Stock Images, Science, and a Marketing Misstep

When marketing representatives interact with physicians or scientists, it’s almost always awkward—sometimes it’s even comical. During my time at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the early 2000s, the director of the Ingram Cancer Center, renowned researcher Harold (Hal) Moses, flat-out refused to meet with anyone from our high-priced advertising agency. One time, the agency needed Dr. Moses’ approval for a brochure cover. They asked us to interrupt him in his lab, where he was doing what he loved most—examining slides through his microscope.

The cover featured a close-up image of a lone cancer cell—or so we thought. When my colleague and I, sheepishly, asked if he could take a minute to approve it, Dr. Moses glanced at the cover, then, without missing a beat, returned to his microscope and said, dryly, “That’s not a cancer cell.”

We fled the scene, anxious to throttle the neck of our agency rep. But here’s the kicker: the rep actually tried to argue the authenticity of his stock image. I simply said, "Ok, you go into the lab and tell a world-renowned cell biologist, who happens to be studying cancer cells under a microscope right now, that he doesn’t know a cancer cell when he sees one."

Our rep backed down, of course, but the incident highlights a larger issue: the disconnect between scientific accuracy and the marketing machine.