"What Keeps You Up At Night?"

One of my favorite questions when doing consumer insight work is, "What keeps you up at night?" Once you get past the "de rigueur" attempts at tension-cutting humor – "strong coffee, spicy chili, Saw Part 13" – you often find some startlingly frank, honest, and insightful commentary. Some of the most memorable comments came from the chief executive officer of a major consumer products company. In direct response to this question, and without any attempts at humor, he stated that he often worried late into the night that somewhere, in some distant part of the global geography he managed, there was an advertising campaign being run by his organization that was actually hurting, not helping, the business. The singularly insightful nature of that comment resonated with me and I often reflect on its sagacity.

Are there instances when our advertising, our marketing communications, are actually doing more harm than good, both for our organization and the public? Three recent television advertising campaigns came quickly to mind when considering this question. Certainly there must be others, in a wide variety of media vehicles across the globe, but these three seem appropriate examples of communications that should be keeping their creators and instigators "up at night".

Toaster Strudel Versus Pop-Tarts Television Campaign

This long-running Pillsbury television campaign is "textbook" advertising. Switch Kellogg Pop-Tart eating children to Pillsbury Toaster Strudel because you can add your own icing to the Pillsbury product. Happy mom, happy children, humorous denouement. Sounds terrific, so what's the issue? How could this "harmless" slice-of-life bother anyone, and certainly not Pillsbury's bottom-line?

This campaign should keep Pillsbury marketing executives, and their agency counterparts, up at night for several reasons. First, "this ain't strudel". If you have ever had real strudel, it is a singularly great dessert. Flaky layers of philo-dough crust enveloping any number of remarkable fillings – cheese, cherries, apples, walnuts, almond paste, etc. Served warm with a light sprinkle of powdered sugar, possibly a coffee, hot cocoa, or cappuccino accompanying it, while you gaze out the "konditerei" window onto a busy Vienna, Budapest, or Prague street. That's strudel!

No, what American children are deceived into thinking is strudel is actually a latter-day version of Civil War issue "hardtack" - thick, cardboard consistency pastry with a filling comprised primarily of sugar or high fructose corn-syrup, food coloring, and artificial flavorings. The entire product is enveloped in enough preservatives so that if you see a "good till" label, it will read, "you should live so long!" The ability to add even more sugar in the form of an icing packet is not a benefit, but a further reason why American children are dramatically more obese than their international counterparts and why childhood diabetes in the United States is epidemic.

Pillsbury marketers should know that this is not what children need for breakfast – a sudden spike of sugar-laden carbohydrates. Hey, mom, instead of checking to see if Spike and Muffy have their "sugar bombs" with them, how about making some scrambled eggs, some Greek Yogurt and fruit, or some protein-powered breakfast that gives the youngsters a chance to actually survive until lunch without crashing from a sugar-high? And no, we don't need the United States government regulating breakfast, or elected officials (and their wives) telling Americans what they should eat. Clearly, the "food pyramid" proffered by the U.S. Government is a direct reflection of which groups have contributed most to various campaign coffers, so it is almost diametrically opposed to what we should be consuming. A modicum of common sense and some basic menu research is all that is required for a healthful and tasty diet. Not the ability to add your own icing!

Certainly, that is not Pillsbury's or Kellogg's concern. However, they might include some actually nutritious items in these family portraits, even if shown in the distant background. Just so we might think they actually care about the health and well-being of their audiences.

High Fructose Corn Syrup Versus Sugar Campaign What could follow more naturally from a Toaster Strudel Versus Pop Tarts discussion than a High Fructose Corn Syrup Versus Sugar presentation. This campaign has been running for several years with the clear objective of maintaining loyalty among users of High Fructose Corn Syrup in its many forms. High Fructose Corn Syrup usage is justified because it's "natural" - it comes from corn. Therefore, what's the problem? The commercial also uses the phrase "in moderation", which appears missing in the more recent "Corn Field" executions.

