Hims & Hers threw a Super Bowl Hail Mary that landed incomplete. Now the receiver is on the sidelines.
Hims & Hers did get increased attention from the ad, but the product it showcased for millions of people is no longer at the center of its business model.
Hims & Hers’ Super Bowl ad attracted controversy, but it also led to a spike in web searches and drove a bump in traffic to the tele-pharmacy’s site.
The commercial focused on weight-loss drugs, though less than two weeks after it was shown to millions of people, the Food and Drug Administration took semaglutide off its shortage list, meaning Hims & Hers can no longer sell copies of Ozempic or Wegovy. The company now has to rethink its strategy on weight-loss drugs.
The ad also ruffled Big Pharma’s feathers, with Novo Nordisk (which makes Ozempic and Wegovy) buying full-page ads in The New York Times and USA Today the Monday after the Super Bowl, questioning the safety of compounded drugs. As Hims & Hers figures out how to move forward, one wrong move could potentially trigger a lawsuit from the Danish pharmaceutical giant.
A Super Bowl ad reportedly cost $8 million per 30-second slot, and Hims & Hers’ ad was one minute long, suggesting it likely cost them about $16 million before production and agency costs.
The company did not immediately respond to a request to comment, including an inquiry about much the ad cost it. Hims & Hers typically spends about half its revenue on marketing, with nearly $679 million spent on marketing last year.
Google searches of “Hims & Hers” spiked on the day of the Super Bowl, according to Google Trends data. But that didn’t necessarily translate to sustained traffic to the company’s website.
Data from Similarweb shows that web traffic to hims.com and forhers.com spiked the day of the Super Bowl, but on a month-over-month basis was less in February than in January, which is typical. (The domain forhims.com also redirects to hims.com, though its traffic is much lower.)
