It Comes in a Bottle

 

I keep getting blasted on Facebook by an inane ad for “Jublia,” apparently a medicine for foot fungus. It’s a song, with dancers and the lyrics “Jublia. It comes in a bottle. Jublia. Not a person, it’s a medication. Jublia. Your doctor has more information. Saying what it does-- that would be too much!”

This seems at first glance a ridiculous waste of money. I have no foot fungus; I can’t imagine I have done any searches that might make it seem as though I have. They have targeted their customer universe terribly, then. What are the odds that a random person watching YouTube would have any use for this medicine? And yet they’re pounding it into the ground. I seem to see this ad more often than anything else.

And how can it sell the product without saying what it does? Advertising is to give the potential customer information. Further, an ad should concentrate not on the product, but on the benefit to the customer. So what is the point of an ad that deliberately withholds how the product might benefit the consumer? And instead boasts that it comes in a bottle?!?

I can think of a few reasons why this ad campaign might make sense.

First, it piques the curiosity. How, after all, do I know that it is for foot fungus? Already at a computer, I just had to google and find out. I imagine others would too. So, in this day and age, advertising online, there is really no need to say it. Better yet, Jublia has doubled its advertising dollar or better, getting the viewer to encounter it twice and in greater detail than a quick ad could manage. It has at the same time certainly caught my attention. It made the product interesting; this is not just one more spam ad that passes by the eyes and is not remembered. Not incidentally, by prompting a Google search, it has made the viewer listen carefully for the product name, and type it out. Perfect for memorization.

This still does not explain why it is worth broadcasting this particular product to random viewers, instead of targeting those most likely to have foot fungus.

Part of the programme might be to drop huge amounts of advertising in the media on something, anything, simply to ensure that the media, needing the revenue, doesn’t report critically on this pharmaceutical company, or the industry as a whole. Especially now, when “Big Pharma” is under siege in the media, and terrible things are coming out about the Covid vaccines. In the case of YouTube, to encourage the platform’s algorithms to censor such content.

In other words, it is a payoff, explicitly or implicitly to ensure favourable coverage.

Improbable? That’s exactly what the Kamala Harris campaign did: indirect payoffs to Oprah Winfrey, Al Sharpton, Call Her Daddy, and other news and affairs outlets for favourable coverage.