NO - SALLY ANN STANLEY, GROUP MARKETING DIRECTOR, HIGHLAND SPRING
Any clinical intervention requires people to be managed as patients, not general consumers.
It is distasteful and potentially trivialising and exploitative to deploy general marketing methods, often to women who may temporarily be more receptive than usual to aggressive communications.
I would far rather see cosmetic surgery considered through the route of medical consultation and expert clinical advice. People will be more fully and expertly advised and more likely to be directed toward the appropriate outcomes.
Price will always be a consideration, but not at any cost. Surely, the skill and reputation of the medical team and the quality of their work is the priority, not a bargain price.
MAYBE - ROBERT PREVEZER, EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, THE COMMUNICATIONS AGENCY
Assuming that cosmetic surgery companies are appropriately registered and regulated, they should be allowed to use conventional marketing techniques to drive business - within reason.
Advertising their services and using relevant communication channels to reach their target audience and encourage purchase seems perfectly acceptable.
How far they should be allowed to incentivise business is another question entirely.
As with any other type of medical procedure, it would seem to be unethical (if not irresponsible) to actively incentivise people to receive treatment. How a 'two-for-one' offer can work, one can only imagine.
NO - JEMIMA BIRD, MARKETING DIRECTOR, TRAGUS
The decision to undergo cosmetic surgery is a personal choice, not to be undertaken lightly. There are reasons of vanity as well as reconstruction, equal in their weighting to the individuals. In this context, promoting cosmetic surgery in the same way as a two-for-one on detergent feels intrinsically wrong. All surgery carries risk and if we normalise it, we are in danger of hiding this fact. Consumers believe what they 'read on the tin'; I don't think, in this instance, that we should consider the body a 'tin'.
'Buy one get one free' on breast surgery may have gallows humour to it, but in this instance regulation is right. The doctor used to say a cigarette a day was good for your health; look where that landed us.
YES - CARL RATCLIFF, EXECUTIVE PLANNING DIRECTOR, ELVIS COMMUNICATIONS
We tend to get squeamish and/or moral at the mention of cosmetic surgery in spite of its increasingly mainstream status. Yet we need to park our conservatism and accept that this is a category experiencing austerity like any other.
It's not illegal; like all businesses, it seeks incremental revenues. And, while the notion of a procedure BOGOF may feel closer to something from a Philip K Dick novel than we'd like, our sensitivities need to roll with the punches.