Dear Ignorant Horse Owner...: Spending Money to Feel Good and the Damage This Can Do

The Selected Advertisements

These are the advertisements that I pulled to take a look at. I was able to get my hands on two copies of Cutting Horse Chatter, the 2016 and 2017 versions and they contained, between the two of them, fifteen advertisements for miscellaneous drugs, supplements, and therapeutic products. 
Four common advertising strategies I wanted to look for in these fifteen advertisements are:
  1.  Cheerful/successful photos
  2. Product guarantees
  3. Broad slogans
  4. anxiety inducing statements
This table demonstrates the results: 
 Cheerful/Successful photosProduct GuaranteesBroad SlogansAnxiety Inducing Statements
EquilumeXXX 
StaySTRONG XX 
Myristol PROX XX
Adequan XX 
Ulcer GardX XX
Ultra CruzXXX 
Back On TrackXXXX
EQCO CoverageX XX
LegendX XX
Zimecterin X X
Equi-BoneXXX 
Platinum Performance XX 
OsphosX X 
Hubbard LifeX X 
NutrenaXXX 
 As you can see, 11/15 had cheerful and successful photos of horses and riders, 9/15 ads utilized some sort of product guarantee, 14/15 employed broad meaningless slogans, and 6/15 tried to induce anxiety in the consumers.  

Based on these ads, I visited some of the homepages of the products that had 3 or more boxes checked to see what they had to say on their websites: 
In the above coding scheme, Back On Track equine products was positive for 4/4 categories and not surprisingly, their homepage shows more of the same with successful photos, product guarantees, anxiety inducing statements such as "reduce muscle tension and prevent injury" 
UlcerGard in the above table was positive for 3/4 categories and again, their homepage showed much of the same with broad statements, product guarantees, and anxiety inducing statements such as "stomach ulcers can: keep horses from performing their best, cause lasting damage to the stomach lining, and cause death." 
UltraCruz was another product that had 3/4 positive categories checked and their website had the same with a successful horse and rider photo, product guarantees in the form of sponsorships, and of course the broad slogan, "choice of champions" 
Last but not least, equine legend squeezes in with 3/4 positive categories in their magazine ad, however their website did manage to tone things down a bit with only one anxiety inducing question. Aside from that it was strictly product information. 
Finally, Nutrena coming in with another 3/4 categories testing positive. Their website homepage also contained a nice, peaceful photo with a broad slogan. 

Now that we've seen just how good the equine pharmaceutical and supplement industry is at pushing their product, we'll take a look at just how much, little, or how damaging these products can be for your horse. Go ahead to the next page to see what the science has to say about the truth behind these products. 

 

This page has paths:

  1. About the Magazine: Cutting Horse Chatter Emma Talbot
  2. Why Are You Here? Emma Talbot

Contents of this path:

  1. Is What These Companies Are Doing Legal?
  2. Why Are You Here?

This page references: