Marketing, the Next Wave of Opportunity

by Kris Pitcher

Many on the resolution road have long since fallen off the wagon. I mean, it's late February and we've got spring in our sights. Lower my cholesterol? Who's got time to wait for that to happen! Besides, I didn't see anything happening anyway, so what's the point in carrying on?

Well, I tell you what I've noticed - the marketing has slowly fallen off the wagon too. First came the barrage of gym advertisements. All those "regular" looking people happily gym-ing it up. They lured us in with fancy music, and images of ladies in step classes, and all twisted around on their yoga mats. Men running on treadmills...smiling on weight machines. Oh yeah baby! I am joining today!

January sales numbers were kind of slow in the industry. Maybe people are still recovering from the economic down turn, still holding their money a little closer. Or maybe people thought they could do it on their own...maybe they still have a Billy Blanks Tae Bo DVD they were planning to do in the living room. At any rate...none of that really worked out.

Then came the onslaught of weight loss program commercials. You have your Jenny Craig, your Weight Watchers and the like. We saw those at prime time for several weeks. As the resolution excitement wore off so too did any inclination to actually eat right. What's the use? Now, those commercials have slowly gone the way of the bullet blender at 3:00 AM.

Now, in late February I seem to see a lot of commercials for prescriptions that might be right for me. Pills to reduce my blood pressure, to deal with my diabetes, my anxiety...and my ED. Everyone but the pharmaceutical companies have given up on our good intentions.

It's only February! The MIDDLE of February. And we are most certainly still in this game. We don't need marketing executives to push us to do what we know we need to in order to live a healthy quality of life. They can lay low until the next wave of opportunity comes along...but rest assured - we won't!