Do sportspeople making ads like the Geoff Marsh Asthma ads not get paid?
And are they lowlifes for doing so?
Paid celebrity endorsement in health promotion: a case study from Australia
In late 1998, Australian cricketer Shane Warne was allegedly paid A$200 000 (£78 060, US$123 000) by a pharmaceutical company to publicize his attempt to stop smoking. Warne failed to stop, and his continuing smoking remained newsworthy more than a year later. The arrangement caused considerable media controversy about the ethics of payment for charitable or socially worthy actions. This paper explores the community's reaction to payment for modelling a healthy behaviour, discussing the values that Warne transgressed and whether these mattered, given that the campaign caused an unprecedented rise in the use of nicotine replacement therapy.
Lessons for health promotion
For NGOs and governments, the question arises of whether market-level payments to celebrities for good works endorsements will inevitably backfire, causing adverse publicity for their efforts. At the end of the day, does the criticism that Warne attracted really matter? While Warne was the focus, the subject of smoking cessation received a great deal of explicit and implicit discussion. While the debate was preoccupied with the ethics of the arrangement, the unspoken assumption running through both supporters' and critics' positions was that quitting smoking was something good. Most in the public health community were delighted that Warne's massive popularity was widely associated with an anti-smoking message. His competitive and feisty personality belied the sanctimony of many dreary healthy role model messages which many young smokers have found boring and predictable in past anti-smoking campaigns.
The sponsoring company was delighted with the outcome: sales of their product increased dramatically in the 3 months after the endorsement commenced (Chapman and Borland, 1999). This unprecedented increase in sales of NRT is strongly suggestive of a causal connection between the publicity and an increase in quit attempts. The track record of NRT shows that, depending on the mode of administration, it is between 63 and 127% more effective than placebo (Silagy et al., 2001).
It seems Warne just could not win when it comes to smoking. If he was seen smoking in public, he was framed as a Pied Piper beckoning the nation's impressionable youth to smoke. But if he accepted an approach from a company wanting to make money out of helping smokers to quit, he was equally reprehensible. It would seem that, based on public reaction, the only morally acceptable path for Warne to have taken would be to have refused to have taken the money.
While many celebrities undertake genuinely charitable acts, what policy should health promotion campaigns adopt when celebrities require money for endorsement of health messages? Our view reflects that of Clive Bates from UK Action on Smoking and Health. Bates argued on an internet listserver for the tobacco control community that Warne's gesture may ultimately save lives by promoting cessation. All he is doing is commanding his market value. The spectacle of people being appalled when free markets and capitalism work in favour of health is indeed a curious one. A more important ethical problem would arise if people like Warne backed away from this kind of activity because of the peculiar public squeamishness about money.
http://heapro.oxfordjournals.org/content/16/4/333.full
