An industry-funded "awareness" campaign

An intriguing variety of marketing involves promotion through public awareness campaigns. Sometimes these campaigns are undertaken by sectors with numerous small producers, none large enough to advertise on its own - think Garrison Keillor's imaginary "Ketchup Advisory Council." Other times the motivation is that consumers may not feel comfortable receiving overt advertising for a particular product or service. Pharmaceutical companies, for example, "help make people aware" that they may unknowingly suffer from a condition or carry a potentially dangerous gene.

Newsweek's Claudia Kalb reports on a new campaign to educate women about their so-called "biological clocks." While her story focuses on the campaign's informal, Web 2.0, and viral nature, her final paragraph touches on the self-interest of its organizer, the American Fertility Association, and its primary funder, a pharmaceutical company that makes drugs used in assisted reproduction:

Like other informational events, the AFA's program isn't purely altruistic. It was launched with $25,000 from drug maker Schering-Plough, which makes the fertility drug Follistim. Other sponsors include a New York-based pharmacy that provides fertility prescriptions and several fertility clinics. Doctors who lead the discussions are asked to make a donation to the AFA, and gift bags that will be given to attendees will contain handouts from the sponsors as well as educational information. [AFA's director of development Corey] Whelan is matter-of-fact about the AFA's need for financial support for their infertility prevention program, which is free to the women who attend. But, she insists, "We're trying to decrease the patient population, not increase it."

While the AFA engages in a number of broad fertility-related activities, such as adoption referrals, it is primarily an industry organization, as its list of sponsors indicates.  I am skeptical that the AFA and its new fertility "awareness campaign" are meant to "decrease the patient population." This has the appearance of an attempt to drum up business for profitable high-tech solutions.

This has been tried before. In 2001, the American Society for Reproductive Medicine launched a similar campaign. (In fact, its website is still online.) Although the ASRM is more focused on assisted reproduction than the AFA, its campaign emphasized that behaviors such as smoking and unsafe sex can affect one's fertility later. Yet then, some  feminists were uncomfortable with the ASRM’s message. Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), said:

Certainly women are well aware of the so-called biological clock. And I don't think that we need any more pressure to have kids.

She wrote in an op-ed:

NOW commends the good doctors for attempting to educate women about their health, but we think they are going about it in the wrong way - by blaming individual women and their behavior for a problem that is caused by many factors, some behavioral, but most not. The ASRM gets free publicity, and women are, once again, made to feel anxious about their bodies and guilty about their choices.

Greater understanding among prospective parents about the inevitable decline of their fertility would be a good thing. Too often, a mistaken image of perpetual fecundity is promoted by assisted reproduction technologies and by media coverage of celebrities producing children well into their forties with no apparent problems. Unfortunately, an industry endeavor such as the AFA's will likely continue the trend.