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The aim of this paper is to call for an increased focus on the ethics of direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertising. This is important, not only to improve DTC prescription drug advertising, but also to inform DTC advertising of future medical advances.

This conceptual paper discusses two examples of medical advances – personal genetic testing services and surgically implanted medical devices – to explain how investigating the research of DTC prescription drug advertising can set the stage for more ethical advertising of future medical advances.

Specific issues related to health literacy, at-risk populations impacted by health disparities, and medicalization of issues common to aging relate to the DTC advertising of prescription drugs and other medical advances. Creative approaches to investigating these issues in the context of prescription drug advertising can enrich the debate about drug advertising, but also prepare researchers, policymakers, and consumers for future advertising of new medical developments.

The value of this paper is its call for increased focus on the ethics of DTC prescription drug advertising, to improve the current marketing environment but also lay the foundation for other healthcare marketing in the future.

Studies of direct‐to‐consumer pharmaceutical advertising (DTCA) have examined the views of consumers and healthcare providers but the perspective of pharmaceutical advertisers has been largely absent. This study sought to fill that gap by exploring the perspectives of advertising professionals working on pharmaceutical brands.

Interviews were conducted among 22 advertising professionals regarding the use of emotion in DTCA and considerations about consumer distrust and ad credibility.

Results suggest emotion is used to gain attention, increase involvement, and enhance information processing. Consumer trust of pharmaceutical companies was recognized as an issue, and various thoughts were provided on trust‐building strategies. However, several respondents expressed doubt that negative opinions of the industry translated into negative evaluations of the specific ads or brands with which consumers were familiar.

Based on participants' assertions, this paper poses a number of specific avenues for future research regarding the effects of emotion on response to DTCA and consumers' conflicting sense of trust within the pharmaceutical category.

While scholars examining the design and effects of DTCA have inferred the motivations of pharmaceutical advertisers, this study provides insight on practitioners' actual intentions behind the messages created for DTCA.

The paper seeks to raise awareness of the issues surrounding marketing of medically implanted devices, a logical extension of issues now debated on direct‐to‐consumer pharmaceutical advertising.

Parallels from the direct‐to‐consumer marketing of pharmaceuticals provide a context for discussion of the marketing efforts of a specific medically implanted device: cochlear implants for children.

Since CI implantation is controversial among some members of the deaf community, the marketing of the product for children raises additional issues beyond those of many other devices or drugs. The omission of this concern in the marketing materials targeting parents overlooks a significant cultural risk that could derail desirable marketing efforts.

Researchers should initiate investigation of consumer perceptions of surgically implanted medical devices and related issues, to provide guidance for health professionals, marketers, and policymakers.

In the interest of designing ethical messages, engendering consumer trust, and improving sales, health marketing should consider the full array of issues surrounding surgically implanted devices and design promotional messages accordingly.

Raising important issues regarding the marketing of a surgically implanted medical device can encourage future responsible marketing of the technology.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the potential value that direct‐to‐consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertisements can provide to social marketers as examples of effective persuasive health communication.

Modern medicine increasingly incorporates media sources such as DTC prescription drug advertising. While DTC advertising presents concerns, it also offers opportunities for studying effective message design to promote health behavior change. The DTC advertising debate is vigorous, with some critics maintaining advertisements cannot be educational – but the field of social marketing utilizes similar tactics and a consumer‐driven marketing perspective to promote preventive health behavior and health behavior change.

One of the most prominent criticisms of DTC advertising is use of emotional appeals, but a variety of national public health campaigns engage in parallel tactics – employing emotional appeals over “pure” health education. While DTC advertising engenders valid criticism, it is crucial to not let the profit motive behind these campaigns preclude social marketers from learning important lessons from DTC advertisements.

The paper highlights the fact that DTC drug advertising could provide useful lessons to social marketers which some academics may be slow to embrace – the profit motive driving these campaigns may obscure the benefits to be gained from studying DTC drug advertising as a model of effective persuasive health communication. It serves as a reminder that even those who might object to the policy and practice of DTC drug advertising may still learn beneficial lessons from these campaigns.

The growth of the nationalist right in Europe and the United States has set off a debate over whether “economic anxiety” or “racial resentment” is at the root of this phenomenon. Examining the case of the French National Front, I suggest that this is a poor way of posing the question of the significance of class in explaining the rise of the nationalist right. Recent advances by the National Front—particularly among working-class voters—have tended to be attributed to the party's strategic pivot toward a “leftist” economic program and an embrace of the republican tradition. This in turn has been critically interpreted in two different ways. Some take the FN’s strategic pivot at face value and see the party's success as the expression of a new political cleavage between cosmopolitanism and communitarianism. Others see the National Front's embrace of republicanism as a cynical ploy hiding its true face. Both interpretations, however, point to a strategy of “republican defense” as a means to counteract the National Front. I argue that this strategy is likely to misfire and that class remains central to explaining—and countering—the rise of the National Front, albeit in a peculiar way. Working-class support for the National Front does indeed appear to be driven primarily by ethno-cultural, not class, interests, but this is itself predicated on a historical decline in the political salience of class due to the neoliberal depoliticization of the economy. I argue that it was this disarticulation of class identity that helped deliver the working-class vote to the National Front and that any strategy for combating the nationalist right must thus find new ways to articulate a class identity capable of neutralizing racist and chauvinist articulations.