O
ften there is an air of mystery surrounding the products we buy. Companies like to entice us with slick advertising messages that rarely provide much insight into the nature or even the purpose of their goods. This summer, Florida-based Miralus Healthcare took that method to a new extreme with a television advertising campaign so bizarrely uninformative that it actually worked.
The product is HeadOn, a topical homeopathic analgesic intended to treat migraine headaches. The 15-second ad, which ran exclusively on basic cable, features a model standing in what appears to be a holodeck of the Star Trek variety (the only variety) rubbing her forehead with something akin to a glue stick or push-pop. An announcer exclaims "HeadOn: Apply directly to the forehead!" He proceeds to repeat himself -- twice -- before informing the viewer that the tube of whatever-it-is is "available without a prescription at retailers nationwide!"
I was stunned upon seeing this commercial. When I saw it again moments later (such are the vagaries of basic cable), I was no less so. The HeadOn commercial is a monument to the crassness of contemporary marketing, the shamelessness of the corporate Mikado. By employing on adult human beings the teaching techniques normally reserved for small children and domesticated animals, the folks responsible for HeadOn have blown away any misconception the average American might have had about his or her place in the mechanism of capitalism as it operates today.
HeadOn is the most recent in a long and storied line of patent medicines, remedies for ailments both genuine and apocryphal that sold vigorously throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries with the aid of vibrant and often misleading advertising. Many of these chemicals contained no ingredients of medicinal value and relied on potent levels of alcohol or drugs such as laudanum, other opiates or cocaine for their effect. HeadOn certainly contains no such dope, but at one time, much like its predecessors in the snake-oil game, it boldly trumpeted itself as "fast, safe and effective" -- a contention disputed by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The claim was subsequently removed from the ad.
Almost immediately, the commercial was roundly parodied on the Internet, particularly on http://www.youtube.com, the video sharing website that has become the center of discourse regarding online culture. Miralus Healthcare has no doubt benefited greatly from the viral results of their absurd commercial. According to a July 31 article in USA Today, sales are up 50%. Miralus has bought its own hype and is now running a self-parody advertisement composed of the original ad cut short by static, followed by an actor complaining that although the commercial is annoying, he still loves the product (which is still not described).
But should he? In order to test the value of this most entertaining of novelties, I engaged in a quasi-scientific study that is probably of standards as unprofessional as those employed by Miralus. I was emboldened by Miralus's assertion, "[HeadOn] can be used by anyone and as often as needed. There are no dosage restrictions or health risks associated with its use." As it turns out, this is a flagrant lie: according to the package of the product itself, "irritation or allergic reaction may occur." My fellow researchers and I, however, were dauntless in the face of such warnings and slathered the waxy substance upon our foreheads while cracking lousy jokes about forgetting which part of the anatomy was fit for application. The consensus was that HeadOn's primary effect is a somewhat bracing chilling of the forehead -- although we did later speculate that it might be a form of mind-control. When stricken with a headache, shortly afterward, I found the product entirely useless.
Miralus Healthcare has embraced its newfound cultural impact, and the media-savvy cognoscenti have rejoiced. But the response over this peculiar case of promotion is not simply snark. The ad for HeadOn, although saying nothing whatsoever about the item it advertises, is still brutally honest in a way that we, as consumers, need badly. We are bludgeoned by advertising -- directly to the forehead -- on a daily basis, and HeadOn makes no attempt to suggest otherwise. In fact, the HeadOn commercial is not selling us on a product, it is selling us on selling -- a kind of selling that treats potential customers as Neanderthals, new to this earth and possessed of little other than curiosity. The rest of the advertising industry has been, by degrees, approaching this technique for years. The makers of HeadOn just had the guts to do it outright.
--Simon Waxman is a senior International Studies major from Newton, Mass.