• by Les Luchter , December 29, 2023

When Marketing Daily’s health/pharma stories descend down to a man’s nether regions, readership goes up, up, up.

Even as December stories on campaigns for low testosterone, curved penises and penile girth enlargement didn’t make the list, 30% of 2023’s 10 most-read Marketing Daily pharma/health stories concerned male urological issues.

The third most-read, last February’s “Urology Tripleheader,” shared news of campaigns for an enlarged prostate procedure from Teleflex, an earlier Peyronie’s disease (curved penis) push from Endo, and new erectile disfunction (ED) mints from Hims & Hers.

Hims & Hers also figured in our ninth most-read story: a new prescription formulation combining ED drugs with cholesterol-lowering statins that brought the D2C marketer into the cardiovascular space for the first time.

The no. 4 most-read story, “Slightly Smutty-Seeming Slogans Abound In Punny Health, Apparel, RTD Campaigns” included news of D2C underwear marketer Shinesty launching a vasectomy sweepstakes, Orchard Valley Harvest entrusting its nuts to a smart-alecky, nuts-obsessed mascot, Rich Nuts teaming up with the Testicular Cancer Awareness Foundation and, in another testicular cancer drive, The Finnish Long Drink launching a “Take Your Pants Off for Cancer” campaign.

The no. 1 pharma health story of the year, though, contained nothing but family-friendly news. In July’s “P&G Mulls Upping Retail Media Spend,” Jon Moeller, the CPG giant’s president/CEO, told investors that “I generally believe the majority of brand choice is made in a retail environment….I think less brand choice is made sitting on a couch or even driving in a car on the way to a retail establishment. The same is true for online.”

Another story about ad budgeting, “Pharma's Digital Ad Spend Tops 50% For First Time,” was the year’s fifth most-read story. Recapping Standard Media Index data for 2022, the article also reported that total digital ad spend for was $6 billion vs. $5 billion for linear TV.

Besides nether-land and budgets, no other clear trends emerged from an analysis of the most popular pharma/health stories. The rest of the Top 10 list consisted of:

No. 2: “Abbott's Formula Woes Persist, While Its FreeStyle Libre Sales Boom,” recapping the pharma/CPG giant’s full-year 2022 earnings report and analysts call almost one year ago.

No. 6: “Bad Meds' Movie Spoiler: It's A Fake!," also a year ago this month, provided details of a campaign using social media movie posters and movie trailers to promote a fake Danny Trejo film. The campaign, from Safe.Pharmacy, marked a pioneering effort against counterfeit medications.

No. 7: “CeraVe's Social Media Strategy Goes IRL In Big Easy,” about the L'Oréal Group brand reaching attendees at a New Orleans trade confab via a French Quarter parade and getting 625 dermatologists to apply CeraVe Moisturing Cream one after another in a video chain.

No. 8:“Cigna's Rebrand Reflects Changing Health Insurance Industry,” showing how the industry is changing by focusing onCigna Corp getting renamed The Cigna Group and dividing it into Cigna Healthcare (its insurance arm), and Evernorth Health Services (which includes the Express Scripts pharmacy benefit manager).

No. 10: “Shatner Speaks Out For HearingLife.” Just when we thought no celebrities would make the list, veteran actor William Shatner squeezed in with his campaign for a national chain of hearing care centers.

And, just for the record, Shatner came in five places ahead of the second most popular celebrity-based pharma/health story of 2023: Nicole Kidman pitching SeraLabs products. The Kidman story was also the most-shared of Marketing Daily’s pharma/health news articles in 2023.