Some people find drug company marketing reprehensible, and apparently nobody more so than these four organizations: the Center for Digital Democracy, U.S. PIRG, Consumer Watchdog, and the World Privacy Forum. They have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission accusing drug companies of everything except kidnapping and insider trading. The complaint runs to 144-pages, and cites such transgressions as,
- The practice of medical “condition targeting,” covering such illnesses as depression, COPD, diabetes, and asthma, based on a person’s use of online health information services and digital behaviors;
- The eavesdropping on online discussions of health consumers via social media data mining, enabling pharmaceutical companies to hone marketing campaigns for drug brands;
- The collection of data on a consumer’s actions related to health concerns via online profiling and behavioral tracking in order to track and target them for medical advertising;
- The use of viral and so-called “word-of-mouth” techniques online to drive interest in prescriptions, over-the counter drugs, and health remedies;
Some of these sound kind of tenuous, but the corker is the last one:
- The influencing of subconscious perceptions via pharma-focused “neuromarketing.”
I’d be the first to agree that drug marketing could be reined in; my own pet peeve is the spending of billions of dollars to market drugs without a proven performance advantage over cheaper, off-patent drugs. That’s fine for a shampoo maker where the consumer decides whether or not the product is worth its price, but not for a firm who wants to be reimbursed by the government or private insurance (and hence, by you and me via taxes and higher insurance premiums).
Still, this complaint is so wide-ranging I think it is unlikely to have any impact at all.
I’d be really interested to see some of the supposed examples of “neuromarketing influencing our subconscious perceptions.” About the only reference I was able to find was an OTOI webinar on how pharma companies could improve their websites via eye-tracking and other biometric measures. This is hardly a unique effort, as just about every website could benefit from this kind of study (even those of advocacy groups!).
If anyone comes up with a good example of drug company brainwashing-via-neuromarketing, I’ll be sure to write about it here. Drop me a note or post it in the comments.
Image via Shutterstock
This col. fails to address the serious issues raised in our complaint related to pharma companies using neuromarketing and other techniques designed to deliberately bypass a consumer’s rational decision-making process. I suggest your readers review the complaint and the citations. The complaint has struck a nerve with some from the marketing community, since it made public pharma and drug marketing techniques targeting consumers and health professionals that few in the public or policymaker community know about. It’s already had an impact at the FTC and other regulators. This col. should be in the forefront of calling for responsible regulation on neuromarketing.
Jeff, thanks for dropping by. To save Neuromarketing readers the trouble of reading a 144-page complaint and further pursuing the citations, can you explain the specific “neuromarketing” techniques the plaintiffs think are being employed and find problematic? Why would we talk about regulating neuromarketing while focus groups and questionnaires run wild?
Roger
It’s all in the cookies.
I will come back and respond to your question. Meanwhile, we are glad German privacy officials are regulating neuromarketing. Our blog post is here: http://www.democraticmedia.org/jcblog/?p=1032
Excerpt citing law firm post: [O]n November 23, the data protection authority (DPA) of the German Federal State of Hamburg imposed a €200,000 fine against the Hamburg-based savings & loan Hamburger Sparkasse due to violations of the German Federal Data Protection Act (the BDSG) for, among other reasons, using neuromarketing techniques without customer consent…Indeed, according to the head of the Hamburg DPA, Prof. Johannes Caspar, the intent was to send a clear signal to the market against the use of modern neuromarketing and comparable methods in violation of data protection law. The case also clearly illustrates that German regulators are willing to enforce the new data protection regime and are well prepared to impose significant fines upon companies rather than giving them merely a warning notice…The decision of the Hamburg DPA may also attract attention beyond Germany and influence the interpretation of data protection laws in other countries, in particular with respect to the compliance of neuromarketing and brain sciences techniques with data protection laws. Due to the sensitivity of such activities, it is likely that regulators in the EU will follow the approach taken by the Hamburg DPA.”
Jeff,
Your post seems to be confusing “neuromarketing” (the use of human pre-programmed neurological responses to increase marketing effectiveness) with “privacy and data protection” (the use of private customer data only with consent).
The source post in German (as translated by Google Translate) indicated that the fine was for misusing data to create customer profile. Whether they framed their arguments in a way that was neurologically optimized is not discussed.
Neuromarketing isn’t really something you can opt-in or opt-out of. It is simply the formation of marketing messages that will resonate.
Now, if you use private customer data to select from a menu of optimized messaging that will resonate with customers, I suppose you could draw a linkage between privacy and neuromarketing… but I would still classify that as a privacy issue rather than a neuromarketing issue.
Other opinions on this distinction? Roger?
I fear the neuromarketing industry doesn’t get it. Its use to facilitate data collection and foster interactive marketing triggers privacy related safeguards from regulators. As with privacy and interactive (behavioral) marketing issues, the EU is ahead of the U.S. The German decision signals to the FTC that it’s now time to regulate data collection and online marketing that uses neuromarketing. Expect a growing call for regulation from consumer and privacy groups across both sides of the Atlantic.
Jeff, I don’t understand what “data collection and online marketing that uses neuromarketing” means. Can you expand on this or give an example? And explain how “privacy” is related to neuromarketing, since the whole idea of neuromarketing studies are to create general strategies, not individually targeted ones. It seems that somehow topics like behavioral targeting, retargeting, etc. are being jumbled with “neuro” concepts.
Thanks.
Roger