Healthy Skepticism Library item: 14773

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Sheehan K.
Consumer Friendly or Reader Hostile? An Evaluation of the Readability of DTC Print Ads?
Health Mark Q. 2006; 23:(4):1-16.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19042509

Abstract:

The Food and Drug Administration requires advertisements promoting prescription drugs to be written in “consumer friendly” language. The purpose of this study is to examine the language of Direct-to-Consumer prescription drug advertisements to determine if such language is easy for consumers to read and understand. A series of advertisements for a variety of products, appearing in popular consumer magazines, were analyzed using the Flesch and Gunning-Fogg formulas to determine if DTC advertisements are more or less complex than other advertisements that consumers read today. Results indicate that DTC ads are among the most difficult print ads to read. Additionally, certain types of information contained in these print ads (such as information discussing a drug’s risks and contraindications) are significantly more difficult to read than information in any other type of ad copy in magazines today. Implications for DTC marketers and the FDA are included