Lies, Damn Lies, and Swine Flu Marketing Claims

It's hard not to notice the number of products making claims that they can help ward off the flu. A spot for an over-the-counter pain medication, for example, starts with a fraught mother wringing her hands and telling the camera she's so worried about her family catching the flu this year. The voiceover goes on to explain that the product can relive the aches and pains associated with flu symptoms. Fine—but what does that have to do with the woman's fears that her kids will catch the virus in the first place?

There's also been an uptick in the number of ads for anti-bacterial cleaning products that used to make allusions to icky germs (such as one memorable ad that showed a woman blithely cleaning her kitchen with a raw hunk of chicken). Now they're all focused on the H1N1 virus. Clorox, for example, has an admittedly clever spot in heavy rotation that shows friends passing around a bottle of bleach that implores viewers to share with their friends tips on how to avoid the flu. And guess what? This week Clorox announced a 23% rise in first-quarter earnings, according to a New York Times article.

Meanwhile, the claims these household brands are making are nothing compared to the Web sites hawking products that claim to prevent H1N1—from ionic silver to vitamins and other supplements. The FDA is cracking down on the snake-oil supplements that illegally claim to prevent or treat H1N1 without FDA approval—it's identified about 140 sites making such claims. Further, it's warning consumers about fake Tamiflu that's hit the market.

OK, already, you get it. So what should you do about it?

Education is the obvious answer, but healthcare organizations are already overwhelmed with calls and visits from worried consumers. So look to online to help spread the message.

Some suggestions:

• Link to FDA warnings about bogus products on your home page—in a prominent location. The agency has even created a neat little widget you can place on your site to help your staff and consumers identify fraudulent H1N1 products. Other widgets, including an H1N1 news feed and a map of the U.S. that shows state-specific flu information, can be found on the HHS flu widget page.
• If you're not into widgets, you can link to the FDA's Fraudulent 2009 H1N1 Influenza Products List.
• While you're at it, link to the FDA H1N1 Flu Page and www.Flu.gov.
• Consider setting up a Twitter feed (branded to your healthcare organization, of course) or a Facebook group that not only pushes out articles and information about H1N1, but also answers consumers' questions. For the latter, you'd need to monitor the site in order to respond promptly. And make it easy for searchers to find you on Twitter by adding the hashtag #H1N1 or #swineflu to each of your posts.
• Alternately, if you already have a Twitter feed (and one is quite enough, thank you), follow and re-tweet accounts set up to share H1N1 news. (Find them by searching for the hashtags above.
• Don't forget to position your physicians as experts on the topic. Consider adding video or other content on your Web site, blogs, and social networking sites of one of your physicians helping consumers to sort out the facts versus the fiction of the H1N1 virus.

In a letter to healthcare professionals yesterday, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg, MD, acknowledged "delays in vaccine delivery and the persistence of myths about vaccination" and offered talking points for explaining to patients that H1N1 vaccines are "the best tools we have to prevent severe illness and death caused by the virus."

I'd argue accurate, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-access information is an important tool, too.