A Product Borrows a Famous Face, and the Face Becomes the Product

When pharmaceutical advertising goes looking for a metaphor, it usually settles for something bland: a couple walking on a beach, a knowing smile, perhaps a very suggestive bathtub. Ro, the telehealth company, has decided to skip the metaphor altogether and simply cast Megan Fox as the pill itself.

In a new campaign for Ro Sparks, the company's compounded erectile dysfunction medication, Ms. Fox appears in a red catsuit bearing the product's logo. She speaks in first person as the drug, describing her active ingredients — sildenafil and tadalafil, the compounds found in Viagra and Cialis — in what the company describes as a sultry voice. (One assumes the voice was not accidental.)

The approach represents Ro's first celebrity campaign and a notable departure from the clinical sobriety that has long characterized the category. The medication, which dissolves under the tongue and is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is being marketed with the kind of directness more commonly associated with fragrance or sports cars.

Ro's in-house marketing team said the decision to center a woman in the campaign was rooted in consumer research suggesting that men respond more favorably to erectile dysfunction messaging when delivered by a female voice. This is the sort of finding that sounds both surprising and entirely predictable, depending on how long one has been paying attention.

The company acknowledged in a press release that the concept "wouldn't work with anyone else," which is the kind of statement brands make when they have bet heavily on a single famous person and would prefer not to dwell on alternatives.

The campaign began running Thursday across linear television, streaming platforms and paid social media. It will also include a Times Square presence and tear-away posters in New York City beginning October 5 — the latter a format that invites its own set of jokes, though Ro appears to be making those on purpose.

Original story published in adweek.com: "Megan Fox Is the ED Treatment In New Ro Sparks Campaign"