Since the early 1900s, industries have deployed clever marketing techniques to promote products, despite their detrimental impact on public health. According to the American Public Health Association, large corporations have been funding research, creating scientific controversy, and marketing products that cause cancer, obesity, and other health issues (Brandt 2012). The cumulative effect of these marketing strategies is profound and contributes to a range of public health crises. The Milbank Quarterly Journal mentions that while there have been efforts to regulate and counteract these practices, these industries do not make these efforts easy and are able to legally push back on many of them (Brownell 2009). Industries such as the tobacco industry, the food industry, and the beauty industry often use marketing strategies that promote toxic elements that negatively impact society’s health. This poses the question, how do deceptive marketing strategies employed by the tobacco, food, and beauty industries negatively affect public health?

For decades, the tobacco industry has engaged in misinformation and misleading marketing strategies to make its products appear less harmful than they are. The most significant ways that the tobacco industry promoted its products were through TV advertisements, funded research, and efforts to silence the individuals and organizations who opposed tobacco. “The Holdout,” a painting by Norman Rockwell, depicts a woman surrounded by men who are smoking cigarettes. The people in the painting, also known as “The Jury”, are members of a jury panel and the men are clearly trying to convince the woman to change her opinion about a verdict. The woman is also the only one who is not smoking.

This is an extremely important message because even though one may be surrounded by people smoking or trying to influence them, one can maintain one’s convictions by going against the crowd. Commercial tobacco products have been depicted through art, TV, and more, leading to the rise in popularity of smoking to fit in with others or give in to peer pressure, despite the consequences. In an article by the “British Medical Journal”, nicotine researcher Lennox Johnston states,

The frequency of references to the comforting action of tobacco (without any indication of its repressed unpleasant effects), and the scale of tobacco advertisements (all of which suggest that it is harmless, normal, manly, or attractive to smoke a particular brand), give some indication of the volume of deception to which non-smokers (and smokers) are exposed. (Johnston 1945)

Advertisements portray smoking as something cool to do and fail to mention the side effects or illnesses that can come from using these products. In an article from the American Public Health Association, Allan Brandt, Professor of the History of Medicine and Science at Harvard University, states that “By the early 1950s, the emerging science on tobacco’s harms…threatened to undo more than a half century of unprecedented corporate success…The goal, according to Hill, would be to build and broadcast a major scientific controversy. The public must get the message that the issue of the health effects of smoking remains an open question” (Brandt 2012). The author continues to state, “It was Hill who hit on the idea of creating an industry-sponsored research entity. Ultimately, he concluded, the best public relations approach was for the industry to become a major sponsor of medical research” (Brandt 2012). Brandt is referring to John Hill, president of Hill & Knowlton, a leading public relations firm, who proposed the creation of a tobacco research group that would conduct public relations research to demonstrate the industry’s concern for the public’s well-being. The Tobacco Industry Research Committee was founded in 1953 and began the “start of the industry’s prolific use of doubt as an effective tactic to prevent smokers from quitting and to protect themselves from litigation” (TIRC 2020). When science on the illnesses caused by tobacco started to emerge, the tobacco industry began to struggle. They confronted the problem by publicly supporting science, but bringing in contradicting evidence to make people think that the risks associated with smoking were debatable. Brandt continues to explain how the science put out by the tobacco industry was “not for purposes of research and development but, rather, to undo what was now known: that cigarette smoking caused lethal disease” (Brandt 2012). Because of the funded research done by the tobacco industry to disprove science, people were unaware of the harms of tobacco, and continued to use tobacco products. The tobacco industry has funded scientific research to disprove the idea that cigarettes are detrimental to the overall health of society, and that is considered deceptive marketing.

