The ads are running so often and in so many forums that the drug companies say they feel compelled to change pitches frequently, to keep them fresh. On April 15, Bayer and GlaxoSmithKline relinquished the aggressively macho posture they had taken since introducing Levitra. The old campaign was fraught with symbols: a man failing, then succeeding, at tossing a football through a tire swing.

In its place, Levitra released a commercial created by the Quantum Group in Parsippany, N.J., a unit of the WPP Group. The ad focused on a woman's sultry testimonial to Levitra's effect on her man: "Let's just say he notices a difference in the experience, like a 'we should do this more often' difference." If that is too subtle, she adds that Levitra gives her guy the "quality of response that he wants, time and again."

The ads may be oblique, but the strategy is not. "We give men the quality erections they want," said David Pernock, senior vice president for pharmaceuticals marketing at GlaxoSmithKline in Philadelphia.

....TASTE is why Grey chose his-and-hers bathtubs rather than a shared hot tub. "We don't want to put Cialis that close to the sex act," Mr. Beebe said. "You won't see a lot of sexual innuendo: a train going through a tunnel, a football going through a beat-up tire."

That jest, clearly aimed at Levitra, points up another way the brands' fight mimics more traditional consumer-product skirmishes: rivals take potshots at one another. For example, the commercial run by Levitra for the Super Bowl featured Mr. Ditka suggesting that football is superior to baseball, a sport that Viagra has sponsored.

"It would be lovely to see them use more humor," said Ms. Simmons of Tierney Communications. She said she was bothered by how many of the ads so far have concentrated "on the man figuring out how to get 'it' done." Humor not only lightens the mood, she added, but also acknowledges that "men and women have been talking to each other about sex in veiled terms for centuries."

One idea she offered gratis to the drug makers: hire the comedian George Carlin to discuss erectile dysfunction in the context of his routine about "the seven words you can't say on television."

"He'd be hysterical," Ms. Simmons said, "and he's the right age." [NY Times] With this much money available and at stake, no one is going to let something like "taste" get in the way of marketing to the 87% of wobbly wang sufferers who haven't seen the pharmaceutical light. And we all get to go along for the ride.