The ultimate goal of most advertising is to drive purchase / consideration. To this end, ads typically either try to grab the consumer’s attention using mechanisms that have little to do with the actual product (e.g., beer makes you more attractive) or focusing on the benefits the consumer will recognize if they use the product/service.

However, DTC pharma advertising is interesting in that they are required by the FDA to lay out the side-effects of their products. They must strike a balance between the benefits and drawbacks that will entice the consumer to still consider trial and adoption. Unfortunately, many pharma products have side-effects that often seem to outweigh the benefits.

Therefore, pharma must rely on more traditional advertising mechanisms such as visual appeal. The best example is the Nasonex bee. The bee floats around flirting with flowers as the voice-over goes into the benefits and side-effects of Nasonex. However, Ruth Day, a professor in Duke University’s Department of Psychology and Nueroscience, found that the bee either a) beat its wings at a higher frequency, or b) flew around the screen more, when side-effects were being disclosed. The argument is consumers would focus on the movement of the bee when it was more active, and therefore pay less attention to the side-effects being discussed.

The point is that creatives are having to turn to cutting-edge cognitive science in an effort to reach out to consumers. I personally would not be surprised if we see an influx of cognitive scientists into advertising over the next decade as we continue to search for new ways to communicate. For a marketing research context, see eye-tracking.