A modern take on tobacco products is e-cigarettes, which are marketed to a young demographic and also cause toxic effects. The e-cigarette industry markets its products in a way that attracts youth to smoking at an early age, despite the risk of addiction. E-cigarettes are being marketed to kids and seen as cool or innovative while having detrimental effects on health. Laura Struik, an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia School of Nursing, states in the “Journal of Medical Research,” “The most common influences present in vaping advertisements included the product as new or innovative, the positive sensory experience of vaping, the ability of vaping to enhance social acceptance, and vaping as an alternative to smoking…Furthermore, advertisements often emphasized the ability to derive “satisfaction” from the product.” (Struik 2020). This article found that e-cigarette marketing and advertisements promote their product as new, satisfactory, and cool. This entices consumers to vape, without mentioning any of the negatives. Jennifer Duke et al., (Ph.D.), an expert in the evaluation of social marketing and mass media campaigns, specializing in topics including e-cigarettes, tobacco prevention, tobacco cessation, and obesity writes in the “Nicotine and Tobacco Research Journal” that, “After ad exposure, youth who have never used e-cigarettes previously perceive e-cigarettes as cooler, more fun, healthier, and more enjoyable. Youth who thought the ads were more effective were more likely to have a positive attitude toward e-cigarettes and a greater intention to try e-cigarettes in the future. Restricting televised e-cigarette advertising may reduce e-cigarette initiation among youth” (Duke et al. 2016). E-cigarette marketing strategies are effective in leading kids to think positively about e-cigarettes, and consequently buying them. This shows how youth are easily influenced by marketing strategies for negative products. However, in an article in the “Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Journal,” Kathy Do Ph.D. et al., a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, states that “when parents and peers endorsed relatively more negative attitudes than the adolescents’ original attitudes (i.e., negative influence), adolescents were more likely to stick with their pre-existing attitudes and resist conformity” (Do et al. 2020). This article focuses on an fMRI study that explores how adolescents ages 12–14 respond to conflicting attitudes from their parents and peers. The goal of the study was to comprehend the extent of conformity in adolescents while focusing on contrasting constructive and unconstructive behavior types as well as positive and negative influence types. Despite previous evidence stating that adolescents were likely to conform when faced with negative advertisements, such as e-cigarette advertising, this study sheds light on the willpower of adolescents, and their strength in not conforming to negative influences from parents and peers. Because youth are more influenced by marketing than parents and peers on negative influences, e-cigarettes should not be marketed, as they are too enticing to youth. Even if adolescents have negative influences at home or at school, they will most likely not conform, but when faced with marketing they do conform. E-cigarettes are extremely dangerous, as shown by 18 year old, Simah Herman. Herman states in an interview with ABC News that “I just remember feeling like absolute…nothing. Like I just couldn’t do anything…I couldn’t drink water. I couldn’t move. Like, I literally just wanted to crawl out of my skin” (Hawkins 2019). Herman recalls her traumatic experience of being unable to breathe, due to e-cigarette usage. This highlights the dangers of e-cigarettes, and why marketing them is extremely harmful. The e-cigarette industry uses the same marketing strategies as the tobacco industry to attract people to their harmful products.

The food industry is another major industry that markets products that can cause negative health effects. Junk food plays a role in childhood obesity, yet the industry markets to children. Myriam Ertz, Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Quebec, states in the “Sage Journals” that, “Marketing has contributed to framing unhealthy foods with appealing imagery and branding while eluding its poor nutritional content” (Ertz 2021). The food industry positively advertises junk foods, which entices people to buy them. Junk food should not be advertised as appealing, as it is extremely unhealthy. They fail to mention the negative health effects and the impact of these foods on obesity, and the harms that junk food has on people’s health. In the “Public Health Nutrition Journal,” Cherie Russell, a Health and Sustainable Food Systems Researcher at Deakin University states, “Over the last two decades, junk-food marketing targeting children has received increased attention by public health researchers, advocates and policy-makers as a factor contributing to childhood obesity” (Russell 2020). Junk food advertisements have been contributing to childhood obesity by appealing to young children with foods that are loaded with sugar, calories, and other ingredients. According to the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University, almost 14 million children suffer from obesity, and it accounts to around 300,000 premature deaths per year. Because junk food leads to obesity, and in some cases, death, it should not be promoted in a fun and enticing way. Warning labels should be put on junk food, and people should be educated on the harms posed by junk food consumption. Junk food is advertised in the same way that the tobacco and e-cigarette industry market their products. They do this in a way to get the vulnerable youth, and adults to get hooked on their products.

