| The Soft Sell
January 02, 2004
During the third quarter
of the Super Bowl on Sunday, 90 million viewers
will get a break from the rough- and-tumble.
A languid 60-second commercial will open with
a middle-aged couple in side-by-side bathtubs
on a mountain bluff, taking in a golden sunset.
To the gentle strum of a jazz guitar, the spot
slowly cuts to another couple canoodling at
a coffeehouse. Then there's the pair riding
off in a convertible, wind in their silver hair.
Finally, a rugged husband lovingly startles
the missus in the kitchen and drags her off
for who knows what? It might look like a pitch
for a dating service, but what's really for
sale is sex. Or, more specifically, a sexual
aid: Cialis, the latest impotence drug to take
on Viagra. The Super Bowl ad, shown exclusively
to NEWSWEEK, is laced with Cialis's biggest
selling point-it works for up to 36
hours (the French call it "Le Weekender").
Sure, there's a mention of an unsettling side
effect or two, like erections that won't go
away, but overall the tone is subtly suggestive.
"When the moment is right," the announcercoos,
"will you be ready?"
Now that Cialis's big moment
has arrived, its proud parents are giving it
quite a push. Drug giant Eli
Lilly and the ICOS biotech firm are spending
$100 million to launch their new creation. The
ad blitz will highlight Cialis's 36-hour nookie
window, compared with the five-hour effectiveness
of Viagra
and Levitra. Cialis (pronounced "See-Alice")
won't be the only advertiser looking for love
at the Super Bowl. Levitra, which debuted last
fall with an ad showing a virile guy whipping
a football through a tire swing, will advertise
in the first half. Even market-leader Viagra,
made by Pfizer, is considering showing up for
the big game, where air time goes for $4.5 million
a minute. That's peanuts, given the rapidly
expanding market. Viagra had nearly $2 billion
in sales last year, and the overall market will
triple to $6 billion by the end of the decade,
predicts Lehman Brothers analyst Tony Butler.
By then, there will be a half-dozen drugs available
for the 30 million American men who struggle
in the sack. And it's not just Bob Dole anymore.
In the six years since he taught us the meaning
of "erectile dysfunction," impotence
drugs have morphed from an old man's crutch
to a baby boomer's little helper. These days,
Viagra is pitched by 39-year-old baseball slugger
Rafael Palmeiro. And there's so much buzz about
the latest magic pill, men are asking for it
without knowing its name. "People are walking
in here and saying 'I want the weekend pill',"
says Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of Boston
University's Center for Sexual Medicine.
Instead of appealing to the
locker-room crowd with jock endorsers and blatant
sexual metaphors, Cialis is going for a soft
sell. Its emotional ads target not just guys,
but also the women who love them. Cialis's ad
team, led by two women at Grey Worldwide, figured
they could get more men into the doctor's office
if they appealed to the person in charge of
health care in most households-the wife. The
campaign Grey created has the feel of a romance
novel for aging boomers, with plenty of tender
moments. "The harder, jocky kind of advertising
excludes the partner," explains Colleen
Meehan, Cialis's creative director. "It's
not just about the ability to have an erection.
It's about getting back the emotional bond with
your partner."
Discussing erections in mixed
company wasn't so easy three years ago, when
Grey started on the Cialis campaign. At first,
Meehan and brand director Millicent Badillo
planned to go naughty. The first commercial
they dreamed up featured a train streaking into
a tunnel. That and similar-ahem-"visuals"
were never even shown to the client, says Badillo,
because they didn't pass "the red-face
test." To be more subtle, they crafted
spots only suggesting sex. One showed a trail
of clothes leading to a bedroom; another had
a running kitchen faucet. But focus groups of
impotence sufferers gave it a thumbs down. "They
said, 'If I have 36 hours, I don't need to rush',"
recalls Badillo.
Then they tried to make time
the star of the campaign. "We thought if
the benefit is time, why not show a clock?"
says Matt Beebe, Lilly and ICOS's Cialis marketing
chief. So the ad team worked up spots showing
spinning clocks and men checking their watches.
The slogan: "You've already chosen who
to love. Now you can choose the right time."
The focus groups hated it. For them, overt references
to time replaced one problem with another: performance
anxiety. "They said, 'You're reminding
me I'm under pressure'," says Badillo.
Even the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love"
stressed them out. Another slogan-"Now
you can choose the right medicine for you"-wasn't
working, either.
The light-bulb moment finally
arrived on a hot summer night in Boston two
years ago. After a brutal week of focus groups,
the ad team locked themselves in a room at 2
a.m. to brainstorm a solution. Everything they'd
tried had been a turnoff to couples starved
for affection. But slowly, they realized that
36 hours of sexual freedom is shared equally
in the bedroom. So by changing one word, they
perfected the pitch: "Now you can choose
the moment that's right for you."
The risk, though, is that Cialis's
sensitive sell won't stand out. That bathtub
couple "could have been selling soap,"
says Lehman's Butler. To clear that up, the
Super Bowl spot repeatedly refers to "36-hour
Cialis." And to build more buzz, Cialis
marketers are meeting with sitcom writers and
Broadway producers about working Le Weekender
into their scripts. They've even mailed press
kits to Letterman and Leno, who've both joked
about it ("If I have a 36-hour erection,
how am I going to go to work the next day?").
And eventually, the Cialis couples will get
more frisky. Coming soon: an ad where a couple
washing a car start hosing each other down.
Isn't that a tad risque? "Sometimes a hose
is just a hose," says Meehan. Thirty million
men might beg to differ.
© 2004 Newsweek, Inc.
source:-http://www.msnbc.msn.com
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