Marketing Magic

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Marketing Magic and Increasing Your Brain Power

Everywhere you turn there seems to be a magic pill or potion you could take to help improve your looks--Rogaine for your hair, botox injections for wrinkles and now there's even a pill that could boost your brain power capabilities.

Pharmaceutical marketers are extending their market beyond its initial intended market of those with brain impairments or suffering from brain injuries to include healthy individuals looking to add premium fuel in their memory tanks.

Evidence of Healthy People Taking Brain-Boosting Drugs

High School and college-age students are taking Ritalin as a way to help them cram for tests

Scientists have been found taking Provingil, a drug used solely to treat narcolepsy, to gain greater feelings of alertness before public speaking in front of large groups of people

Several marketers are planning to target the 65 and over age group who are concerned about normal cognitive decline.

Nicotine Patch and Nicotine Gum Used to Treat Alzheimer's Disease Symptoms

It was discovered that the brain functions of smokers with Alzheimer's disease improved after wearing the nicotine patch. Researchers cautioned that the benefits from the patch didn't outweigh its many harmful side effects such as increased heart rate and blood pressure, sleep disorders, nausea and dizziness. Nicotine gum was also found to improve symptoms of Alzheimer's, however at the same time posed the risk of side effects such as dizziness, fainting and vomiting.

USA Today July 8, 2004

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

My 50 years of living on this planet was celebrated on the date of the above article and I blogged the following comment below on that date.

The older I get the more I appreciate the challenges and the limitations of the physical body. Fortunately, from a physical and functional perspective, I have nearly every bit of capability that I had as a youth. The only difference is one of degree. I can't run a 2:50 marathon anymore, but 3:30 is still fine by my standards. Besides running a marathon is foolishness that virtually no one should do more than once.

I have great respect for the amazing physical capacity of Lance Armstrong who captured the yellow jersey in his attempt to win an unprecedented six straight Tour de France victories. But I have to tell you folks this is not healthy behavior. As most of you know he developed testicular cancer a number of years ago. I suspect that his excessive exercise regimen had quite a bit to do with his cancer.

So, while we all need exercise and virtually no one reading this post is getting too much, it is certainly possible to exceed healthy levels of anything, including exercise. But, from my perspective that is one of the major missing ingredients for over 95 percent of the country in their efforts to achieve health. They are not getting enough exercise.

Anyway let me get back from my exercise digression.

The key point I wanted to make after I read this article about "smart pills" was an insight on marketing magic. Americans are spending $1 billion a year on dietary supplements claiming to boost brainpower, even though there's little evidence that they work. Why are they doing this?

Well, it is a very sad thing to lose one's mind and nearly everyone in the United States, including most of you reading this, are captured by the allopathic paradigm--that there is a quick-fix pill solution for health problems. For the more conventional (non-newsletter readers) this is typically a drug solution, but for the vast majority of those interested in health, they fall in the same trap. They choose the pill route for their health challenges. How else would you explain $1 billion spent every year to improve brainpower?

My insight as I hit the half-century mark, is that most nearly everyone is clueless how marketing influences them.

Why?

Well a number of factors. The first obvious one is that there is a need. If they felt their brainpower was fine they would never seek these products out. I have never felt the need for them and have not paid one red cent for them. However, this is clearly not the situation for many Americans.

Once the need is identified they need to be made aware of solutions. The key that nearly all Americans are clueless on is how much marketing influences their choices. They don't understand that the reason they read about most products in the media is that there is a very powerful capitalistic force that is seeking to sell them something.

Now, most successful businesses provide more value to the consumer than they lose in the exchange. If they didn't the business would not be around for very long.

This morning what was so crystal clear to me is that the simple basic inexpensive natural solutions that truly solve the riddle of so many of our health challenges are promoted by virtually no one. Very little profit is made from selling you fish oil. If a month's supply of cod liver oil cost $100 and there was a patent on it, my guess is that the annual sales would exceed the $10 billion spent on Lipitor. If you want the real solutions on how to increase your brainpower review my recommendations for Alzheimer's.

Proactively using the recommendations to treat brain damage is the most effective, inexpensive and powerful solution to improve your brainpower.

Why?

Well there has to be some type of profit to sustain a model that will provide serious media exposure. There are exceptions, and I am very grateful for them. They usually result when there is a massive social shift and tons of free media exposure is directed to the phenomena and it rapidly becomes an ever-increasing massive snowball as it picks up steam and captures more and more media. The classic example here is the social adoption of low carb as an essential element of truth in our culture in the last six to 12 months. This was primarily due to Dr. Atkins and South Beach.

Although I had a slight influence on this adoption belief, it was relatively insignificant, as I never received any major media. That is fine by me, as low carb is really not the solution to our health problems, as regular readers of my newsletter already appreciate. The key in the adoption of healthy lifestyles is to address the foundational causes of disease.

This involves basics that virtually no one receives any massive profits on you doing, such as:

Getting enough sleep Ideal exposure to sunshine Eating healthy Having your emotional short circuiting corrected

Because large amounts of revenue are not involved for getting you to do the above you will not see media exposure on this strategy until a massive social switch occurs similar to what occurred for low carb.

Please understand that there is a powerful force preventing this from occurring. It is the drug companies. They earn ONE HALF trillion dollars per year and they are not going to fall easily or allow this shift to occur without a fight. They have far too much to lose.

I have also visited New York for one week for a National Publicity Summit where I "pitched" my health strategies to the executive producers from major media, like Oprah, 48 hours, MSNBC, and many others. I hope to have begun the process to capture some major media attention.

I know there will be challenges, but I also know that I have another 60-plus years to reach the goal. I fully understand that this is a and Goliath set up, but I know from the depths of my soul that we will succeed. However, I also completely understand that the battle is not mine alone and I will not succeed without your help.

So what can you do?

The most important would be to pray. From my perspective, that is the single most important thing you can do. Secondly, you can continue your amazing and consistent efforts of spreading the word and encouraging your friends and relatives to sign up for the newsletter.

We have a quarter-million subscribers now, but we need millions if we are going to have any significant influence on the marketing magic of the drug companies.

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