Social Marketing

March 26th, 2009 · No Comments

Since we are on the topic of Dr. Oz, I found this article in the New York Times to be quite interesting: Online Age Quiz Is a Window for Drug Makers.

Have you taken the online “RealAge” quiz which Dr. Oz pimps on Oprah? I have. I found some of the questions and the results to quite odd. It asks if you have Multiple Sclerosis but I guess given what he said on Oprah, we shouldn’t be surprised he thinks MS kills. The other odd part is that it put me at like 27 years old. Seeing that I am an obese 30 yr old woman with MS, I find that highly unlikely.

Anyway, it seems the RealAge quiz is nothing more than a way for drug companies to market the drugs better. We shouldn’t be shocked by this I guess. My real question is, what is the point of CatAge? Are they going to start marking drugs to my cat? And yes, I took that test too. There is no way I can survive 10 more years with this cat. I would htink she only has a couple more cat lives left.

RealAge allows drug companies to send e-mail messages based on those test results. It acts as a clearinghouse for drug companies, including Pfizer, Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline, allowing them to use almost any combination of answers from the test to find people to market to, including whether someone is taking antidepressants, how sexually active they are and even if their marriage is happy.

I can’t wait for the copaxone spam to start.