Pharmaceutical sales are a big business that utilizes television, print, and other media to reach their target audience, often the elderly. From 2016 through 2018, pharmaceutical companies spent $17.8 billion on Direct to Consumer Advertising (DTCA) for 553 drugs. During this time, the United States Government and Accountability Office determined that 58% of the $560 billion dollars in Medicare drug sales were attributed to advertised drugs, totaling $324 billion in sales. (Dicken 2021) Pharmaceutical companies use DTCA to influence the dialog between patients and prescribing physicians which enables them to make a profit. Consumers are exposed to advertising campaigns that may cause them to ask their doctor to make unnecessary prescription changes that do not improve their health. (Eisenberg 2022) By persuading consumers to switch from less expensive generic drugs to name-brand medications, pharmaceutical ads may increase healthcare spending.(Schwartz 2019). Pharmaceutical ads also lead people to focus on getting medication for their condition, rather than making lifestyle changes that could help them improve their health.
According to Dychtwald (2021), people 55 and up control 70 percent of all personal wealth in the United States. This population is also the largest consumer of prescription drugs; they purchase 76 percent of all prescription drugs in the United States. Many medical advertisements are intended to be marketed specifically to older individuals in order to profit and make more sales off of this targeted age group. Eisend (2021) points out that a majority of pharmaceutical advertisements portray elderly patients with a positive outlook in spite of the disease the medication is treating. Most pharmaceutical ads tend to avoid depictions of mental inferiority and forgetfulness in their ads because these characteristics are considered as elderly stereotypes. It is considered bad marketing to misrepresent an age group, due to the fact that many people who are ‘actively’ aging do not represent these stereotypes and look at them negatively. In reality, active agers feel more comfortable and confident when purchasing a product that represents their age group in a positive manner, and not through a false narrative. (Eisend) Advertisers target specific age groups in order to sell their products in the most effective way for the people they believe will purchase their product the most.
Numerous studies have referenced the connections surrounding the portrayal of happiness among elderly people in medical advertisements. There is a correlation between how medical advertisements portray happiness in their marketing as an effort to sell their product. In reality, the use of happiness in a pharmaceutical ad for disease treatment may give the consumer a false sense of hope that the use of their product will make customers’ lives more fulfilling. Elderly people who are the customers for many medications that are advertised for diseases are vulnerable to the fantasies that are evoked when ads use happiness to market their product.