By unamimous vote of the membership of Dry Eye Talk, the prestigious Cheesiest Pharmaceutical Marketing Effort of the Year award goes to whoever in Allergan's marketing department came up with an idea which if it weren't so simply demented would be even more offensive:
The Dry Eye Book Club.
Read it and weep.
Honestly... sponsoring someone to write a tear-jerker as a way to "raise disease awareness" (a/k/a sell more drugs)?
Inviting people to join "The Dry Eye Book Club" - and when they click on the link, redirecting them to registration for the Optive Frequent Buyer program - which includes requirements like joining all the marketing lists?
I simply could not believe this when I saw it. I think if our members weren't so darned desperate, some of them would be throwing away their Restasis in protest.
Seriously, Allergan, if anyone out there is listening, here are just a few of my personal objections to this ad:
1. The whole idea insults the intelligence of the average human being and especially women.
2. If you're going to put a human face on dry eye, make them at least pretend to have REAL dry eye. It's an insult to the rest of us to suggest that someone whose most serious complaint is that she uses artificial tears "up to 5 times a day" suffers from chronic dry eye. For heaven's sakes, our DryEyeZone members would give their right hand to be able to survive on 5 artificial tear doses. Many use audio books because they can no longer read - tear-jerkers or otherwise.
3. Artistic license is fine in marketing but let's not stray quite that far from medical facts! We all know that the reflex type tears that we get from irritants or emotion are different from the balanced basal tears we so desperately need.
4. Choosing as the professional face for this ad a physician best known as a pioneer in refractive surgery... er... no offense whatsoever to Dr. McDonald who enjoys an excellent reputation, but A, did it never occur to you HOW some of us got our dry eyes?
Please, please scrap this nonsense and go back to classic infomercials.
2 comments:
eww, this is horrible! and don't they even know psychic tears leave the eyes worse than before crying? totally unacceptable and demeaning to true dry eye sufferers
Its almost as bad as when the restasis girl said 'i didnt know my eyes were dry until i went to the doctor and they put me on restasis'. Excuse me love, if you had dry eye you'd KNOW about it!
It adds to the misconception that drops are the only thing needed for dry eye *rollseyes*.
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