What the Hims Super Bowl announcement really sells

THe announced that HIMS & HIS health plans to be broadcast during the Super Bowl come to you with a fast -firing visual overload – a giant giant belly, bare feet on ladders, X -ray results, sweet sodas, a pie in The oven, a measurement strip said a waist – all with a frenzied hip -hop rhythm of “This is America” ​​by Childish Gambino. A disembodied voice warns: “This system was not designed to help us. It was built to keep us sick and stuck. The Super Bowl spot is a surprisingly dark and politicized way to go to the last initiative of the company: Selling weight loss drugs to women and men. The announcement also marks a pivot for the familiar television company known as Hims, which has become important a little less than a decade ago, marketing the leaflet of hair loss and medicines in drugs in Erectile dysfunction for men.

Since the hips foundation in 2017, the company has been on a very special future, in which the word patient is interchangeable with customer. The HIMS brand has started people to see both their daily health and natural age processes as problems that can be modified and optimized – as if it had updated the operational system for the human body. Now, while the national mood and the commercial environment change, Hims’ message undergoes its own restart.

The restoration of male anxiety can transport a long way: if you are a man in their thirties, like me, the advertisements featuring the signature brand of Hims – a hip police on a clear background – have become essential on Instagram and Facebook. Hims sells all kinds of pills, supplements, shampoos, sprays and serums. At the heart of the Hims field, the fact that many people, especially younger men, regularly avoid the doctor; A recent Cleveland clinic investigation have found that less than a third of men in the millennium and generation Z receive annual physics. Hims markets the experience of Télésanté as a welcome alternative. After completing an online admission form and communicating with an authorized supplier of his group of partners on hair loss, for example, you might have prescribed a HIMS brand Researcher. Such an offer, announced at $ 35 or more per month, contains Minoxidil, a drug that struck the market for the first time in the 1980s under the name of Rogaine, combined with finasteride, that most people know under the name of Propecia, more supplements.

On platforms such as Instagram, under the logic of targeted advertising, if you dwell on an ad for an additional hair growth, similar announcements will follow. In my daily tapping and scrolling the application, HIMS advertisements started to appear everywhere – and finally I am in my head. During last year, my self-interrogation began: How long has my hair had this peak? Has my forehead have always been so … giant?

“Marketing work is to influence behavior, and sometimes it means identifying problems you may not know, or underlying insecurity that can prevent you from losing social currency on the road,” said Marcus Collins, professor of marketing at the University of Michigan, told me. Former advertising manager, Collins said that he too had been bombed by Hims advertisements. He could see how Hims tried to “rise to being a shortcut which represents a hair loss solution to be a solution for masculinity, to be a outlet for himFor what it means for virility.

In December, after my dermatologist examined my scalp during an annual skin screening, I timidly asked him about him. She rolled her eyes. When we have evolved towards the discussion of processing options, she also warned me that a potential side effect of using oral finasteride for hair growth is a decrease in libido, an erectile dysfunction, or both.

After a few minutes of discussion, a current solution seemed to be a better bet than the pill. But there is nothing special in itself. “If you wish, I can simply call a Minoxidil-Finasteride solution to your pharmacy,” said my doctor. “It will be cheaper.” She saw me as her patient, not as a buyer of electronic commerce. However, the fact that I asked questions about him made me feel like the omnipresent marketing of the company worked on me. A minute, I reported, checking it for Hims Biotine Biotin ranges; The next minute, I was practically at the checkout, by ordering myself.

When I spoke with Mike Chi, Commercial Director of Hims, he looked hard at words such as normalization And empower. I told him that the constant dam of Hims advertisements made me feel almost the victim of intimidation to do something about my hair. Chi disagreed with my characterization but recognized the high volume of the company’s announcements. The objective of his campaigns, however, was “to create an emotional link with a customer,” he said. “And to create this personal connection with a customer, we often have to have various messages to find the path that connects with them.”

ECome, however The omnipresent marketing campaign of Hims has proven to be effective in exploiting male insecurity, the treatment of male vulnerabilities with generic drugs has its commercial limits, and Hims faces increasing competition in space. A company called RO (formerly Roman) has a model similar to that of Hims; Amazon has an online pharmacy and remote chart. In recent years, Hims has gradually extended its activities to a wider range of treatments for men and women: antidepressants, anti -annual drugs – and, as indicated by the Super Bowl spot, drug loss drugs Weight that include a version of the semaglutide, the active ingredient in the Ozempic and the Wegovy. The semaglutide is currently on the list of FDA medication lots, a status that allows Hims and other companies to sell their own composed versions. (Ozempic manufacturers urge the FDA to declare the end of the semaglutide shortage.) Going down the Peptide-1-type compound (GLP-1) is a daring gambit for Hims. The market for a monthly offer of hair growth pills or erectile dysfunction is limited to men in certain age groups, but the perpetual quest for slimming and heat transcends demography.

According to some measures, Hims expansion has succeeded. The company has accumulated more than 2 million regular customers and has reached a market capitalization of $ 9 billion. Last February, the company announced its profitable first quarter. Marketing represented 45% of HIMS operating expenses during the third quarter of last year. Peter Fader, marketing professor at the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania, told me that such a percentage was “absolutely high” with regard to typical marketing costs in a successful operation. “And it’s not lasting either,” he added. “Many people question (the long-term viability of the company),” he said, but he also congratulated it to “ride over time”.

Although HIMS shares increased by 65% ​​in the last month, investment experts seem divided on reason. Some seem confident in the value of the company’s prospects. Others, like the host of CNBC, Jim Cramer, suspect that the price of the action in the fault of Hims is the effect of a “short pressure”, in which the bet of speculators on a strong future decrease increases temporarily the course of action.

Even the announcement of the Super Bowl wears Hims traps. Friday, Senators Dick Durbin, Democrat, and Roger Marshall, a republican, sent a letter to the acting FDA commissioner Sara Brenner saying that the “RISCS” of HIMS “risks in terms of“ trompe risks by omitting information on safety or side effect ”on an injectable weight loss drug that appears in the MA. In response, a spokesperson for the Hims told me in an email: “We respect the existing law and we are impatient to continue working with the congress and the new administration to repair the broken health system.” The person continued to involve that the criticisms of the company defend the status quo. “The announcement calls for industries that are part of a system that does not favor the health of the Americans,” said the spokesperson. “And now these industries are asking to close the announcement.”

Hims now does business in a world where a concept such as “Make America Healthy Again” quickly migrated a marginal political movement to the center of government. And although Maha purists can avoid pharmaceutical solutions, some potential customers could be sympathetic to Hims’ pretension to be an ally against “the system”. The message to a single full volume in the Super Bowl Sims is that All is rigged against you – you overweight, making you unhealthy – and you are right to be crazy about it.

The company could bet that in a political moment when talking about needing more “Male energy” Plays a disproportionate part, this atmosphere changes in its marketing strategy which will help it reach an even larger audience. Hims made its own recipes for male energy; Now, he thinks he can do even better to push remedies to help you regain control of the elites and make you feel good again. It is daring, perhaps cynical and probably very effective.