Centrum Silver Ad and Buckets of Bullshit
Monday 02 September 2013 at 10:07 pmI was watching the news tonight and a Centrum Silver ad comes on, similar but longer than this one:
The copy is as follows:
“Man: I’ve been taking a multivitamin for years, Centrum Silver. Woman: Both of us actually. Our pharmacist recommended it. Man: Yeah, that makes me feel pretty good about it. And i heard about a study looking at multivitamins and the long-term health benefits, and what do you know, they used Centrum Silver in the study. Makes me feel even better. That’s what I take. Sorry, we take. Voiceover: Centrum. The most recommended, most preferred, most studied. Centrum. Always your most complete.”
I take issue with this ad. First off, I have my doubts that my pharmacist has more or better information about the health benefits of multivitamins than my 8-year-old daughter. OK, maybe a little bit more, but my General Practitioner is way more likely to understand the impacts of a multivitamin on my health than my pharmacist. From what I’ve read, pharmacists know more about drugs and medicine than my GP might, but I’m not sure they study multivitamins. And I don’t really even trust my GP much anymore either. Nor do I trust the Internet, yet here I write.
Anyway, I call bullshit that the pharmacist is a trustworthy source for the healthfulness of taking a daily multivitamin. The impact or dosage of a drug or medicine? Absolutely, but not vitamins. Which leads me to that nagging study.
Second, the guy mentions a study on long-term health benefits where they used Centrum Silver. But he doesn’t mention the outcome of the study, only that they used Centrum Silver in the study. Why? Because it wasn’t a good outcome.
“New findings from a long-term study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, for example, suggest that multivitamins do not protect against heart disease in men. The study, which included nearly 15,000 male physicians over age 50, found that those who took a daily multivitamin for more than 10 years did not reduce their risk for heart attack, stroke or death.” — ABC News: Mixed Results on the Benefits of Multivitamins
So the study that shows that Centrum Silver has no positive impact on our lives, and yet this guy “feels good about it” because they used Centrum Silver in the study.
I used to be in the ad business, and I used to like ads. But ads really are piles of crap being sold as The Emperors New Clothes. I’m not taking any stupid multivitamins.
Trackback link:Please enable javascript to generate a trackback url