass-along factor is huge”, says Barletta. “I call it the word-of-mouth marketing multiplier, because reaching a single women can increase overall sales exponentially”. In Canada, that amounts to billions of dollars for pharmaceutical and health care purveyors. No wonder it’s a woman’s face all over health care ads.

According to some estimates, women will control two-thirds of North American wealth by the year 2010, and manufacturers are tripping over themselves to get their piece of a very profitable pie. But how to reach today’s woman is a divisive issue, and women’s health care advocates worry that in the scramble for female consumers, ethical lines are being crossed. Their concern is that in the mad dash for profits, women are being demeaned or, even worse, endangered. They point to a number of women’s drugs being rushed to market with what they feel is inadequate testing.

“Hormone replacement therapy is just one example of a drug that was promoted way past the point that it should have been”, says Barbara Mintzes, a researcher at the Center for Health Services and Policy Research at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She cites Tamoxifen – a drug used to prevent breast cancer recurrence – as another example. (Data reveals that Tamoxifen carries with it an increased risk for uterine cancer, although many medical practitioners counter that this side effect doesn’t come close to outweighing the potential benefits). And, she adds, “There are others”.

Obviously, marketers aren’t the only ones involved in the process of launching new drugs. As Mintzes readily asserts, “There are regulatory and policy issues to be considered. But the other consideration is the way women are convinced [by marketers] that they really need these products”.

Statistics tell us that women are, in fact, more frequently diagnosed with conditions like depression (according to the Canadian Medical Health Association, 5 to 12 per cent of men and 10 to 25 per cent of women will experience at least one depressive disorder in their lifetime), although Mintzes argues that this may be a case of under-reporting of male depression and anxiety, since women more frequently seek help for such disorders. Still, Mintzes says, “The antidepressant ads are the worst. They show us pictures of these sad women regaining their happiness, playing with their children, and then run the line, ‘I got my mommy back’. That’s just preying on the social position of women. It’s obnoxious”.

Not everyone agrees. “Is it insulting to be targeted by health care manufacturers? I don’t see it that way”, Barletta argues. “We know that women are making choices for many. They’re the ones that need the information. Besides, anything can be used for good or evil, and I think most women are smart enough to assess what’s good”. What is insulting – and ultimately unsuccessful – for marketing analysts like Barletta and Anne Sutherland, president of the Toronto-based marketing consulting firm Planning Ahead, is campaigns that are “painted pink”. These ads rely on sterotypes that marginalize women and fail to capture the reality of women’s lives now.

“Anyone who succeeds with women has to demonstrate an understanding of women”, says Sutherland, who has helped companies like Zellers reposition their marketing. “An example of a big guffaw is an ad that ran a couple of years ago for a vaginal infection cream featuring talking stirrups in a doctor’s office. Another showed a blushing, embarrassed mother being interrupted in the middle of her tea party by her son, who tears through with mom’s vaginal infection cream in the back of his toy truck. How silly; women don’t get embarrassed by that kind of stuff and even if they did, why would you poke fun at it? It showed no appreciation of how women really feel on a deep level. I thought to myself, ‘A man must have written that’”.

In September, Dove will roll out a series of television and print ads intended not only to prove representative of women, but also to provoke discussion and challenge stereotypes. The campaign will be similar to Dove’s promotions in the United Kingdom: Two-page magazine advertisements in support of its Firming range of washes and lotions feature an unabashedly size 14 customer, posing in skivvies under the headline, “Let’s face it, firming the thighs of a size 8 supermodel wouldn’t have been much of a challenga”.

“The campaign reflects a philosophical approach in our marketing”, says Dove’s Canadian marketing manager, Erin Iles. “I think most women’s health and beauty advertising is aimed at making women feel inadequate if they have wrinkles or aren’t a certain size. Women know that’s not true – they’re smarter than that. We’re trying to turn that thinking on it’s head”. It’s all about getting real and, she acknowledges, by getting real, getting in with a hugely profitable and hugely misunderstood market.

Prescribing a Change
According to many advocates, concerned citizens and even politicians on Parliament Hill, the commercials you see for all kinds of pharmaceuticals are illegal. Direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription drugs was prohibited in 1949, and only reappeared thanks to a loophole introduced in 1978. However, stricter enforcement may be on the horizon. In April of this year, an all-party federal committee released a report entitled, “Opening the Medicine Cabinet”. Its unambiguous position is that “Health Canada has abrogated its clear responsibility to enforce the existing rules”, and that the government should “immediately enforce the current prohibition” of DTCAs. Of course, this is a committee’s opinion and not a binding ruling. “With an impending election, anything could happen”, says Anne Rochon Ford of Women and Health Protection, an advocacy group. “Standing committees can completely die after an election. We’re encouraging people to pressure the party in power to follow the recommendations” – Robert Maurin