An ESPN story got some attention on Twitter last night, dredging up the old urology marketing ploy of promoting vasectomies for men who are lying around watching March Madness and the NCAA basketball tournament for days at a time anyway. Actually, ESPN just trotted out a story they published 2 years ago and called it “Snip and Roll.” The network included a phone interview with a man who “took one for the team,” as the network put it. The story claimed that, “In the last several years, urologists across the country have reported increases of as much as 50 percent in the number of vasectomies scheduled in the days leading to the NCAA tournament.”
The re-posting of the two-year old story on the eve of March Madness beginning again led to some Twitter activity Wednesday night.
Pitt urologist Benjamin Davies simply tweeted, “911 Carrera is all.” As in the Porsche 911 Carrera. As in…more vasectomies…more urologists improving their ride.
I joined the vas deferens discussion by pointing out how long this has been going on – that I’ve written about it twice in the past 6 years:
A Salt Lake City TV station shows a billboard basketball-vasectomy promotion.
Another Salt Lake station showed another aspect of the marketing campaign, including basketball-sized ice packs for the rehab period.
Basketball March Madness….Baseball spring training….golfing’s The Masters. Urology seems to be vasectomy-vying for March marketing honors.
Maybe dermatologists will use toenail fungus to try to win April or May marketing honors in anticipation of beach-and-pool season.
Note: A blog for The American Journal of Kidney Diseases has created “NephMadness” – “an homage to the NCAA Basketball Tournament, March Madness, but while the basketball tournament seeds the top ranked basketball teams, we use some of the most important, newest, and controversial concepts in nephrology. … We expect that some of the concepts will be novel, even to academically minded nephrologists, so we provide deep, fully referenced, guides to each of the concepts.” If you’re more into nephrology than urology, you may want to fill out your brackets.
Addendum on March 20:
As we approach the second round of the tournament, a second round of Vas Madness ads from Dr. Edward Schloss on Twitter (@EJSMD):
Opinions on other issues in news, journals, PR, advertising, marketing
A week like this should teach you how/what to ignore: #COVID19 news & PR about studies in monkeys & mice...about studies of dishonesty & BMI…and about rating attractiveness of women with endometriosis!!! https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2020/08/crazy-week-of-pr-news-on-studies-should-teach-us-how-what-to-ignore/
“to project certainty where it simply does not exist is communication malpractice at a time like this and with a public health issue like this.” @garyschwitzer on @ContentScience https://review.content-science.com/covering-covid-19-vaccine-news-part-two-from-the-publisher-of-health-news-review/
In case you weren't aware: Prestigious journalism organizations and outlets take money from pharma, @garyschwitzer https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2020/08/drug-company-influence-on-journalism/#.XyrYGZeNvXA.twitter @HealthNewsRevu
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