Ad it up
“Belo makes you happy.” This was the new giant billboard of plastic surgery queen Vicki Belo, seen dominating the highway leading to the
Not to be outdone, Mendez Medical also has newly-installed ads and posters right inside the domestic airport terminal in
What’s all this? From the profession that we knew to be staid and ultra-conservative, we’re seeing the unfolding battle of beauty specialists, fought out not in the wielding of skills inside the operating theatre, but by in-your-face ads and screaming tag lines.
It’s a new generation of doctors we’ve seemed to have bred, bringing along a new phenomenon – the generation of publicity, star endorsements, and commercial advertising.
Where did this come from? Is this an offshoot of the government’s supposed thrust of promoting medical tourism? What’s going to happen to the respectability of this profession?
And it’s not only for cosmetic surgery that we’re seeing this. A couple of years ago maybe, Cebuanos saw a laser battle right in their very midst – laser eye surgery, that is. Different eye centers based in Cebu started with newspaper ads, then billboards in the streets, followed by fluorescing ads in the local airport, all boasting the best and the latest in opthalmological wonders. (I’m really tempted to get lasered, but the smell of burning that supposedly accompanies the procedure makes me nervous.)
Will this spill over to other areas of medicine? If it does, what kind of ads will we be exposed to? Ads for oncology? (“C means cure.”) Surgery? (“We’ve got the cutting edge.”) Internal Medicine? (“We got your organs covered.”)
I have a suggestion for my favorite orthopedic surgeon, the brilliant Tony San Juan, who seems to have acquired quite a gaggle of female admirers. What about: “Kilig to the bone”? (Ok, these might be lame taglines, but that should explain why I never tried becoming part of the ad profession.)
And what happens if they don’t deliver? What if Vicky Belo doesn’t make you happy, even after you undergo her recommended thermage and meso-lipo procedures, spending mega-bucks on creams made from seaweed, and subjecting yourself to knives galore? Can you sue her for false advertisement? Can you file a case before the Ad Board as well as the relevant doctor’s association?
It’s a far cry from the legal profession, where lawyers aren’t allowed to advertise or tout themselves. Supposedly, it demeans this profession to run after clients. (Ambulance-chase, is what they call it). The theory is, reputations should be built, not hyped. And I don’t have a problem with this – considering the depths to which the legal profession has sank, it probably is better to refuse shysters the ability to rustle up some paid publicity.
But now that the medical profession is now openly competing, what does that say about its future? It tends to make one nervous about believing all that’s out there. On one hand, the information benefits could be substantial, with people no longer having to cope with the hassle of doing their own ad-hoc research, specially when it comes to identifying specialists.
On the other hand, you run the danger of an ad becoming God’s truth. Prospective patients will no longer think, but just meekly shepherd themselves into the nearest clinic of the biggest spender. The one with the highest budget, wins. So where will that leave new entrants in the field?
These are questions that those in the regulatory body should think about. Should spending limits on ads be set? Should there be guidelines on what’s acceptable advertising? Should TV commercials be banned, specially those with gory drilling and hacking scenes?
What about those pandering to man’s baser nature, where sexy models show sculpted bodies in a striptease? (Ok, maybe we can make an exception for this one.)
* * *
Email: [email protected]
- Latest
- Trending
