It’s no mystery who’s responsible for the first-ever billboards in the U.S. to show a vibrator: Sexual health devicemaker MysteryVibe has claimed credit for the ads, with an assist from healthcare marketing agency Havas Lynx.
As part of its “Happy Menopause” campaign, MysteryVibe’s bold billboards are emblazoned with the slogan, “Orgasm now comes with a medical prescription,” overlaid on a picture of the company’s Crescendo 2 device. Finer print dotting the posters notes that MysteryVibe offers “the only HSA/FSA eligible intimacy devices,” directs them to MysteryVibe’s website and shares the “#happymenopause” tag.
The billboards went up Monday in central Manhattan, where they’ll stay for a week, closing out Women’s History Month, according to Havas’ announcement this week.
“Women’s sexual well-being and pleasure remains a whispered subject—especially when you add menopause into the mix,” said Shared Tash Loeb Mills, the agency’s director of planning. “We’ve had enough of it, and what better way to get people talking, than with a massive orgasm! That’s what everyone wants, after all.”
Rounding out the “Happy Menopause” campaign are additional educational materials, backed by research from Joyce Harper, Ph.D., a professor of reproductive science at University College London’s Institute for Women’s Health.
The campaign is aimed at raising awareness around the medical benefits of masturbation and orgasm, especially for those going through menopause, who may see symptoms like vaginal dryness and atrophy improve from the blood flow-boosting “vibrational therapy” of the Crescendo 2, according to Havas’ release.
“We are incredibly lucky to have been a part of many ‘firsts’ in women’s health over the past decade,” MysteryVibe CEO Soumyadip Rakshit said in the announcement. “Not only are we honored to support a campaign that enables women to overcome taboos around menopause, we know that discomfort shouldn’t be normalized.”
The “Happy Menopause” campaign follows another menopause-focused push from MysteryVibe that went live late last year and included billboards—sans photos of the company’s devices—with slogans like, “A menopause prescription you’ll be happy to take. Over and over again.”
MysteryVibe markets its vibrators as being rooted in medical research and among the few sex toys to be registered with the FDA as medical devices.
Studies published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine around the Crescendo 2, for example, show that using the device resulted in a fivefold improvement in pain scores for women with genito-pelvic pain/penetration disorder and that it can also significantly improve symptoms of female sexual arousal disorders when used in combination with cognitive behavioral therapy.