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The little blue pill is the subject of more scam ads from ad agencies than any other, except for, maybe, WonderBra.
What happen is this: "funny" layouts for Viagra are easy to make, production-wise. Most everybody in the world knows what a Viagra pill looks like: there's your sign-off— no company name (Pfizer) or even product name is needed.
So, hopefully in their spare time, and not while they're billing other clients, teams of copywriters and art directors "jam" on the most outrageous Viagra ads they can think of. Often their boss creative director is complicit is this scam process.
After the best campaign is settled on, the final comps are made to look as legit as possible. In many countries that are not America, pharmaceutical advertising regulations are much more lax; sometimes no legalize is required in layouts.
Then the creative team gets out their Cannes ad festival entry forms, fills it out as properly as possible, adding in as many account executives names as possible, and maybe a publication or venue or spot where the ad never ran, and submit it.
Until, really, the last couple of years, Cannes was let's say less than rigorous about screening for scam ads for one simple reason: money. The entry fees are ridiculously high compared to other awards shows — about $500 for each print ad for each category it's entered into. And Cannes is not a non-profit. So, they not-so-secretly didn't want to discourage scam ad entries.
Almost every year, for the past 10 years, I've spied another bullshit Viagra campaign that some ad agency (usually Thai, Indian, Chinese, or South American) tried to slip by the less than on-the-ball screeners at Cannes.
Here are some of those ads through the years.
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