Middle aged men speaking in the Viagra language...

Pfizer the world’s biggest drug company is embarking on a novel campaign to promote their erectile dysfunction drug Viagra. The advertising which involves the original use of a fifteen second TV advertisement is extremely clever in that it plays on the worldwide recognition of the word Viagra and the entire advertisement is spoken in a completely made up language. The language which is named” The International Language of Viagra”, is completely unintelligible apart from the word Viagra popping up every now and again.

The TV advertisement features middle aged men speaking in the Viagra language in different situations and by using expressive body language the people watching the adverts know what their conversations are about. The big drug firms in the United States have been under fire recently from what industry regulators called “irresponsible advertising”. They have been using advertisements which have a certain amount of “nudge nudge wink wink” in them which make erectile dysfunction drugs like Viagra look like they are fun, jokey drugs as opposed to serious drugs to treat a serious medical condition.

The Food and Drug Administration for example have previously told Pfizer to stop running an advertisement that had the strap line “… remember the guy who wanted to spend the whole honeymoon indoors”,  and another one that had the line “ remember the guy who used to be called Wild Thing”. The clever idea of using the Viagra language was that it did not talk about erectile dysfunction or sexual problems but just played on the worldwide recognition of the brand Viagra. These adverts are known as reminder advertisements, and as the condition of erectile dysfunction was not mentioned the side effects of the drug do not need to be mentioned under United States law.

Nevertheless this advertisement is likely to annoy some industry regulators who will argue that yet again Pfizer have found a way to trivialize erectile dysfunction and undermine its seriousness. Pfizer are under a lot of pressure to keep their market share as Cialis and Levitra are becoming more popular. Viagra sold 1.7 billion dollars worldwide in 2006.