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03/15/2006: "The Power and Danger of Advertising --- It's a Good Thing that Can Turn Bad."

Most people make their buying decisions based on advertising. When they see a product on television or in the print media or even the Internet that appeals to them, chances are high they'll go out and buy it. And this works with everything.

Drug companies have discovered that if they advertise their prescription drugs directly to the consumer, the consumer will beg their doctors for their drugs and most of the time the doctors comply with the patent's request.

It can be debated whether or not this is a good thing and I'm not going to start the debate here. I will say, however, that I asked my own physician about Previcid after seeing a television advertisement and I've been taking it for several years with great success.

We all pay attention to advertising. We perhaps pay more attention to advertising than to news and certainly we pay more attention to it than pay Web sites that have valuable, credible information. Only a handful of consumers use pay sites such as consumerlab.org or consumerreports.org.

I do use both sites frequently and make a good many purchase decisions based on what I read there. But we're all swayed by advertising and those of us in the advertising business know it. If someone makes it, we can sell it. That goes for good products and bad products as well.

Some people say that advertising causes people to go out and buy things they don't need and can't afford. I expect to a large extent that's true. Advertising is extremely powerful.

The following was taken from India Infoline in a business school essay on advertising.

Because advertising is so persuasive and has so much power over the consumer it is important that those of us responsible for writing the advertising and presenting it to the public do so in a fair and honest manner. We need to be careful with what we say about a product or service. We need to make every effort to be honest.

Advertising is not always honest. And because it's not, people have died. They've taken drugs that killed them. They've driven cars that were unsafe and driven on tires that blew up because they were poorly made. And the unfortunate stories go on.

Cigarettes, one of the most advertised products in memory, has killed untold millions of people and sickened others.

Advertisers will continue to lie to the public in order to create a profit. But we who are in the trenches can do what we can to keep them honest. At least we should try.

David Ogilvy, one of the greatest names in advertising said, "Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous."

Ogilvy also said, "Good copy can't be written with tongue in cheek, written just for a living. You've got to believe in the product."

Words to live by. And write by too.