Tag: advertising

Ninth Circuit rebukes lawmakers, grants injunction against California law targeting gun marketing

A California law ostensibly aimed at restricting the marketing of firearms to minors infringes on the free speech rights of adults, according to a three-judge panel on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In its ruling handed down on Thursday morning, the panel vacated a lower court decision denying an injunction against the law’s enforcement and delivered a resounding win for both First and Second Amendment advocates.

Writing for the majority, Judge Kenneth Lee ruled that the law forbidding marketing and advertising firearms that “reasonably appear to be attractive to minors” is likely to infringe on the First Amendment, given that the statute is so broadly written that advertisements aimed at adults who can lawfully purchase a firearm would be swept up in its provisions.

While California has a substantial interest in reducing gun violence and unlawful use of firearms by minors, its law does not “directly” and “materially” further either goal. California cannot straitjacket the First Amendment by, on the one hand, allowing minors to possess and use firearms and then, on the other hand, banning truthful advertisements about that lawful use of firearms. There is no evidence in the record that a minor in California has ever unlawfully bought a gun, let alone because of an ad. Nor has the state produced any evidence that truthful ads about lawful uses of guns—like an ad about hunting rifles in Junior Sports Magazines’ Junior Shooters—encourage illegal or violent gun use among minors. Simply put, California cannot lean on gossamers of speculation to weave an evidence-free narrative that its law curbing the First Amendment “significantly” decreases unlawful gun use among minors. The First Amendment demands more than good intentions and wishful thinking to warrant the government’s muzzling of speech.

California’s law is also more extensive than necessary, as it sweeps in truthful ads about lawful use of firearms for adults and minors alike. For instance, an advertisement directed at adults featuring a camouflage skin on a firearm might be illegal because minors may be attracted to it.

While the state of California had argued that the statute didn’t violate the First Amendment given the broader latitude given to regulations on commercial speech, the panel was unswayed, with Lee writing that even under a lowered standard of intermediate scrutiny the law fails to pass constitutional muster in light of the fact that the “state has made no showing that broadly prohibiting certain truthful firearm-related advertising is sufficiently tailored to significantly advance the state’s goals of preventing gun violence and unlawful firearm possession among minors.”

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The 9-question survey many doctors use to diagnose depression was actually created by an antidepressant manufacturer

If your doctor suspects you might have depression, there’s a go-to questionnaire they might pull out with nine questions to answer about how you’ve been feeling over the past two weeks.

The questions touch on a range of potential issues, from sleep disturbances, to appetite changes, concentration issues, and your general enjoyment of life.  

Many experts say this tool, called the PHQ-9, was never meant to be a definitive diagnostic test aimed at diagnosing mental health issues. It was designed as a first-ditch screening tool; a conversation starter between doctor and patient.

But for primary care physicians strapped for time in the exam room, it is often used as a stand-in for a more in-depth clinical evaluation — a go-to prescribing tool for antidepressants.

Critics say the issue is that it this tool was developed by Pfizer, shortly after Zoloft came on the market. 

“These forms have a very low criteria for anxiety and depression,” UK-based psychotherapist James Davies, co-founder of the Council for Evidence-based Psychiatry, told the Telegraph in 2017. “It’s about getting people in and out of the door in 10 minutes,” often, with a prescription in hand. 

As reporter Olivia Goldhill details in a wide-ranging Stat report out this week, the marketer who first dreamed up the idea for what later became the PHQ-9 — the quick tool that ultimately made many primary care doctors more comfortable prescribing antidepressants from exam rooms worldwide — was a “marketing man” working for Pfizer. Howard Kroplick convinced the company to invest in the pricey research required to develop the now-ubiquitous questionnaire. 

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Advertisers plan to use ‘Dream-Hacking’ to implant branding into your dreams

According to a recent essay published by researchers from Harvard, the University of Montreal and MIT in Aeon Mag, 77 per cent of all marketers and advertisers plan to use “dream-hacking” techniques to begin invading our dreams with advertising within the next three years.

A core topic of the essay was the recent Molson Coors beer marketing campaign, where the company offered free beers to people in exchange for taking part in a “dream incubation study,” as reported by American Craft Beer.

The dream study had participants watch a short marketing video that included talking fish, hypnotic visuals, mountainous landscapes and dancing beer cans, resembling something out of a wild PCP trip.

The beer company also featured One Direction star Zayne Malik live-streaming himself falling asleep watching the video on Instagram earlier this year.

A slippery slope

The scientists say in the Aeon essay that:

“We now find ourselves on a very slippery slope. Where we slide to, and at what speed, depends on what actions we choose to take in order to protect our dreams.”

They went on further to say that the team of scientists are “also baffled by the lack of public outcry over the mere idea of having our nightly dreams infiltrated, at a grand scale, by corporate advertisers.” Also making reference to what was once “science fiction” now becoming a reality.

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UK government hires ad agency to convince the public they don’t need privacy

The UK is stepping up its “war on encryption,” reports are saying, and like in any good old war, propaganda comes first to “prepare the ground.” And a new campaign is expected to launch as early as this month.

In this case, they call it publicity, with the Home Office being behind the effort whose goal is to sway public opinion in favor of undermining the privacy of the very members of that public – using their own money from public funds, to the tune of over half a million pounds.

Meanwhile the “hired gun” is ad agency M&C Saatchi. The Rolling Stone said it had a chance to review documents thanks to a Freedom of Information request, and that what it discovered were “some shockingly manipulative tactics.”

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