The Hims & Hers Super Bowl advertisement is "illegal" due to the lack of a required disclaimer, according to a former consultant for major food and pharmaceutical companies, adding the ad's theme ripped off RFK Jr.'s "Make America Healthy Again" movement while promoting GLP-1 medications.
Calley Means, the founder of TrueMed, a company that enables tax-free spending on food and exercise, wrote on X:
This ad is illegal. Ads pushing drugs must communicate the risks of the product. This drug has pronounced side effects - but this ad promotes easy prescriptions for millennials as some kind of counter-cultural moral good. A patient advocacy group should sue - happy to help.
This ad is illegal.
— Calley Means (@calleymeans) February 8, 2025
Ads pushing drugs must communicate the risks of the product.
This drug has pronounced side effects - but this ad promotes easy prescriptions for millennials as some kind of counter-cultural moral good.
A patient advocacy group should sue - happy to help. https://t.co/XlyAevchMY
The Hims & Hers ad is themed around "Sick of the System" and criticizes the $160 billion weight loss industry. The ad shows a "life-changing" solution: affordable weight-loss drugs while completely ignoring the true core pillar of MAHA: eating clean, healthy food and exercising.
Means continued:
The fact that they are co-opting MAHA messaging is cynical BS. We don't have an obesity crisis because of a lack of Ozempic. It is because pharmaceutical companies have rigged out incentives to profit when we are sick.
The fact that they are co-opting MAHA messaging is cynical BS.
— Calley Means (@calleymeans) February 8, 2025
We don't have an obesity crisis because of a lack of Ozempic.
It is because pharmaceutical companies have rigged out incentives to profit when we are sick.
Bad move @wearehims
On Friday, the New York Times reported that Senators Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, and Roger Marshall, Republican of Kansas, sent a letter to the acting head of the Food and Drug Administration warning the ad "risks misleading patients."
"Nowhere in this promotion is there any side-effect disclosure, risk or safety information as would be typically required in a pharmaceutical advertisement," the senators wrote.
However, a Hims & Hers spokesperson told CNBC in a statement:
"We are complying with existing law and are happy to continue working with Congress and the new Administration to fix the broken health system and ensure that patients have choices for quality, safe, and affordable healthcare."
Hims & Hers' marketing department quite possibly made a bad move by attempting to hijack the MAHA movement by promoting weight-loss medications. MAHA advocates for clean, nutritious food—not low-cost, experimental weight-loss drugs as a solution to America's broken healthcare system
Let's not forget this about Hims & Hers...
We wonder what MAHA's Nicole Shanahan has to say about this ad...
