IMC Hawks Blog

Tag: Health

  • Igniting Your Inner Marlboro Man

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    On January 10, Eric Lawson, an actor who played the “Marlboro Man” in print and outdoor advertising for the cigarette brand from 1978 to 1981, died from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, commonly known as COPD—a disease frequently caused by smoking. Lawson was 72.

    Lawson isn’t the first Marlboro Man to die from a smoking-related disease. At least three other men who acted in the iconic campaign died due to causes linked to smoking cigarettes. David Millar died from emphysema in 1987, Wayne McLaren from lung cancer in 1992, and David McLean from lung cancer in 1995. McLean’s widow sued Philip Morris in 1996, claiming McLean had to smoke up to five packs of cigarettes per TV commercial filming. TV commercials for cigarettes were banned in 1971.

    The rugged, masculine Marlboro Man campaign was introduced in 1955 to market Marlboro to men, because at the time, filter cigarettes were regarded as feminine. The campaign ended in 1999, when the use of humans and cartoons (see Joe Camel) were banned as a result of the 1998 Master Settlement between tobacco companies and the state attorneys general. Today, cigarette advertising is primarily in magazines and retailers.

    Now, the very product the Marlboro Man advertised is ultimately taking away the actors’ lives. After he hung up his hat for Marlboro, Eric Lawson was an anti-smoking advocate, appearing in a public service announcement and a segment on Entertainment Tonight about the negative effects of smoking.

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    Looking back at the cigarette ads of yesteryear, they definitely weren’t ethical, but they sold a lot of cigarettes. The Lucky Strike ad from 1930 claims a pack of Luckies protects against obesity. Today, we are more educated and know the real harm cigarettes cause. The percentage of adult smokers in the U.S. has dropped from 43 percent in 1964 to 18 percent today. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/health/jan-june14/lushniak_01-12.html)

    With the rising popularity of e-cigarettes, brands such as Blu are taking a “tough and masculine” approach. Does this ad remind you of something?

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    Advertising for e-cigarettes does not fall under the same regulations as tobacco advertising because the product does not contain tobacco. However, e-cigs have not been proven safer than traditional cigarettes. Did Blu make an ethical choice by channeling Marlboro’s now-infamous campaign that made Marlboro the most popular cigarette brand in the country? Blu is a young brand that is advertising in a fashion similar to Marlboro did when it was new. If e-cigs are found to be not at all safer than tobacco cigarettes, should they be subject to the same regulations? What will it take to regulate e-cigarette advertising? These are questions to ask about the ethical implications of cigarette advertising today.

    -Nathan Evers

  • Humor: The Helper

    It’s undeniable that cancer is a scary subject, and breast cancer is no exception. One simple statistic summarizes just how un-discriminatory and prevalent breast cancer is: breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women, no matter your race or ethnicity. With the whole month of October designated as National Breast Cancer Month, reminders for women to get mammograms and to screen themselves appear regularly. So how do you get people to face one of the scariest diseases out there? The answer is humor.

    Rethink Breast Cancer is an organization dedicated to changing the perspective of breast cancer from scary, to preventive and manageable. Most notably, they want to change how awareness is taught. Rethink Breast Cancer has moved away from fear-based education tactics to using “fear-free, cutting edge messaging, multi-media platform reach and positive energy [that will] revitalize the breast cancer movement and motivate young people to action.” The YouTube video they have created for awareness has done just that.

    With over six million views, the video Rethink Breast Cancer produced in 2011 has done a remarkable job of not only raising awareness for breast cancer, but also doing so in an approachable manner. Based on the premise that “women are more likely to watch a video if it features a hot guy,” it stars male models that educate the audience on how to check for breast cancer. Humor is interwoven throughout the video in scenes such as a female nurse tripping over a stool, and a slow motion of a male model bathing himself.

    Together, all of these humorous scenes combine with raw education to make breast cancer awareness fun to learn about. By using a pop-culture medium, such as YouTube it is even harder to ignore the message. But most importantly, Rethink Breast Cancer is living up to its goal of helping to educate from a perspective of humor rather than fear. This is exactly the kind of video that women (and even men) will pass on to their friends, helping to spread the importance of proactively approaching breast cancer.

    Carefully balancing humor and sex appeal, Rethink Breast Cancer has created the ultimate advertisement for spreading awareness on how to help catch breast cancer. By using humor the ad becomes persuasive and makes examinations less of a chore and more of a self-service. But is this particular message the way that survivors would want to caution the public? While it seems appropriate to use humor on occasion, could there be a point where humor starts to detract from the sincerity of the situation at hand? If ads like this can be successful for breast cancer could this type of levity be introduced in messages of other health campaigns?

    –Meghan Carey, Caroline Robinson

  • VitaminWater: Ethically Healthy?

    When asking people about their New Year’s resolutions, you are likely to hear about their well-intentioned dietary goals. Our culture today is fanatical when it comes to weight loss and getting healthy. There are numerous hit TV shows such as “Biggest Loser,” “Celebrity Fit Club,” and “I Used to be Fat” plus piles of trendy diet books littering a great deal of homes across America that all attest to this craze. With people’s insatiable appetite for slimming down quick, it is no wonder that the big players of the industry are trying to cash in, even if it means being dishonest. So where do we cross the line? Isn’t it unethical when companies are turning out products that claim to be good for you but in truth are the opposite?

    By branding and promoting products as healthy, companies are capitalizing on the fact that people will buy almost anything they think will make them healthier, lose weight, or feel better. Some companies have gone to extreme lengths to ensure “healthiness” and “good for you” are  intertwined in their brand message but some go too far. It’s simply unethical for marketers to make a product seem healthy just to soothe our guilty conscience and sell their product. While striving to reach your health goals this year, keep the following misleading speed bumps in mind on your road to getting skinny and staying healthy.

    For example,Vitamin Water has healthy buzz terms in its title yet when you take a closer look at the nutrition label, its marketing campaign is contradicting the actual product. The brand of choice endorsed by our favorite two-coin rapper actually has about 32.5 grams of sugar per bottle. “Vitamin” and “Water” carry healthy connotations in their misleading titles and have relied on clever campaigns that play directly at our desire to be healthy. However, these products don’t in fact deliver on their promise. These little morsels of advertising non-truths can soon turn into a fat lie.
    -By: Alexis Kapczynski, Kacy Cox, Sara Kaloudis and Josh Bowman.