Hard Sell, Soft Sell: Men Read Viagra Ads

Viagra (known generically as sildenafil citrate) was released in New Zealand in 1998. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertisements represented Viagra as a panacea for men's sexual difficulties. The Research Medicines Industry Association of New Zealand (2000) claims that the Viagra DTC campaign removed the stigma associated with erectile dysfunction. However, in this paper we analyse participants' views that the advertisements also transform cultural anxieties in ways that proliferate ‘performance’ (and other) anxieties in new forms and for increasingly broad groups of people. This paper draws on material from a reception study of male viewers' readings/interpretations of popular cultural representations of Viagra in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2002. The participants frame both the advertisements and the television program My Family as ‘peddling fear’ about sexual performance, and thus potentially ‘establishing a need ‘for a new drug. As one participant said: ‘Pfizer wants young men to start worrying about these things, stress creates erectile dysfunction, off you go.’ This indicates a need to consider how the critical responses of viewers/readers to advertising, particularly DTC drug advertising, may reflect the ‘exploitation’ of advertising by its audience in a way that simultaneously critiques a commodity (Viagra) and its associated cultural practices (creating erections through a pharmacological ‘solution’), as suggested by recent arguments in the media/cultural studies literature.