Pele may have been the original erectile dysfunction ambassador, but the Brazilian legend swore he never needed Viagra.
On December 29, 2022, the three-time World Cup winner died at the age of 82. He is the only player in history to have won three World Cups and to have scored 1281 goals.
And, as if his talent and prestige weren’t enough, he leaves this world as the first ever ambassador for erectile dysfunction. However, this does not imply that he ever ingested one of the infamous blue tablets.
“I haven’t used it, not yet,” Pele laughed when asked if he had ever used it in 2011. “My contract was to tell people to use it with prescription not that I started to use it.”
“At the beginning I was surprised [to be approached by Pfizer] and in Brazil a lot of friends of mine told me to be careful and to find out what is the real message, what is the real campaign,” Pele said as quoted by the Independent in 2003. “But when I was in New York I got all the information on the situation all over the world and I thought that it is good to be part of this.”
Pele began working for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals in 2002 to promote erectile dysfunction awareness. For the company, he travelled the globe giving speeches on the challenges that tens of thousands, if not millions, of men had to face.
Working with Pfizer, Pele’s major goal was to inspire men to talk openly about a topic that was typically highly awkward to discuss. “In the campaign, we discuss taboo topics. Men don’t talk about their problems all that much. This is not cultural as I had previously believed. In Japan, we launched the campaign.
“The Japanese are very different to Brazilians or Europeans. They were different, but the same. This problem of ED is universal. It doesn’t matter about the culture.
“To me that was a very good experience because I thought when we started that Latins would be different to Scandinavians because they are hot, they have, as we say, the carnival, whereas the Scandinavians are cold. But the same problem is all over the world.”
