Growing up in the South, the weekend for me basically meant one thing: football. College football all day Saturday, NFL football all day Sunday, whether I was watching with my dad or with a friend, this was my routine since I knew what Pass Interference was.
One thing about watching football is that while you are getting nearly four hours of quality entertainment (if you like football), you are also getting an obscene amount of ads. As a result, I have become pretty adept at seeing right through commercials that try to appeal to a football "audience" more than others, using masculine music, titles, or celebrities appearing in the commercials.
But one commercial was a little different, it came out in 2003, and it's this ad for Levitra, which Angell specifically mentions in her book. I have probably seen this commercial 200 times in my life, but when it first was on the air, I was twelve. I specifically remember asking my dad "What the hell was that?" I think to just avoid an awkward moment he said he didn't know either. But watching it now, the not-so-subliminal messages are hard to miss, particularly with that ball going through the tire. However, I find it difficult to see how else an ad for this product could be done, and it is exactly that characteristic of the ad, and of drug companies in general that I find so frustrating: they are so good at what they do.
Not only do they understand what it takes to make you think you need something (not want, need), but they are also so good at hiding from you what that thing you need actually costs you. I vaguely remember Mike Ditka's TV spot for Levitra, but more important than actually seeing it is realizing what the drug companies have done by picking Ditka, who is a football celebrity that men not only generally like, but also have come to trust in his long career as a broadcaster after hanging up his whistle.
Convincing men to do anything with respect to their own health is hard, getting them to admit that they have a problem in their sex life is even harder, but with respect to drug companies, it's difficult to not respect how they manage to exploit the weaknesses of the human condition, to constantly seek full satisfaction instead of dealing with our idiosyncrasies.
No comments:
Post a Comment