squidpants

So what the hell is wrong with ads for medicine? Why do they purposely not make any sense? I was looking around online and I saw an ad for something called Crestor. Although it sounds like one of He-Man’s enemies, it’s apparently a medicine. The ad said “Crestor: if you want to be clear, ask your doctor if Crestor is right for you.” Now this ad struck me as strange, since it doesn’t say what medical condition it’s supposed to treat, and the idea of “being clear” makes me immediately think of venereal disease. However, when looking around, I discovered that Crestor is actually for cholesterol. So, why not say that in your damn ad?

“Hey doc, it burns when I pee, should I get Crestor?”
“Well, are your arteries clogged also?”

My roommate has the same problem (not VD, I mean he doesn't understand drug ads). I think he was watching an ad for some herpes medicine and thought it was for sinuses, so he said he needed that. I guess you had to be there. And I mean, my roommate and I are fairly intelligent dudes and we don’t understand these ads. Are they supposed to be brain teasers? There must be some kind of law against saying “take this to cure your herpes, ok?” or something. Seriously, these companies could have a kindergarten poster contest and get better ads. What are these meetings like? “No, we don’t need to mention what the drug actually does, I’d rather just have more drawings of sad blobs or a movie of people sitting in bathtubs at the top of a mountain.”

Boondocks has been running a series about this sort of thing too, which is pretty funny: check it out. (click “previous” for the next strip on the topic).