Of course, what all the parodies of this campaign have identified is the fact that Americans simply consume too much sugar, in whatever form. High Fructose Corn Syrup is just another vehicle for an almost unbridled consumption of a product clearly linked to major health issues. "In moderation" would be fine, if Americans really knew what "in moderation" meant. For example, when I was in high school, the Coca-Cola vending machine dispensed classic 8 ounce glass bottles. Today, those same vending machines are dispensing 20 ounce plastic bottles. We are a nation built on choice, no one wants to infringe on that choice, but it should always be an informed choice. The High Fructose Corn Syrup campaign seeks to defuse the real "over consumption of sugar" discussion with a tangential Sugar versus High Fructose Corn Syrup canard, merely obfuscating the real issue.

This campaign reminded me of a sequence from the Cable Television series, "Mad Men". While not a regular viewer of this series, there are segments that are very informative about the positives and negatives of the advertising industry. One is the "It's Toasted" segment.
We often use this segment in our training as an excellent example of "Reason To Believe" or "Reason Why" in advertising. What is instructive about this sequence is how the "It's Toasted" idea diverts attention from the fact that Lucky Strike cigarettes, and in fact all cigarettes, have serious health consequences – "everyone else's is poison".

The same is true of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Nothing wrong with producing and selling this product if the Food and Drug Administration has approved its use. But its manufacturers and marketers should cringe and ponder well into the night at the portrayal of this ingredient as some harmless substance with no health consequences given America's voracious appetite for "sweets".

The final campaign that should be keeping its creators and marketers "up at night" is the Cymbalta anti-depressant campaign.

My objective is not to debate the "pro's and con's" of direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. Rather, it is a discussion of whether Eli Lilly, the makers of Cymbalta, is really helping the American public by advertising this product via television.

The basic requirements for pharmaceutical advertising include the need to provide "full disclosure" of the product's potential side-effects IF you mention the condition the product is designed to treat. This "full disclosure" must represent half the length of a television execution. Therefore, most pharmaceutical television commercials are 60 seconds – thirty seconds of benefit presentation, thirty seconds of "full disclosure". If you do not mention the product's benefits, or what it is supposed to treat, you do not need to provide this lengthy full disclosure. For example, "Ask your doctor about Viagra" did not require an enumeration of potential side-effects.

Which brings us back to Eli Lilly and Cymbalta. This brand is part of the enormous anti-depressant drug category, with well over $10 Billion dollars in annual sales and equally astounding profit margins. Flagship brands such as Paxil, Prozac, Zoloft, Effexor are each enormous brands whose size and profitability dwarf most better-known consumer products. And, Cymbalta has demonstrated strong growth, attributable in part to their direct-to-consumer television campaign, which has been running for several years.

At this point, some of my students would invariably ask, "What's the issue? Big brand, growing rapidly, highly profitable, television advertising campaign appears to be contributing to this growth, what's not to like?" My issue is that this product appears to have so many side-effects, which are potentially so serious, that they actually appear to outweigh the benefits derived from its use. Particularly when the category is already so full of competitors and "me-too" brands.

Watch the attached commercial. Conservatively, there appear to be fifteen counter-indications or serious side-effects. Many are life-threatening, notably "increased thoughts of suicide", "severe liver problems, some fatal", etc. Clearly, these side-effects must have occurred at a statistically significant level for their mention to be required, so why would anyone take this product or why would Lilly advertise it?

The answer to the first question merely leads to a far larger question, why are there so many people suffering from "depression", what is the real root cause of this condition? Is our modern life so stressful, so frightful as to cause this veritable depression tsunami? (Consider those in the 1930's who concurrently experienced the Great Depression AND the Dust Bowl, only to be called to served in World War II! That would cause real depression.)

The answer as to why Lilly is advertising is clear and we've already answered it – Cymbalta is a big, profitable business, accounting for an important segment of Lilly's profits. The entire pharmaceutical industry is "drying up", with fewer and fewer "blockbuster" drug launches and many flagship brands going off patent and generic. Once enormous profits are disappearing, so companies such as Lilly will hold on to brands such as Cymbalta as long as their patent allows. However, advertising this brand should still cause some executives to linger late at night and wonder if it's the right thing to do for their patients.

In closing, marketers should be guided by the same goal as physicians, as strange as that might sound. "First, do no harm." Otherwise you may finding yourself having trouble sleeping some late night.