Is anyone else bothered by the Invisalign for teen ads? I have been seeing them more frequently and they are starting to get under my skin. Their attempt show that traditional braces on teens as being weird or geeky is like a throwback to the 1950's or something. When I was in middle/high school braces were pretty much a non-issue from a social aspect, but I suppose the company has to try to manufacture a problem somehow.

But the 'comparison' between the two girls crosses the line into deceptive/fraudulent advertising. Invisialign may be great for certain cases but for the company to claim that their product would work better for the girl with her 'bad' traditional braces is irresponsible. I don't have any kids, (yet), but I know if I had to deal with a teenage meltdown over this I would be plenty mad.

Any opinions from parents, (or others)?

Align Technology has a lot of money to throw at marketing and advertising.

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I'm the owner/admin of this site. Had ceramic uppers, metal lowers ~3 years in my early 40's. Now in Hawley retainers at night!

That advert really bothered me as well! Vain jerkfest is the message I get from their ads and makes me even happier I vetoed invisalign when it was offered up as a possibility for me.

Smile!

d

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I can't understand why a company would 'market' a medical product. When I visited America and bought a magazine I was amazed by the fact thet they advertised medicine! This seems insane to me as I never really thought to ask for a medicine by name, the same with braces. I only went with my damon braces because they are the type my ortho likes. i really can't see how you can have a prefereance I hate the idea of marketing certain braces to children and teens especially. Plus the idea of sugesting traditional braces are geeky is terrible especially since some problems can't be fixed by invisalign so some teens will be stuck with their 'geeky' braces.

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Drug manufacturers and medical companies have been advertising to the lay public since the 1980s in America. Before that, it was frowned upon. Doctors never put ads in newspapers, magazines or on TV before that, either. But sentiment about that changed. Perhaps some regulations also changed (I'm not sure). Now drug companies market directly to consumers. It is a multi-billion-dollar business. And I agree that there is just something wrong about it. Especially when you begin to prey on the vulnerabilities of teenagers.

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I'm the owner/admin of this site. Had ceramic uppers, metal lowers ~3 years in my early 40's. Now in Hawley retainers at night!

Completely agree, you make a really good point in raising this. My twelve year old daughter just came out of metal braces, and has had to go straight back into them! Very long story, but she still needs some movement that only fixed brackets can achieve for her growing bite. Invisalign would never achieve the results that fixed braces do for growing teenagers, and it does seem so irresponsible to market in this way. So few teenage cases would be suitable for Invisalign, and even if they were, the costs for parents would be astronomical in comparison to what we have to pay for fixed braces. I have paid two and a half thousand pounds for miniature metal, it would have been another four hundred pounds for ceramic, and Invisalign is in the region of five to six thousand pounds at our orthodontic practice! However, I have to say - even if they were cheaper, I still would not want them for my child. They can never match the superior tooth movement of fixed braces, and at the end of the day - that is what we want for our children - for them to have a healthy bite which will last them for life. It would also be way too tempting for teenagers to leave the aligners out - fixed braces give them no option but to continue wearing them.

My ortho said that Invisalign is a very expensive way to get an 80% result. I never liked Invisalign due to their marketing anyway. I would have been a great case for Invisalign but I said no thanks. When I had braces the first time they had the commercial with grown up sisters who each had orthodontic treatment and it annoyed me to no end.

I have a problem with Invisalign's marketing to teens and adults. Even their name is extremely deceptive. The word Invisalign and claims that they are an "invisible" alternative to braces is simply a lie. If you have spaces in your teeth, there is no way that invisalign will be invisible. If you have the buttons/attachments, there is no way you can claim they are invisible. I predict lawsuits for deceptive marketing practices in Invisalign's future.

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I knew a teenage girl with invisalign. She was about 15. I'm not an orthodontist but to me it DID look like she needed just a bit of cosmetic tweaking, so maybe for her invisalign was just as good. But frankly, listening to her try to talk with them in and how uncomfortable she obviously was from the discomfort of the aligners, plus the fact that I could see them, made me decide that option was off the table for me as an adult.

I worked at a large computer company 10 years ago when I had braces for the first time and I had zero questions or comments. You'd be surprised how little people actually care about that metal in your mouth. Maybe it's the fact that around here people have tattoos and gaged ear holes and piercings, but it's more likely that braces are just mundane now. Besides that, at my age I work with parents who have kids at the right age to get braces.
I'm actually worried I'm not going to get any reaction at all when I roll in to the office and give people a big shining smile.