VeriChip TV Ad Confirms Critics' Fears: They Want Everyone Implanted
VeriChip’s TV ad for its Health Link implantable microchip that connects to your online medical records has spawned a backlash on YouTube. Observers regard it as either part of President Obama’s secret Nazi plan to enslave us all or a sign of the coming antichrist.
The ad itself comes on like all drug advertising does — healthy, smiling middle-aged people describing the things about life they are thankful for.
But, to give VeriChip’s critics some credit, the ad clearly positions the VeriChip as something for everyone, not merely patients who are so deranged or damaged that having a chip to transmit accurate data might be useful.
It begins:
To think something so slim can connect you.
… Health Link is always with you when every second counts in the emergency room.
… Because Bob has trouble remembering all his medications.
So far so good. But then the ad suggests a much wider application. A young woman says:
… because my car lost control while driving.
And a groovy looking guy in a pork-pie hat adds:
… because I have diabetes but it doesn’t have me.
When you add this to VeriChip’s previous marketing activity — in which they implanted the chips in cuties on Miami’s nightclub scene so they didn’t have to bother showing ID or carrying cash — the impression it gives is that VeriChip does indeed want everyone to be implanted.
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
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