The Mega Marketing Of Depression

Ethan Watters and Michael Moss express two separate pieces of literary works that display different scenarios, but express the same message. Watters sets forth a phenomenon in which an entire culture is modified for the better of industry in Japan. With this circumstance, Watters argues that the ‘total environment’ in which a demographic is set can be altered by the influence of outside sources. Moss relates a similar example, where a certain group is marketed to, and as a result, this group’s relationship with the product drastically increases. There are many differences in the two works, but both researches contain many similarities; marketing techniques, ethical views, etcetera. The main thing that is most common in both texts is type

When most people hear the phrase “The Great Depression” they only associate it the crash of the stock market and the hard times that followed. Here in the Midwest, when we think of the Great Depression we also think of the Dust Bowl and the Dirty Thirties. The Great Depression was a very climactic end to a series of poor choices that greatly affected the entire United States.

In Ethan Watters’ essay, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan,” he has a discussion with Dr. Laurence Kirmayer regarding Kirmayer’s invitation to the International Consensus Group on Depression and Anxiety. In their discussion Kirmayer talks about how the basis of his invitation was on the notion that he as the director of the Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry at McGill could add to the answer the large pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline was looking for. The question at hand was how culture influences the illness experience, but more specifically how depression is influenced by culture in Japan. If the conference was a success, the company would be able to enter and expand into a market worth billions of dollars. The reason that the cultural aspect of depression was very important was because in countries like Japan, the American conception of depression was taken as a more serious illness, rivaling heights of diseases like schizophrenia. The company hoped that by somehow changing the Japan’s perception of the illness from being something social or moral to the American conception where expressing the illness to others is considered being strong person rather than being a weak one, that their drug Paxil would be able to sell to the market, which is where the scientific and economic aspects of depression come into effect. The scientific and economic aspects take place due to the intentions of the company to sell the drug, and the drug’s ability to help

The readers of both Moss and Watters are introduced to the manipulative skills corporations hold within their mega-marketing and idea processing backgrounds. Both authors introduce their mega-marketing topics as a negative and chilling idea, in which the products that big corporations are trying to sell are related to something much simpler in terms of the effect’s it will have on the human body. For instance, Watters states “these practices are the medical equivalent of what real estate agents do to sell vacation time shares” (514). In this statement, he is comparing the selling objectives of drugs to vacation homes, and how corporations can use the same tactics in order to mega-market and sell their products. Watters is bringing up the idea of drug companies encouraging and advertising the use of antidepressants, as they are trying to change the morals and thoughts of diseases and drug usages of other countries such as Japan. Moss would agree with Watters’ idea of corporations using their persuasive actions on consumers. In his writing, he states that the world and “culture [has] become upset by the tobacco companies advertising to children, but we sit idly by while the food companies do the very same thing” (Moss 260). Both food and drug corporations take a stand in mega-marketing, pushing their ideas into the minds of consumers. Although they do not focus on separate beliefs of

Culture is known to be able to shape the beliefs of a society through its language. The term “depression” for example, was not commonly used due to the impression that depression was not psychological, but rather more physical. This is because the people of Japan were able to find ways to avoid giving in to the feeling and moving on with their lives. In Ethan Watters’ “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan”, Watters looks into how pharmaceutical companies attempted to change the concept of depression in Japan in order to create a market to sell their antidepressant drugs. He discusses how the Japanese culture was influenced by the companies that were selling the drugs by imposing western beliefs on Japan, which would result in the

In this rapidly globalizing world, the jobs of the advertisers and marketers are to make sure we, the general public, have no control over our wants and desires. However, it is impossible for them to gain full control, but they do a good job of restricting what freedoms we do have. Big companies want us to believe that we have control by changing cultural norms without us realizing they did. Ethan Watters discusses how marketers plan to redesign Japanese culture for their benefit in his narrative titled “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan.” Watters makes it clear big companies, such as the drug company GlaxoSmithKline, are reshaping Japanese culture to market a pill that supposedly cures depression. Society is constantly changing and companies are able to take advantage of that by prompting the route in which society chooses to take. Large companies practice this style of marketing everywhere in the world and they are successful in influencing us, the general public. Big companies are considered big because consumers continuously buy their products, a lot of which are unnecessary. Their success brings light to the fact that we may believe that we have control, but it is just an illusion.

The market can often face influences and change from numerous companies all at once. Companies aiming to introduce a product to a new population face the hurdle of influencing the market to create a need for their product, if there is not one already. In Ethan Watters’ essay, The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan, Watters addresses the methods with which GlaxoSmithKline introduces and changes the very culture of the Japanese in order to create a need for their antidepressant drug, Paxil. Though GlaxoSmithKline’s efforts to create a need for their drug, a cultural shift occurred, one in which changed the very way of life for the Japanese. As stated in Watters’ essay, the executives did not present themselves as people only driven by profits

