| Making
the lineup for the big game
January 27, 2004
It's an odd setting for romance. In separate
bathtubs, overlooking a coastal vista, a middle-aged
couple lounge naked. But there's a spark within
this surreal landscape. The woman reaches out
to lightly caress a masculine wrist.
The overwhelming reaction to the 15-second
television advertisements for Cialis,
a new drug to treat male sexual impotence, has
been, Huh?
For the befuddled who saw these teaser spots
during the National Football League conference
championship games Jan. 18, the Super Bowl will
offer an answer. Sometime during the on-field
skirmishing between the New England Patriots
and the Carolina Panthers, the Cialis manufacturing
team of Eli Lilly and ICOS Corp. will roll out
a 60-second advertisement to explain it all
-- and much more.
But don't worry, said Leonard Blum,, vice president
for sales and marketing at ICOS. "They
don't get out of the bathtubs."
Sunday's Super Bowl is the first to feature
ads for drugs for erectile dysfunction. The
debut llustrates not only the increased competition
between impotence
treatments, but the drug companies' increasing
reliance on sports to transmit their messages
to middle-aged men.
Levitra, manufactuered by GlaxoSmithKline and
Bayer, is an NFL sponsor. Cialis has a contract
with the PGA. Pfizer Inc.'s Viagra sponsors
Major League Baseball and has its name on a
NASCAR automobile.
Competing for attention with the bathtub couple
on Sunday will be former Chicago Bears coach
Mike Ditka, in a retooled campaign for Levitra.
Viagra
is on the questionable list. Pfizer, which spent
an estimated $50 million in 2003 to advertise
its famous blue bill for impotence, won't say
if it plans a Super Bowl commercial.
The spots will be seen by an enormous audience,
including more women than typically watch NFL
games. It is no surprise that drug marketers
would want to introduce products to restore
sexual vigor during the Super Bowl, the pinnacle
of athletic achievement, said Kevin Grace, a
professor in the University of Cincinnati College
of Education who has written about marketing
and the role of sports in society.
"They're saying, `If your team's not scoring,
you bring in a new quarterback. If you're not
scoring, take this drug -- be your own athlete
in the bedroom,' " Grace said. "They're
making a direct connection."
The average price of a 30-second spot in this
year's Super Bowl is a record $2.3 million,
according to Advertising Age magazine.
The Cialis ads will clearly state what the
drug treats, a marked departure from the strategies
employed by Viagra and Levitra. Commercials
for those drugs have avoided mentioning erectile
dysfunction, relying instead on wink-heavy metaphor,
such as Levitra's spot that shows a middle-aged
man in a suburban backyard tossing a football
through a tire swing.
Lilly-ICOS is getting specific because it wants
to draw attention to what it considers the Cialis
advantage: Its effects last up to 36 hours.
Because the spot says what the drug does, it
also triggers a Food and Drug Administration
requirement that potential side effects be disclosed,
in this case headache and upset stomach. The
commercial will lack the usual emphasis on men,
Blum said.
"We focus continually on couples, in contrast
to the competition, where the focus is on the
man and concerns about his manliness and the
partner is just sort of an object," said
Blum. "For us, erectile dysfunction is
a burden not only for the man but also for the
partner."
GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer are sticking with
their tough-guy image -- once again fielding
Ditka, who has been growling at male viewers
throughout the playoffs to "stay in the
game." There was a 40 percent increase
of men seeing their doctors about erectile dysfunction
throughout the regular NFL season, said GlaxoSmithKline
spokesman Michael Fleming. The company believes
its Levitra ads were responsible.
"The campaign had high recall among viewers
and high impact, and people really liked it,"
Fleming said. "It hit just the right note
and motivated men to take action." Levitra
has not revealed earnings, he said, but has
taken a percentage of the market in the "high
teens" since its August launch.
With spokesmen like Ditka, and former Republican
Senator Bob Dole, and Texas Rangers star slugger
Raphael Palmeiro (both for Viagra), the industry
has made strides in getting Americans to talk
more openly about sexual problems.
The word Viagra, said Dr. Pablo Gomery, a urologist
at Massachusetts General Hospital, has become
part of the national lexicon.
With the introduction of Levitra and Cialis
in 2003, the big issue for doctors now is figuring
out which drugs work best for which patients,
he said.
"People come in wondering which drug they
should be on," he said. "Right now,
we give them a choice -- take a couple of pills
of each and see which one works best for you."
Christopher Rowland can be reached at crowland@globe.com.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
source:-http://www.boston.com
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