BeigeJournal

After reading a recent Dave Barry column I finally figured out what the drug Levitra treats. I’ve seen the TV ad a great many times. It features, as you know all too well if you own a television, a middle-aged-ish man throwing a football through a tire-on-a-rope swing. They don’t indicate what condition the drug treats, you are supposed to just pick up the subtle symbolism. I thought it was an arthritis drug. Turns out it’s an impotence drug. The football through the tire thing was just too subtle for me, taken without any context. Football just doesn’t remind me of sex. Instead it makes me think of advertising, because the only football game I watch is the Superbowl, and I only watch it for the commercials.

The Levitra ad is sort of an old-school prescription drug ad. It used to be that you never found out what the drug was for: You were supposed to “ask your doctor.” I suppose Bayer/GlaxoSmithKline decided to distinguish their brand from Viagra by taking the extreme opposite advertising approach. Pfizer/Pharmacia hired Bob Dole to tell us about his penile function and Viagra and Bayer/GlaxoSmithKline hurls projectiles through holes and hopes we’ll get the hint, so whichever style of advertising you prefer, you’ll see it. Over and over.