Are you more likely to buy a product if you see a person who is quite obviously a model wearing the white coat of authority that identifies him or her as a doctor than you would be if it were sold by a model in ordinary clothes — or Hema Malini? Do you believe in that white coat’s symbolic meaning? If you do, do you also believe that it has an inviolate sanctity that should not be sullied by toothpaste?

Time was when TV commercials for most cosmetic products and over the counter drugs were endorsed by men and women in the doctor’s white coat, no doubt to lend them an authenticity we might not otherwise believe they possess. However, since this was a patently dishonest practice with no medical basis — for example that X toothpaste has a magical fluoride that would rid your teeth of chocolate’s gaping holes — it was discontinued as misleading.

Global advertising standards discourage, even ban, the use of misleading information or endorsements in commercials by white coats, and India is no exception. However, unmindful companies continue to field the men (and women) in white as their sales executives.

A recent Colgate TV commercial has ‘doctor-sahib’ to recommend the toothpaste. There’s a fake medicine woman in the Pampers disposable diaper commercial. She is the neighbour of a woman with a cry baby — literally — and diagnoses the problem as a damp nappy syndrome. She helpfully recommends Pampers because it has an extraordinary lining that absorbs the baby’s urine and remains dry as the Thar desert and soft as a snowflake — well, that’s the general drift. One commercial was a bit more sly — it featured a GP who extolled the virtues of mustard oil without presenting a certificate of approval to the particular brand of sarson ka tel that was advertised.

... contd.