Predetermined realities are realities that people blindly accept and inhabit as their own. These false realities constrict the expression of life by clouding an individual’s purpose and guiding them to live systematically. Too often individuals neglect to navigate their lives around their own wants, beliefs and values. Instead of making independent decisions, decisions are made based on the opinions or pressures from others, suppressing one’s authentic reality with societal norms. These norms and expectations set forth by authorities inadvertently transform an individual’s reality into an unoriginal, predetermined reality. In other words, there is an infinite number of aesthetically eccentric views, but we are given binoculars to only focus on what others want us to see. Unfortunately, these societal interferences are nearly unavoidable. Cathy Davidson’s essay, “Project Classroom Makeover,” presents how the enforcement of mundane standardization in American education systems leads to the decrease of original talents and creativity. Similarly, Ethan Watters’ essay, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan,” portrays the ways in which pharmaceutical companies attempt to standardize depression, shifting the reality of an entire culture, for the sake of their profit. Lastly, in “The Mind’s Eye,” Oliver Sacks illustrates how reality differs between individuals by using stories from individuals with blindness. Evidently, reality is in the

In the ever-expanding world today, consumers are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the ploys of mass media advertising and pharmaceutical companies alike. Ethan Watters in “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” delves into the dangers of the globalization of a mentality for depression that seeks to transcend cultural values and traditions completely. Pharmaceutical companies, proponents of globalization, aim to eliminate the social and natural confines of a disease like depression, and instead, establish a medical model that is rigidly enforced through marketing and challenging existing cultural norms. Drug corporations continually bombard the general public with drugs that can cure ailments that supposedly afflict them, even if they are not indeed suffering from them. Therefore, a question arises, how much of what we perceive of the world around us is truly accurate and untainted by external influences? On the surface, corporations present themselves as benefactors of society working for the grace of the people; in reality, they are after the mighty dollar and strive to exploit new markets for product distribution. Every culture is unique in its explanatory reasoning for various circumstances and events that occur in the population, ranging from mental health to a general outlook on life. It is a travesty that cultures undergo unnecessary changes that can alter their very nature for the sake of monetary gain. Since cultural background shapes the conception of the

To begin, Lorie Johnson in Source C, highlights the harmful effects of marketing on our overall “delusion” of the “American Dream”. Johnson states, “…parents get trapped into buying the heavily sugared cereal…” and “…places that sell music probably have stock in hearing aid…” Johnson’s commentary on marketing here shows us the significance of the “Almighty Dollar” within our everyday lives. These ruthless marketing systems can invoke a sense of want into the consumer, which can only be fed through the use of the “Almighty Dollar.” As a result material wealth takes precedence over attaining stature, due to extreme marketing techniques.

In America, only 50% of people with major depressive disorder seek treatment for their illness (Holmes). Just as many people avoid seeing a physician, people will avoid facing mental health because of the fear that something is wrong. Through stigmas created in society, mental illness is viewed as unnatural, and having a therapist or taking medication is the easy way out. Many articles and books may offer help for surviving the difficult times in one’s life, but if the person in question is suffering from mental illness, advice can often do more harm than good. In the Power of Now, Eckart Tolle represents mental illness as a

Ethan Watters exemplifies a unique phenomenon in his work on the idea of cultural change in Japan. Watters essay discusses how a nation was altered for the benefit industry through the use of marketing. The stance that Watters takes in his essay is the implications of marketing and marketing techniques which can be used to change the thinking of a whole country. Karen Ho’s essay “Biographies of Hegemony” focuses on how the leaders of investment bankers market the ‘success’ in investment banking in an attempt to make students get involved in the banking career. Both of these ideas were joined together by the constitution and techniques used in marketing, a system evident in Ho’s essay. Before scrutinizing how marketing influences different

Consciousness is awareness of one’s thoughts, emotions, knowledge of various aspects in life, and reality. People from multiple nations have distinct consciousness or different perception of numerous topics including politics, medicine, society, etc. These differences may not necessarily be negative. For instance, the goal of any debate is not to find the right answer, but to reach an agreement. Nevertheless, Watters’ “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” is an example where differences in consciousness are negative. In Watters’ story, while the Western conception of depression is a severe feeling of sadness and anxiety, the Japanese citizens see depression as a simple disease that does not require much attention. They refuse to

One of the most important facets for a successful business in the twenty-first century is how it communicates with their customers, partners, suppliers and governments from different countries and cultures from around the world. For a business to operate with any modicum of success in Japan, you must possess a basic understand of how their society functions. As a result of learning about the geography, climate, history, religion, cultural rituals, politics, education system, and the role of the family; it will allow a business or business person the insight needed to understand how society functions and the method in which business is conducted.

In both, Azar Nafisi’s, “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” and Ethan Watters’, “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan” there is an overlap on the themes of cultural narratives and personal choices. In “Reading Lolita in Tehran,” Azar Nafisi illustrates her class meeting with her girls, who are driven to learn about the relation between fantasy and reality. The Islamic State – the high force – in this selection, rules over the girls and Nafisi reveals the emotions and enhances her girls’ reactions to the freedom that is experienced in her living room. In “The Mega-Marketing of Depression in Japan,” Ethan Watters explains how the Japanese view depression, melancholy, and sadness as beneficial to the individual, and how the Western conception of an illness has been deliberately exported to various countries. Cultural narratives in the given society help shape the community and allow an individual to get a better understanding of the general principals and societal norms. Narratives such as literature aspects in Nafisi’s selection and the interpretation of illnesses in Watters’ essay, provide an individual with an opportunity he or she needs to understand the available choices he or she is provided with. Whether it be related to medicine, workplace or household, such cultural narratives help construct one’s everyday tasks, while allowing the individual to experience and to live his or her dreams through fantasy. Individuals who are oppressed or restricted – physically, emotionally,