Attacks on advertising are growing. Two hot buttons are the epidemic of obesity and direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs.
Nearly two thirds of adults are either obese or overweight and the rate of overweight children ages six to 13 has more than doubled since 1980. In addition, the rate for adolescents has tripled, former FTC Chairman Timothy J. Muris said.
“A striking development with important and long term consequences is the increased incidence of children with Type 2 adult onset diabetes,” he said.
He said that obesity is a complex public health issue that demands effective response from parents, industry, physicians, consumer advocates and government. And that the idea to ban TV ads aimed at kids for junk food first surfaced in the late 1970s.
“There’s been a long tradition of blaming ad commercials for society ills,” Muris said. “Advertising bans are like the quick-fix weight-loss products the FTC frequently challenges. Appealing on the surface but ultimately useless.”
He said banning junk food on kids’ programming is impractical, ineffective and illegal.
“It’s impractical because, although kids see many food ads on children’s programs, most ads they see on programs not directed to them,” he said. “It’s ineffective because there is no reason to think that the ads kids see make them obese. Although American children see thousands of food ads each year, they have done so for decades, since long before the dramatic upswing in obesity. Finally a ban would be illegal, food is not alcohol or tobacco, it’s not illegal to sell food to kids.”
The FTC’s 1978 proposal to ban advertising on programs for which young children comprised at least 30% of the audience whittled down to only one program, Captain Kangaroo. He said children actually watch less TV than in previous generations.
He said that attacking food advertising may offer the illusion of progress in the fight against child obesity, but the real issue lies in Americans eating less and exercising more.
“More importantly, a ban on ads to kids would impede the progress we must make,” he said. “That’s because advertising can play a role in fighting obesity. We need to harvest the power of advertising to spur competition to help fight obesity.”
He said year after year manufacturers have shown great ingenuity in pitching foods to kids as tasty and fun and that their goal now should be to develop and promote healthy foods too. Manufactures have begun to improve their products to reduce the amount of calories and reduce serving sizes to help consumers eat more sensibly. The challenge is to make these foods attractive to children as well as to adults and nutritionists.
“Meeting that challenge will likely require marketing that responsibly addresses children rather than seeking to avoid them because most of the advertising that children see is not advertising in children’s programming,” he said. “Avoiding children is simply impossible.”
Critics of DTC ads for prescription drugs are already trying to link the Vioxx problems with the ads. Critics say that fewer people would have been at risk from the unknown side effects if there had been less marketing to consumers.
“Pressed to the extreme, this is an argument that says that new drugs are fine as long as consumers don’t know about them,” said Muris, who is counsel at O’Melveny & Myers, in Washington, DC.
Muris said that evidence is strong that DTC ads benefit consumers in numerous ways including stimulating discussions between doctors and patients, providing useful information, encouraging consumers to find more information from other sources. Consumer surveys also suggest that DTC doesn’t harm doctor-patient relationships as consumers come in asking about what they’ve read. And, critics have long pointed to the growth in DTC advertising as contributing to the rising costs of prescription drugs. DTC advertising is only 2.2% of total sales. Total spending on all forms of drug promotion remain fairly constant 14-15% of product sales, he said.
“We should not sacrifice these benefits to misplaced fears of price increases or fears that consumers will actually use the products as they become available,” Muris said. “Even when there has been significant progress toward allowing truthful advertising there is a continuing danger that attacks from advocate groups will erode those gains.”
He said when issues arise in which advertising may be implicated it is often at risk in part because it is poorly understood by many policy advocates and often poorly defended by the ad community. Some interest groups are devoted to the belief that they know what consumers should want, better than consumers know themselves.
“Rather than a source of information that consumers do with what they please, these advocates see advertising as a means of manipulation,” he said.
He said too often advocates assume that advertising creates the culture and that if only advertising were changed or eliminated the culture would someone be different. The answer, as the Supreme Court’s First Amendment juris prudence has long reflected, is more information, Muris said.
“The ad community must remain active in this debate,” he said. “You must help educate policy makers and the public about the economic value of advertising, you should support more research on these issues. If advertisers will not defend themselves, they can expect to see an ever increasing tide of restrictions on advertising.
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