If you need a better look, click on the pictures to enlarge them.
1. This picture is from:
(A). A promotional piece for Extreme Cage Fighting, 2011
(B). A "don't litter, or else" public service announcement.
(C). A notice not to pick up hitchhikers.
(D). The Halloween costume your kid wanted last year.
(E). An advertisement for a narcotic pain killer.
2. This is:
(A). A polar bear. What kind of stupid question is that?
(B). A commercial for the new show on Animal Planet.
(C). What are those red lines... Wait a minute! Do polar bears really have a tail covering their butt? I better google that.
(D). An ad for a new treatment for shingles pain.
(E). A and D.
3. This is:
(A). An ad for a rustic fishing supplies shop.
(B). The symbol for the new "Jesus loves you and your aquarium" campaign.
(C). From a fish conservation group.
(D). The new logo for Osteichthyes Bank & Trust.
(E). In an ad for a muscle relaxant.
4. This makes me think of:
(A). A promo for "Beauty and the Beast"
(B). Do Halloween and Valentines fall on the same day this year?
(C). OMG! Simba killed a florist!
(D). Aslan is "in the mood."
(E). Yet another ad for an expensive painkiller.
5. This next picture is:
(A). That guy you owe money to.
(B). An ad for World Championship Wrestling
(C). Wow. Bobby Knight sure looks different these days.
(D). The neighborhood chiropractor.
(E). An ad for the same narcotic as picture #1.
In case you didn't guess, (E) is the answer to all of them. And no, I'm not in marketing. I have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER where they came up these pictures. But I want to hire the guy in #6 to work as my office bouncer. And yes, polar bears really do have small tails.
1 and 6 are the guys who would frequent your clinic, if you were known for dispensing lots of those oxys.
ReplyDeleteThat looks like the storyboard to the weirdest children's book ever.
ReplyDeleteMaybe they're promoting the pain killer to drug dealers? Because drug dealers are, you know, big and scary and carry axes?
ReplyDeleteSeeing this from a design point of view: I am guessing that they are trying to avoid the whole imagery of someone being in pain.
ReplyDeleteI kind of find the big scary guys kind of amusing, but I feel as though something might be missing, like a way to tell us how you make them go away... at least the guy with the axe... The other guy could actually be suffering from headaches etc due to too many chairs to the head.
The polar bear one is also kind of clever, from a design perspective, as the polar bear is either trying to hide from the pain, or to go and ease the pain.
The one with the fish? Seriously I have no idea.
The Lion makes me think of Narnia, so that is a bit of a fail. Unless they are trying to say that the pain is wild and animalistic, but hey it can be soft, loving and gentle as well!
Keep in mind that advertising is all about getting people to look at the message you're trying to send across, and in this case they are doing it by making you wonder what the hell is going on and how the imagery relates to the product.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/09/diet-soda-tied-to-stroke-_n_821058.html
ReplyDeleteI saw this and immediately thought of your blog.
Anon- I saw that, but it seems to be mostly for headline effect.
ReplyDelete1. The study wasn't peer reviewed
2. They didn't take into account family histories of strokes or co-morbidities.
3. I'd want to see data saying it's worse than equal amounts of regular Coke, or even isolating it from other diet habits (that would be pretty hard in a retrospective study, and a prospective study of the needed length would be damn near impossible.
I think this is just media sensationalism with an absence of strong data to back it up.
Where'd number 3 go? :P
ReplyDeleteOh, man. I can't believe I did that.
ReplyDeleteSigh.
I fixed it.
Time for my Aricept.
Number three:
ReplyDeleteDon't tell me, let me guess...
Wild salmon now have a lobby claiming Omega 3 fish oil only promotes heart health in wild salmon.
>:p
Yumm, narcotics...
ReplyDeleteReally, WTF? They must only be advertising them to medical professionals because I haven't seen any of these.
C- All ads shown were featured in medical journals I get, except for #3. That was in a pamphlet that the drug rep gave me.
ReplyDeleteOsteichthyes Bank & Trust. Bwaahahah!
ReplyDeleteGrumpy: Saw the diet soda thing and thought of you. Your response is of course typical of the user.
ReplyDeleteGuess someone will be laying in a garage full before the ban.
Why oh WHY don't you have a facebook share button!?!?!?!
ReplyDeleteClearly, they came up with the images by ingesting the products they're advertising.
