Many people who suffer from IBS-D aren’t getting a diagnosis because they’re hesitant to talk about diarrhea, gas, and bloating—even with their doctor. We needed a creative approach that broke the taboo around these unmentionable symptoms, and would be memorable enough to stand out in the big game. Enter Gut Guy, our anthropomorphic intestine. He could actually make something disgusting and smelly be cute instead. With his innocent persona, Gut Guy could be skittish and tortured or whimsical and curious, depending on whether we were using him as shorthand for symptoms or relief. In the Super Bowl commercial, we did both, using him to dramatize the worst possible scenario to be hit with diarrhea and the feeling of confidence and downright swagger at having subsequently conquered the condition.

Our 60-second commercial ran during the 3rd quarter of the Super Bowl, immediately reaching more than 25 million women in our target audience. After the Super Bowl, we continued to run a shortened 45-second version of the commercial on a mix of broadcast, syndication, and cable shows relevant to our target audience. Within 2 months, we had reached 71% of our target audience, with an average frequency of 3.6 views

Gut Guy quickly became a cultural phenomenon. Traffic to the website spiked immediately after the commercial aired. If compared with daily site traffic, the hour after airing would have ranked as the 2nd strongest day in 2016. Natural site visits were up 462% compared with the 2016 daily average. Social media conversation about Gut Guy drove millions of Twitter impressions. And news outlets from the high-brow (The New York Times) to the low-brow (Entertainment Weekly) to the satirical (The Onion) featured Gut Guy that night. Jimmy Fallon even talked about him on The Tonight Show, and called it his favorite Super Bowl ad in his opening monologue the next night. All of this buzz drove a lot of people to a new way to get relief for their symptoms. 94% of Xifaxan prescriptions written the week after the Super Bowl ad aired were new prescriptions.