Hims & Hers Hopes Super Bowl Commercial About Obesity Stands Apart From Pack of Snacks
Most Super Bowl commercials aim to entertain. A minute-long Big Game ad from telehealth company Hims & Hers Health might do something very different.
The spot, slated to air during the third quarter of Fox’s February 9 telecast of Super Bowl LIX, uses a collage of video footage to tell viewers that obesity has become a nationwide epidemic, and that drugs used to fight it are far too costly for the average American. The Super Bowl audience will see a lightning-fast array of statistics, scales, measuring tapes and people whose weight is over the norm for healthy living.
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“Welcome to weight loss in America — a $160 billion industry that feeds on our failure,” says the narrator of the commercial. “There are medications that work — but they are priced for profits, not patients.”
Hims & Hers has already launched an effort to sell weight-loss medications directly to consumers, and its spot is no doubt intended to help it stand out to a viewership that has already been inundated with dozens of commercials from Novo Nordisk, the manufacturer of Ozempic and Wegovy, two weight-loss drugs that have a significant presence in ad breaks.
Still, there’s risk in speaking to consumers so bluntly during the Super Bowl, typically the biggest media event of the year in the U.S. Many viewers come to the pigskin classic expecting to laugh or be surprised. They are likely to be inundated by commercials for candy, beer, chips, and other snacks.
When viewers are asked to consider difficult trends, however, sometimes they push back. In 2015, for example, Nationwide Insurance offered a Super Bowl spot with a young narrator who talks about all the fun experiences he won’t get to enjoy, because, as the audience found out, he was dead. Nissan in the same year played the heart-yanking tune “Cat’s in the Cradle” during a commercial about a kid growing up lonely and disaffected as his father tended to other pursuits.
There may be rewards for the bold strategy. The market for obesity treatments could total as much as $200 billion by 2031, according to a September report from Morningstar and Pitchbook, with 16 different drugs poised to launch by 2029 and contributing $70 billion of that figure.
Hims and Hers, small compared to most pharma giants, felt it wouldn’t be able to compete for attention by using more traditional Super Bowl ad concepts, such as celebrities. “We don’t have the budgets of Allstate. We don’t have the budgets of Geico,” says Dan Kenger, chief design officer of Hims & Hers, during an interview. “If you can’t fight the fight, just fight a different fight, you know? And I think that’s what we are trying to do here, trying to zig where everyone else zags.”
The commercial carries a “punk rock” aesthetic, the executive says, and relies on “poking and calling out the system, and being truthful. I think our hope is that it will cut through the noise and that it will resonate with people in a bit of an authentic way.” Viewers will be encouraged to visit digital “landing pages” to get more information on what they might be able to do with the company’s services.
The spot may shock viewers and has the potential to cause debate, as pharmaceutical advertisers in the Super Bowl — a relatively small group — have in the past. In 2016, AstraZeneca ran a spot that discussed treating “opioid-induced constipation,” and its presence indicated just how much of a problem addiction to painkillers is in the U.S. Most drugs ads require disclosure of all side effects, sometimes requiring commercials that can be 90 seconds or more in length. With Fox seeking more than $7 million for a 30-second spot in this year’s event, such costs can be prohibitive.
Hims & Hers typically runs video ads on both TV and streaming, but some of them are of the direct-response variety, meaning the company runs them until they “stop performing” says Kenger. The telehealth company, which also offers therapy and prescriptions for hair loss and erectile dysfunction, also has tried out-of-home advertising and digital marketing, but the Super Bowl marks “the first time we had a spot made just for a specific thing,” he says.
The ad, created in-house, relies on dozens of images found via online searches by Hims & Hers personnel. An outside agency that specializes in getting licenses and permission for so-called “found footage” was employed as part of the efforts, says Kenger. The back half of the commercial, showing actual people who stand to benefit from the company’s services, was shot in Atlanta.
The company may face some hurdles, because consumers can’t just click a button to get weight-loss medications. They will need to consult with a physician as part of the process.
“We don’t expect that everyone to go through a telehealth visit in the third quarter,” says Kenger. Instead, there is a desire for more consumers to know about Hims & Hers. “I think this might be the first time a lot of people are being introduced to us,” he acknowledges, and “we want to come up as a bit of an underdog, a smaller company in the healthcare industry. We are very young, and we are doing innovative things. And I think if people lead with that and understand that we’re a cool-looking brand that that is modern and understands how people want to deal with these conditions today, I think that’s the win for us.”
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