Who'd Be A Marketer?

By Author: Steven Johnson
Total Articles: 494
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So the boss runs in one morning. He's really excited, holding the print-out of an email. It seems Pfizer have just commissioned the agency to produce five new TV commercials for the winter marketing blitz. The creative team split in their reaction. Half burst into tears. The rest run screaming from the room. One jumps off the roof. Well, alright, I'm making this up. But there would be weeping, wailing and a gnashing of teeth if you worked for an agency winning the contract for TV ads for erectile dysfunction drugs. Just what do you show when you know both cable and terrestrial channels would buckle at the knees if you proposed to show a real erection forming after the guy took a pill?

What makes the role of the marketer a little more difficult is the rise of the action groups representing the "family" and "church". Their role is to complain that the First Amendment permits any ads for erectile dysfunction. Never mind how tasteful and oblique they are. The moment ED creeps on to the screen or is mentioned on a radio show slot, telephone protests are made and emails are blasted out by parents angry that their children have ...
... yet again asked them to explain what an erection is. As a marketer, you know the law is on your side. Your client's money will buy the slots and, so long as you don't push the envelope too far (no reference to an erection intended there), more or less whatever you decide to say or show will be seen and heard. Except the FDA does require a listing of all the major side effects. So, in a thirty second TV slot, you might have ten seconds of message and then a quick scrolling of potential problems (hopefully too fast to read).

So everyone plays around with "family" scenes. A couple can be working in the kitchen. Their under-sink plumbing has sprung a leak - heavy symbolism at work there. As she passes him an adjustable wrench, their eyes meet. Any time, it seems, is the right time and, before you can say, "what about the water running on to the kitchen floor", they have beamed themselves a romantic cave where we are led to believe good things happen because, seconds later, they have dove into separate tubs to wash off the evidence and get ready for beaming back into the kitchen to mop up the flood and finish repairs.

No one ever said ads have to make sense. We all know plumbers. Once they get stuck into a job, nothing distracts them until the pipes and faucet are dry as the proverbial bone. Obviously, there was an air of desperation about the ad agency that day and, short of anything creative to fall back on, they decided Viagra could sell itself no matter what they put on the screen. So there you have it. If you're a man in need of a confidence-lifting drug, what's the name must likely to pop into your head? If you answered, Viagra, the brand recognition is as strong as it was back in 1998 when it was first launched and there ain't nothing going to change that anytime soon.