advertising
terrasig | July 20, 2009For those of you who read only Terra Sig and not others at ScienceBlogs (post-morning coffee delusions of grandeur), you may not be aware that a number of questionable advertisements have been appearing on the frontpage run by the purveyors of our pontifications.
Many of this adverts have been of content diammetrically opposed to what each of us stand for professionally and personally.
So, it was to my dismay this morning that I awoke to this ad for a bodybuilding supplement that exploits the endogenous vasodilator, nitric oxide. Commenter Daedalus will be convulsing in a corner somewhere…
grrlscientist | July 2, 2009Since Flickr is being an ass these days and won't let me share images with you that they don't approve of, which includes just about everything I put on my blog and no doubt includes screen shots of ads that I am using to illustrate my points, you'll just have to accept that I am not misleading you if you can't see the offending ads themselves.
Basically, if you take a peek at the ads in the top and right sidebar of this blog, you'll notice that Seed Media has revised their advertising policies recently. One of the results of that revision has been to run Google ads on both these blog…
grrlscientist | July 1, 2009Due to our incredibly crappy economy, there has been a change in the advertising policies at ScienceBlogs recently. Which leads me to ask, what do you think of those Russian Brides ads that are popping up here recently? I ask because I think they are incredibly tacky, offensively sexist and worse, I wonder if "Russian brides" aren't somehow tied in with human trafficking? Does anyone else know about the human trafficking angle, or can you point me in the direction of information related to the Russian Brides racket and human trafficking? I'd appreciate your comments about the ads, since I've…
terrasig | June 19, 2009RethinkingAutism.com is the brainchild of Dana Commandatore, a friend of one of my high school classmates. Dana is a former NYC advertising guru and the mother of Michaelangelo, a child with autism. His story inspired her to write the children's book, Michaelangelo the Diver.
Dana has now taken her creativity and contacts in her new home of Los Angeles to produce a series of controversial public service announcements to combat misinformation about the causes and treatment of autism and the acceptance and celebration of neurodiversity. Here is the spirit in which they are presented:
All too…
revere | June 3, 2009Here is an interesting follow-up to the leaked meeting minutes of the BPA cabal. Henry Waxman's Energy and Commerce Committee has a Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. As a result of reports in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and the Washington Post about the meeting minutes of BPA spinmeisters (the full contents of the memo were posted here and then by the Environmental Working Group), Waxman and Sub-Committee Chair Bart Stupak have sent the following letter to Dr. John Rost, Chair of the North American Metal Packaging Alliance, Inc. (the tin can people who line their cans with a…
revere | May 31, 2009We've had occasion to write about the endocrine noise-maker bisphenol-A (BPA) quote a few times (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here for starters). The word about BPA has gotten to consumers and they have fled BPA-containing products like they are swine flu carriers. Meanwhile the scientific evidence is piling up and what the market hasn't done will likely bring BPA into the cross-hairs of food safety regulations, if not via the FDA then by state and local governments, some of which have already acted.
So it looks like the writing is on the wall for BPA unless the food…
revere | May 15, 2009It is clear that if you want to get a so-so paper published in a top tier journal, the best way to do it is to write about a breaking medical news event and get there first. We saw this with avian influenza and SARS and now it's being repeated with swine flu. The Scientist had a story yesterday about how The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and Science, two of the highest profile science journals in the world, pushed through some swine flu papers at record speed last week:
An international research team led by Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London published a report online today (May…
bioephemera | April 8, 2009I find this 1950s-era needle book cover fascinating, because it mixes the stereotypically female activity of sewing with the stereotypically male interest in space travel. What is the connection here? Are these young women sewing spacesuits? Are they inspired by/chatting about the excitement of rocket science? Is there any tenuously plausible connection that can be made between a space ship named "The Moon" and sewing needles, other than that they are both silver?
View larger image
Ha! It turns out we can't even make that connection, because a closer look at the packaging reveals that the…
bioephemera | April 5, 2009Bora's comment on my previous post (Could beautiful design save newspapers?) got me thinking about the distinction between aesthetics and advertising. Here's one Twitter-worthy take on it:
Available at the Grandburo online store.
Via Kingdom of Style
bioephemera | March 12, 2009
Here in DC, creative individuals appear to have revised Chevron ads in at least one Metro station to reflect a more, er, politically overt sentiment. The poster hack changes the promise "I will use less energy" in this ad (pdf) to "I will stop lobbying against climate legislation."
