The game starts up and I duck the subject for a while, until the next commercial break, which features a commercial for Levitra. Unbelievable. Does Broken-Johnson Syndrome afflict all Yankees' fans, or just most? I'm a pretty diehard Yankees supporter, but if this is the ultimate price, I would even pull for Boston.To be sure, Levitra knows what its doing by advertising to baseball fans, especially those likely to hail from New York. After all, most of these fans are middle aged, New Yorkers are innate stress crucibles, and you can't feel terribly libidinous when you're losing to the lowly Cleveland Indians 22-4 on a half-a-billion-dollar roster. But most Yankees fans? Please.*
A look at the numbers. The statistics say ED afflicts one out of ten men, but more telling, those numbers shoot up to 39% at age 40 and 65% over the age of 65. And baseball fans are aging rapidly. According to a 2002 Gallup poll, about 50% of every age group between 18 and 65 self-identifies as a baseball fan, but the 18-49 age group has fallen ten percentage points while the 65+ group has gained ten percentage points in the last half century. If the statistics hold, that means 32.5% of men over 65 - about five million people - are watching baseball and paying particularly close attention to the ED ads. If you multiplied across the whole middle aged baseball-watching spectrum, Levitra could be looking at an audience of around 15 million men.
That's a great market, and New York specifically is a potential jackpot. It's not just the stressing, it's the smoking. Secondhand smoke exposure is insanely high for New Yorkers, according to this very recent study that found up to 57% of nonsmoking New Yorkers had internalized significant levels of residual secondhand smoke. Smoke - even the secondhand stuff - can constrict blood flow, so that a man who smokes more than 1 pack per day increases his chances of ED by 50%. That's a not-insignificant slice of the Big Apple.
So to answer Goldberg specifically: There's no way that ED cases are five times higher among Yankees fans than the general public, but baseball's aging population combined with the stress and smoking factors inherent to New York might make it especially prevalent among its home fans. With that in mind, maybe Levitra et al should spend a little more on stadium sponsoring and less on commercial ads, if only to give life to the "Earth Dissection" fib.
*I am a Yankees fan.
Nice market analysis and interesting conclusion about how ED companies should target stadium advertising. What would be even more interesting to see those ED advertisers that rely so much on metaphors put together a still photo ad for a stadium. Actually, never mind, we've seen that already with the subway 5 dollar footlong billboards.
On an unrelated point, I love it when baseball related articles include an asterisk...so appropriate.
To that point, I'd like to add the observation of a colleague, who noted:
What if people pay attention to baseball *because* they have ED? “Men experiencing erectile dysfunction often report increasing anxiety, loss of self-esteem, lack of self-confidence, tension and difficulty in the relationship with their partner,” or so says the MMHC.
Sounds a lot like members of several fantasy baseball leagues I’ve been in.
Goldberg closed his comments, but... FWIW, I don't remember seeing
too many of these ads during Red Sox games*, though I've only watched one regular-season game so far this year so I probably should hold off on suggesting that y'all reconsider your loyalties. They were CONSTANTLY showing during afternoon NFL broadcasts in the Boston market this past season, however, and explaining "ED" to my Patriots-addled 9-yr-old was a little awkward. (Gosh, what might Yankees fans and Pats fans have in common?)
IMPOTENCE – A NATURAL CURE FOR MEN &WOMEN THAT IS CLINICALLY PROVEN?
Because of the wealth of bogus products available on the internet which are supposed to cure erectile dysfunction (impotence) in men, it is difficult to believe much if any of what you read today. We are now under the impression that the little blue pills you can buy on the internet & get on prescription from your local GP are often found to be fake! Such confusion would even trouble the little grey cells of Hercule Poirot himself.
The secret of any such internet search is to define your request to use keywords that really narrow down the final selection. In the case of impotence, use words like clinical trial, tested and proven solution each time adding in impotence.
Whilst there are many internet companies selling performance enhancing pills & herbs or even herbs in pill form, all are suggestive or use heavy handed implication to make you believe they have the elixir of life, a cure for all ills. The vast majority are little more than a bottle of snake oil under another label.
My second piece of advice is take time to read the claims and documentation offered ignoring the sexy pictures and suggestive copy designed in the main to appeal to the male machismo. Dig down and read the facts available on any site offering products that improve your bedtime mind set.
If this sounds like a lot of work, then you probably don’t have a serious problem with the strength of blood flow into your sex organs. If like 1 in every 5 men and a slightly smaller number of women in the world today you can be found wanting in the arousal department come bedtime, the recent discovery of Butea Superba is important news. Available on the internet in pill form under the brand name HealthyED this non chemical herbal solution has been tested in clinical trials and proven to improve performance in over 80% of all those that take it.
So you could trawl through the net via Google search, then carefully read the documentation and decipher the validity of the mountain of claims and counter claims made. Or you could just enter HealthyED into Google search , saving a whole heap on time and effort. Either way happy hunting.