ReplyDeleteHey I do the trade journals too and promptly forget the association between words and pictures--too abstract when I'm trying to remember mechanisms of action (for drug interactions and side-effects), doses, etc. We pharmacists tend to get over the hype, long before the ads show up on TV ;) Patients will ask about this or that in relationship to an ad and it's the dickens trying to find out what they're talking about. And, I wouldn't mind if free pens were still available! Although people in other professions think we pharmacists are influenced by the writing on them--we are not the prescribers, anyway. I lost my yellow metal pen with the pink PDA poker, but &#@! if I can remember which company sold the product advertised on it.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I shivered when I saw #6 as it looks like an overweight Rasputin sitting on the steps of a southern courthouse, and I seem to remember he died (or, rather, his body was 'found' at the bottom of an icy lake in a northern climate --and it was not exactly 'extreme' ice-fishing. But, it's -10 here in the mideastern cornfields, so that could be the reason for the cold chill.
Jenniferarb- believe me, I have Blogger set to show them, but for some reason it never has. It drives me nuts.
ReplyDeleteDr. Grumpy, why didn't you bug Mary about the facebook botton? I am sure her powers will help :)
ReplyDeleteOkay, I think I have it working now.
ReplyDeleteGood thing my patient no-showed so I had time to do something so important!
I'm with Old MD gal - #1 and #6 look like eventual purveyors of the drugs they're advertising.
ReplyDeleteI believe the wrestler in #5 is Mike Knox. If it's not Mike Knox, it's Mike Knox's beard on some other dude.
ReplyDeleteTherefore, choice B should be World Wrestling Entertainment, not World Championship Wrestling. I think he was released though, which would explain the unfortunate situation of posing for a pain pill. "Not only am I a spokesperson, but I'm also addicted to this drug!" Thanks, Mike!
None of those ads would suggest medication to me... except possibly anti-psychotics.
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your take on the diet soda thing. And in any case after seeing the final consequences of some cancers I dunno that I think an MI or CVA is the *worst* that can happen!
ReplyDeleteI love the details in the pictures, especially in #5 where the pants have "backbreaker" on them. I wonder what condition they having mind for these painkillers....
ReplyDeleteI have often thought that advertising and marketing might have been a good field for me since I never did figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up but obviously, I am not weird enough to have been successful. Thanks for cheering me up yet again during another crummy day in healthcare.
ReplyDeleteMy first thought for #2 was a very small polar bear walking into a pupil. Silly me for thinking the picture had anything to do with medicine.
ReplyDeleteMeet the members of the New Village People.
ReplyDeleteSo, what are the drugs advertised? I recognize #4 as Nucynta (tapentadol) from ads we've gotten in the pharmacy, but never seen the other 4...
ReplyDeleteBen S, I had the same first thought about the polar bear.
ReplyDeleteBut i found the association: It sure as hell does hurt to have a polar bear in your eye. I would definitely buy some pain killers then!
These are all things you might see when high on said painkillers. Reminds me of a patient I had once who woke up from a nice morphine nap, pain free, but dying to tell me he'd had this wonderful vision of the place marshmallow peeps are born, which turned out to be a grassy hillside somewhere where they all live in a rusted out volkswagen, while teletubbies frolic. If it had been a bit darker, it would have been post apocolyptic gang members, wrestlers, and frolicking polar bears.
ReplyDelete1. Exalgo.
ReplyDelete2. Qtenza
3. Soma 250mg.
4. Nucynta.
5. Exalgo.
I like "Osteichthyes Bank & Trust"
ReplyDeleteI don't think 2 is an eye. It looks like a tunnel, unless total lysis of an iris is a common problem with herpetic ophthalmic problems, as I can't see any iris around the 'pupil'.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to be that the message is 'icy chill' to cool the burning neuropathic pain from shingles and polar bears are associated with cool conditions.
The rest I have no clue about.
"Do polar bears really have a tail covering their butt?"
ReplyDeleteHahahaha!!! Doc, this is probably one of the funniest phrases you've ever written. I'm cracking up here.
I can kind of see the point of all of them except #3.
ReplyDeleteThat picture of the guy with the crazy weapon makes me think of my migraines. Probably not the best image for a painkiller.
ReplyDeleteI gotta know...
ReplyDeleteAre the crazy scary guys in pictures 1 and 5 meant to be images of the pain (prescribe Drug X if your patients feel like this guy's been beating them up) or are they supposed to represent the medication (it's tough on pain!) or what?
They are supposed to represent pain.
ReplyDeleteCan I switch to Exalgo? Because I just threw up my current painkiller and I'm guessing those babies would drive their bare hands into the stomach wall and hang on.
ReplyDelete