The digitally executed revision (which looks pretty convincing in person) follows in the footsteps of Berlin graffiti artists and others who use graphic hacks to subtly shift, reverse, or critique advertising in public places. The question is, how many people have noticed? (Keep your eyes open, DC residents!)
revere | March 4, 2009When I was in medical school it was common to get gifts from drug companies. Since many of us had very little money, the gifts were welcome. One company gave me a Littman stethoscope, at the time, the most advanced stethoscope around. The same model costs about $100 now. I was glad to get it, although I can't tell you the name of the company. I forgot the names as quickly as I pocketed their gifts. We all got lots of free samples, too, and they were often things like tranquilizers sent through the mail and left in the magazine bin in my apartment house common mailbox area. Yes, these folks…
bioephemera | February 20, 2009San Francisco based company Cordarounds seems hell-bent on living up to every stereotype about that quirky city. Their store is online-only and features a trippy blog. Their catalog ads involve horizontal corduroy pants worn by attractive-and/or-grungy people drinking, eating, playing guitar, camping, reading The Satanic Verses in a reversible smoking jacket, that sort of mundane thing. They offer free shipping - but only to Greenland, of course.
Best of all, they're not afraid to offend people with their uberedgy science:
Okay, maybe that's actually pseudoscience. If it's not, I really don…
revere | January 13, 2009Whenever you read about some high profile drug company trial where the smoking gun is some incriminating email, do you shake your head and wonder, "How could they have written that in an email?" There are two ways for a drug company to protect itself from being nailed by these kinds of emails. The best is not to do things that if written anywhere would incriminate them. The other way is to teach your employees not to leave documentary evidence of your company's misdeeds. Guess which route the drug companies are taking?
Want to avoid those embarrassing internal emails containing concerns that…
terrasig | December 30, 2008Even at this incredibly slow time of the year for blog traffic, we hit about 250% of our average readership yesterday with search engines finding our post on Allergan's new eyelash enhancing cosmeceutical, Latisse.
Lots of folks wanting to know where to buy Latisse - Allergan stock anyone?
(Aside: Among my other search term hits yesterday was: "'junior faculty' hate my job." It hit an older post on whether junior faculty should invest time in writing review articles. I suggest that the reader start adding feeds to many of our commenters who with whom they may be able to commiserate.)
terrasig | August 20, 2008Many thanks to science and medical senior writer Cathy Arnst of BusinessWeek for the unexpected coverage online a couple of days ago in their Working Parents blog.
Ms Arnst cited Terra Sig and one of our previous posts in discussing the additional FTC settlement funds to be provided by the makers of Airborne for false claims to consumers:
For background on the charges against the product check out the informative blog terra sigillata, by a pharmacologist, which pulls apart false claims made on behalf of natural remedies (in fact, he pulls apart false medical claims in general--a blog worth…
terrasig | July 20, 2008[Posted originally on 19 July but updated to include more information on BiDil]
DrugMonkey alerted me to this gem at Light-skinned-ed Girl on a company called GenSpec Labs who are marketing, African American-, Hispanic-, and Caucasian-focused vitamin supplements.
Seriously. I thought this was a link to The Onion.
The GenSpec promotion is a completely asinine and repulsive marketing exploitation of a concept that, surprisingly, often has some pretty good science behind it. But it's also very typical of the dietary supplement industry to take a little science and come up with some snake oil…
revere | April 20, 2008The National Post recently had an interesting article on "disease mongering," an article I largely agreed with. The major point was that fostering a fear of "germs," promoting the idea that following medical advice, especially advice involving "taking your pills," and the very definition of who is diseased and who is not has a suspiciously commercial aspect.
Consider the marketing of hand sanitizers, a subject of interest to the flu obsessed:
The slogan of Purell -- a hand sanitizer manufactured by Pfizer -- is "Imagine a Touchable World." It's hard to miss the implication that the world in…
revere | April 16, 2008Thanks to a local health officer in Colorado I get word that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has begun an investigation of claims made by my favorite infomercial quacks, the Kinoki Foot Bad folks (see my howl of pain in the post The TV ad that DRIVES ME CRAZY). Here's some of the AP story:
Late night television infomercials seem to have a cheap fix for anything: lose weight, banish cellulite or improve conditions like diabetes, arthritis and insomnia.
Or, all of the above.
Ads for Kinoki Foot Pads made exactly that bold claim, saying the pads use secrets of ancient Japanese medicine…
terrasig | March 27, 2008Only time for a short post today but many news outlets are just now picking up on a 12 March WaPo article by David Segal on the 10th anniversary of the US FDA approval of the erectile dysfunction drug, Viagra. As we noted in yesterday's post, the active ingredient in Viagra, sildenafil, is so popular that even dietary supplement manufacturers are doping their products (illegally) with it and other related compounds.
While some may be cracking silly jokes today, Segal's article focuses primarily on the complexities of the female side of sexual relationships and the challenges in psychology…
terrasig | February 25, 2008From today's FDA Digest comes the following notice of action:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced that Brownwood Acres Foods Inc., Cherry Capital Services Inc. (doing business as Flavonoid Sciences) and two of their top executives have signed a consent decree that effectively prohibits the companies and their executives from manufacturing and distributing any products with claims in the label or labeling to cure, treat, mitigate or prevent diseases.
The consent decree of permanent injunction is a result of the companies and their executives making unapproved drug claims and…