Le Wand Celebrates Women’s History Month With New Commercial Starring Model Veronica Campos

If anyone understands the cost of the stigmatization and censoring of sexual wellness and pleasure products, it’s Alicia Sinclair Rosen.

The sex educator and 20-year veteran of the sex toy space is the founder and CEO of COTR Inc., parent company of sexual lifestyle brands b-Vibe, Le Wand and The Cowgirl. While the bootstrapped brands’ products are sold worldwide, promoting them to consumers has been tricky. In January, the Instagram profile for b-Vibe, COTR’s butt-focused sexy toy range, was shut down, possibly for good. The brand had amassed almost 19,000 Instagram followers. 

“We don’t know why, no one responds to us,” says Sinclair Rosen. “This is the third, maybe fourth time that we’ve gone through that with this account. Advertising has never been an option for us on Instagram. On TikTok, we’ve tried probably three to four posts, and every single one of them is flagged and taken down. Social media has become an increasingly unfriendly place for us. We’ve had a tremendously difficult time being able to familiarize folks with who we are.”

The social media treatment the business has faced stands in stark contrast to the treatment of other companies in the adult ecosystem like Pornhub. The adult content platform has a verified Instagram account with nearly 13 million followers. Sinclair Rosen says, “I’m not even judging folks, everyone has a right to that, but it is such a male gaze versus female. It’s just normal. This is the double standard that we continuously run into in everything.”

Social media advertising roadblocks force sexual wellness companies to be creative, and Sinclair Rosen was inspired to try something new for Le Wand’s latest campaign. The brand, maker of premium sexual pleasure toys for internal and external use, is celebrating Women’s History Month with a 45-second commercial that spotlights evolving attitudes about pleasure throughout the decades, from the 1970s to now. 

Produced in collaboration with creative agency Moss Park at a cost about $100,000, the commercial features the brand’s titular wand massager as the star and model Veronica Campos’ companion. It transitions from secretly being a hidden under the bed and in a drawer to becoming an empowering accoutrement that deserves a place of pride in a person’s bedroom and life. The ad will be on YouTube and out-of-home video displays in New York City, which Sinclair has found to be the city friendliest to her company’s promotional efforts. Le Wand is careful in the commercial not to be too explicit about what its wand massager does. 

“Advertising is incredibly difficult for our industry, notoriously hard,” laments Sinclair Rosen. “We can’t talk about sex when we’re selling sex, interestingly enough. So, one of the key themes [of the commercial] is taking control of the narrative and making a commercial that is about a vibrator, but we use power as the way to talk about it.”

Sinclair Rosen explains YouTube is a safer bet for sexual pleasure brand advertising like Le Wand’s because the long-form video site separates content into various different explicit categories. “We are lucky because our content falls into a non-sexually explicit category,” she says. “There’s nothing overtly sexual in the commercial. That’s why I think it’s so clever. It’s really just about power.”

The commercial’s launch is followed today by the release of Le Wand’s 2022 Feel My Power wand. Since 2019, the brand has celebrated every International Women’s Day by collaborating with artists on special-edition versions of its original Le Wand in what it refers to as its “sex-positive Supreme drop.” This year, Le Wand partnered with Los Angeles illustrator and designer Kelly Malka, an artist-cum-activist whose work raises awareness about mental health, gender equality and socio-political issues, on the $199 Feel My Power wand adorned with her illustrations. An 8-piece set with it includes a branded travel bag, postcards, key chain, embroidery kit and stickers.

Le Wand has certainly been feeling its power lately. Sinclair Rosen reports the brand has experienced “explosive growth” in excess of 100% annually for four years until 2021. “With the law of large numbers catching up to us in 2021, we saw a more normalized year-over-year sales increase of 51%,” she says. “Taking into account new product releases and sales channels, we anticipate a re-acceleration of sales at 75% year-over-year moving forward.”