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Right -- and Wrong -- Ways to Push Health and Beauty Aids Online VitaminShoppe.com and Drugstore.com make their point clearly. More.com, OnHealth.com and SelfCare.com might give you a headache Few online product categories are as congested as health, beauty, and wellness. It's no surprise, then, that many of the dot.com commercials cluttering the airwaves lately are for E-tailers that sell prescription drugs, shampoo, herbal remedies, and adult diapers. Buying the same toiletries every week or month is no fun, and in some cases is even embarrassing. Still, the ads for many online drugstores and health info sites often don't stress selection, convenience, and confidentiality. Instead, they opt for irony and abstract humor -- just what I always look for in a pharmacist. Take the intense, surreal campaign for online druggist More.com. Offering a glimpse into the high-powered world of supermodels and stockbrokers, the ads serve as testimonials to the perks of fame and fortune: Personal trainers, stylists, Japanese-speaking manicurists, and rock-star boyfriends. Sign me up, but tell me, please: What does this place sell? And must I mingle with the brat pack? To their credit, though, the spots do cram in the fact that customers who buy now can lock in free shipping and current prices -- for life. GET UP, GRANNY. More proof that abstract concepts, even when funny, are hard to pull off on health-care issues arrives in the form of commercials for OnHealth.com. Its funniest ad, for example, features family members moving furniture around an elderly relative's bedroom in hopes that the perfect position will revive her. At one point, the white-haired granny bolts upright in bed, only to lose consciousness a moment later. The sporadic arousals are enough to encourage the movers to continue jockeying a heavy dresser, while the screen cuts to the headline of an online article: "Feng Shuei: Does It Work?" "A new way to look at everything on health," says the voiceover, as the company logo is revealed. That's a roundabout way of telling viewers that OnHealth.com not only provides information on a plethora of subjects but also provides daily news updates, hundreds of discussion groups, interactive tools, local physician directories -- and it sells stuff, too. Other OnHealth.com ads also miss the point, such as one that features CPR trainees learning how to fake the sound of flatulence -- one of the oldest surviving jokes on earth, but one that dot.coms seem to have only lately discovered. Of course, serious ads aren't always surefire successes. Note the commercials for SelfCare.com, another one-stop online health site. With their slow-motion images of women wrapped in oversized sweaters contemplating the meaning of life, friends practicing yoga in a wheat field, and mothers caring for sick children, the ads aim to instill feelings of trust and security. But a Web site can't hold someone's hand, so a dot.com commercial that asks "Who took care of you today?" or "Who held your hand, calmed your nerves, wanted to understand you?" might be taking touchy-feely too far. WHO DO YOU TRUST? The best ads for health and wellness sites combine wit and information. That includes the campaign for VitaminShoppe.com, which sells natural products and food supplements online. Its ads parody the in-your-face tactics other sites use to attract customers. One features a mob boss and his two thuggish lackeys advertising the mythical site "No Problems, No Hassles, and No Questions Asked" Loans.com. "These days you can buy anything on the Web," the VitaminShoppe ad intones, "but who are you buying it from?" VitaminShoppe has 18,000 products, 400 brands, and more than 20 years' experience, the ad claims -- facts that truly are reassuring. Drugstore.com is another site with a smart ad strategy. In one spot set to a Mission: Impossible-like soundtrack, a woman relaxes in her bath as several people in white jumpsuits stealthily replenish her cache of diapers, soap, aspirin -- even the bubble soap resting on the edge of her tub. "You have better things to do than go to the drugstore," chimes in the voiceover. "Let the drugstore come to you." This is Drugstore.com's second effort at TV advertising. Its debut campaign featured an embarrassed laxative shopper whose "choo-choo won't leave the station" and a pharmacy clerk who was clueless about herbal remedies. Thank goodness that dot.com advertisers learn from their mistakes. By Stefani Eads in New York |
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