Another industry that advertises products that negatively affect health is the beauty industry. An example of this is Botox, an injection that relaxes muscles that cause wrinkles and can address signs of aging (Cleveland Clinic 2016). According to Henryk Witmanowski, the Head of the Clinical Department of Plastic Surgery, in the “Advances Journal”, Botox is the most common cosmetic procedure performed worldwide, with estimates of nearly 3 million injections per year (Witmanowski 2020). Emma Sandler, a social media content manager and journalist states in Glossy, a fashion and beauty blog, states that “celebrity endorsements are a big part of the pharmaceutical industry” (Sandler 2021). Sandler continues to state that industries pay A-list celebrities, such as Gwyneth Paltrow and Sharon Stone, to promote different Botox products. Dr. Howard Sobel, MD., founder of the Sobel Skin practice and the brand Sobel Skin states, “Using real-life people for commercials with real stories on how Botox has made them look younger helps bring to life the great impact Botox has made to the aesthetic market” (Sandler 2021). People are greatly influenced by the marketing done by the beauty industry, for Botox. Celebrity endorsements are just one way that the beauty industry markets Botox. These marketing strategies are creating a problem because the negative effects of Botox are beginning to show, as the product is becoming increasingly more popular. Heather Widdows, a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Warwick states in the “Journal of Health Care Analysis,” that “There is rising public concern about many aspects of the beauty ideal…the rise in the demand for cosmetic surgery, the routinization, normalization and naturalization of non-surgical procedures, such as Botox and lip fillers, and the epidemic of body image anxiety which is debilitating and devastating” (Widdows 2018). In an article in The Guardian, Denis Campbell, a health policy editor states that “The adverse reaction reports submitted to the MHRA [Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency] between 1991 and 2020 outlined how the 188 Botox recipients had experienced a total of 481 side-effects between them, which indicates that people who suffer complications often have several of them” (Campbell 2021). Brenda Blay, a TikTok influencer, used Botox for 20 years when she decided to stop the injections. Blay says, “I stopped using it in October, so it’s pretty much gone, but you notice I don’t have muscle movement — because I haven’t used them in so long” (Herz 2023). Because of the lack of muscle movement in her forehead due to the Botox, when she went off of it she was no longer able to move the muscles in her forehead. This was found to be a form of muscle atrophy. Patricia Wexler, a New York City dermatologist explains that “muscles can atrophy from a ‘lack of use’ if Botox is used consistently without any breaks” (Herz 2023). Additionally, a study from the University of Calgary in 2010 found that “animals who were injected with the toxin experienced muscle weakness in the body — even in places that weren’t injected with Botox” (Herz 2023). The harmful effects of Botox are starting to be found, and these effects should not be ignored. However, a new light is shed on Botox, as Botox can help treat foot and ankle pain. According to the University Foot and Ankle Institute, Botox “relaxes and weakens the severely tight or spasming tendons, tissue, and muscles to bring relief to the most serious plantar fasciitis cases” (Baravarian 2020). In other words, Botox is helpful as it eases serious foot and ankle pain by relaxing and loosening very tight muscles and tendons. This is especially helpful for people with a painful foot condition called plantar fasciitis. Despite the harms of Botox facial injections, it can also be used for good, to help foot and ankle pain.

The tobacco and e-cigarette industry, the junk-food industry, and the beauty industry have all developed sophisticated methods to attract and retain customers through marketing strategies, at the expense of society’s health. In truth, tobacco kills more than 8 million people each year worldwide, including an estimated 1.3 million non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). With this degree of impact, the tobacco industry should not be promoting such a deadly product. The tobacco industry’s history of funded research and the e-cigarette industry’s appeal to teens through exciting and fun flavors represent significant concerns. Similarly, the junk food industry uses targeted marketing, especially towards youth, which is a leading contributor to obesity and other life-threatening health conditions. According to the WHO, over 340 million adolescents aged 5–19 were obese in 2016. Again, the degree of harm caused by deceptive marketing practices is unacceptable. The beauty industry feeds on people’s insecurities, and their desire to look young forever, to promote products such as Botox. Campbell states that “One in six people who have Botox injected into their face suffer complications such as bruising, headache, nausea and ‘frozen’ features, a study into the anti-aging treatment has found” (Campbell 2021). Although the consequences of Botox injections are not as widespread or as severe compared to tobacco products or junk food, they nonetheless represent how deceptive advertising poses a health risk. Marketing strategies that are used by large corporations lead to many health complications, which can be fatal. Finding solutions to end the marketing of harmful products, or making these products less harmful would benefit society, increase longevity, and keep people staying healthy. Instead, these industries prioritize profit over public health, leading to increased rates of obesity, addiction, lung cancer, and heart conditions. The WHO states that “Young people are especially at risk of being influenced by advertisements and celebrity promotion of material” (WHO 2023). The greatest limitation is that there are policies put in place on false or negative marketing, however they are not effective. There should be government discussion on what makes these policies not effective, and how there can be new policies or laws put in to place that will work and solve these issues. Because of the immense influence that advertisements and marketing have on people’s opinions of products, harmful products should not be promoted, as they can have detrimental effects on health.

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