• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, July 13, 2023

 

Biohm, a supplement brand that combines probiotics, fungi and digestive enzymes, spent its first six years as a D2C marketer largely touting the scientific bonafides of co-founder Dr. Mahmoud Ghannoum.

After all, he reportedly coined the very word “mycobiome” some 40 years ago, referring to the fungal parts of microbiomes -- those colonies of microorganisms, also including good bacteria, that, as the brand explains, “inhabit, protect, and nurture our bodies.”

But, with Biohm last week entering brick-and-mortar sales in a big way via Walmart, the brand has a new medical star: “Dr. Stevenson,” identified in a commercial as a “fictional gut health expert who doesn’t exist.”

“Without proper support, eating the wrong foods can feel like turning your bowels into a volcano,” says Dr. Stevenson in a funny infomercial-like spot as he demonstrates his point with a “dramatic recreation” via a rather graphic model of an erupting human behind.

That’s the most popular of three humorous ads that began testing two weeks ago via a paid campaign on Meta platforms, Dr. Ghannoun’s son and Biohm’s other co-founder and chief executive office Afif Ghannoum tells Pharma & Health Insider.

The other two spots are perhaps even more graphic and risqué: “Maybe you just want to sit on your partner’s face once in a while,” a sitcomy woman muses in our personal favorite. “But the pizza you ate is going to give your husband irreversible lifelong trauma.”

Another spot riffs on uncomfortable sex.

Together, the three spots, which all end with their characters gloating about beating bloating, have already helped increase online impressions 73%, visitors 138%, and sessions 130%, Ghannoum says.

Indeed, he tells us, these ads have seen the most resonating response by far of any of the brand’s advertising and marketing efforts – which have included “millions of dollars on Facebook advertising over the last few years, PR partnerships like Goop” and appearances on shopping channels like QVC.

With the Meta test ending, the campaign will soon add YouTube, then maybe OTT TV, and even later the potential of traditional TV, Ghannoum says.

Biohm chose England’s Dirty Jack to do the creative for the campaign because of the agency’s skill in quirky campaigns.

In being ridiculous to get attention, Biohm is “borrowing a page out of Liquid Death and other brands…that are chopping up very traditional old school categories,” says Ghannoum.

In Biohm’s case, he explains, “supplement ads are everywhere. They’re very boring. They all look the same.” This includes “very vanilla ads from the stalwarts, the major CPG companies, that are in the style of ads they’ve been running for three decades on cable television.”

Other brands are using influencer-created content, but with “a lot of them hawking a number of products,” he says they’re becoming “less and less influential.”

Walmart is not Biohm’s first brick-and-mortar retailer -- that honor goes back four months to healthy chain Sprouts -- but launching in the giant mainstream chain takes the brand to a whole new level.

Indeed, says Ghannoum, “We went from zero to over 10,000 stores just over the last six months. While direct-to-consumer has been really in vogue the last few years, nothing quite matches the power of a retailer like Walmart,” he adds.

With Walmart, Ghannoum says Biohm is “expanding beyond our traditional first mover audience that will try a new product, a new ingredient. That’s a fantastic consumer, but we’d love to be able to impact and help a broader audience. In order to do that, you have to be able to reach that consumer with messaging that resonates.”

On that note, we’ll leave the final words to Dr. Stevenson. Biohm, he concludes, is “the one and only truly superior scientific probiotic that tells your digestive plaque to go f**k itself.”