A Hard Sell?

A new Viagra ad, which features a woman breathily imploring viewers to talk to their doctors about the drug, prompts Ian Crouch to consider a history of advertising for E.D. drugs:

[A]lthough the ad is essentially a come-on by a beautiful woman, it is refreshingly frank about sex, which means that it is markedly better than past ads that relied on silly or crass innuendo: Levitra’s football-through-the-tire-swing ad; Viagra’s “We Are the Champions” mass male celebration; Cialis’sadjacent his-and-her bathtubs. The rare exception is the first television commercial Viagra ever ran, which turns out also to have been the brand’s best, featuring the former Senator and Republican Presidential candidate Bob Dole. That ad, which looks rather oddly like a campaign spot, became a punch line, mocked later by even Dole himself. But, watching it now, it seems far more forthright, honest, and even dignified than the ads that followed. Dole makes note of the ways in which the subject might make viewers uncomfortable, but he tells the audience, basically, to grow up: “You know, it’s a little embarrassing to talk about E.D., but it’s so important to millions of men and their partners, that I decided to talk about it publicly.” It was a little embarrassing; that was the point. In the intervening years, Viagra steered away from talking much about sex in its TV ads: its most recent campaign had showed ruggedly capable men at work, and alone.

The new ad, however, gets remarkably specific.

The problem under review is “not just getting an erection but keeping it”—the woman says this twice in less than a minute. The suggestion is that male sexual performance isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition but something that exists on a continuum—and it implies that men could be performing better. In another context, this plain talk about erections might have been the beginning of a more comprehensive, and truly honest, discussion about sex: it might have included the psychological and relational aspects of sexual experience; it could have suggested to men that sex wasn’t a sporting event, and that it need not be judged in terms of wins and losses; and it might have included the voices of real women. Here, the solution to a complicated issue remains simple: get yourself a prescription.

Recent Dish on Viagra here.