Nick Kyrgios playing pickleball on a bright pink court. 84.9% of people apparently have had sex somewhere other than the bedroom. And a lot of products changing hands through new distribution deals.
Not a bad snapshot of July in sexual wellness.
They might sound like three completely unrelated stories - and, to be fair, they are. But they also reveal three very different ways brands are finding reach in a category where simply buying it isn't always an option.
The interesting question is what happens to that reach afterwards.
When the event becomes the media
Let's start in Regent's Park.
Hello Nancy ran a two-day activation in mid-July, timed around one of the biggest moments in the UK sporting calendar. Nick Kyrgios and his partner Danai Stamati were there, alongside a giant pink ice cream truck and a pink pickleball court where members of the public could take Kyrgios on head-to-head.
More than 1,000 people came through, 1,000 products went out, the event earned national coverage and it ended with a creator dinner attended by Labour MP Samantha Niblett and Dr Tara Suwinyattichaiporn.
Plenty to put in the post-event deck. But here's what interested us: the biggest audience wasn't necessarily the one standing in Regent's Park.
The real reach came from the combination of Kyrgios' audience, the creators involved and the coverage the activation generated.
That's important in sexual wellness. In another category, an activation like this might be one part of a much bigger paid campaign. Here, where paid media isn't always available, the event can end up being the media.
And Hello Nancy wasn't alone. In July, pjur supported Alix Fox's Sex For Breakfast in London alongside Bluebella and Je Joue's ILY range, and appeared with Orion at Deichbrand in front of a reported 55,000 visitors.
So perhaps the opportunity isn't simply to "do more events". It's to think differently about what an event can do.
It can create content. Borrow an audience. Give press something to cover. Put products into people's hands. Start retailer conversations. Generate first-party data.
But only if you've decided what you want to get from it before everyone turns up.
A thousand samples handed out is a good result. A thousand samples connected to email sign-ups, QR scans, retailer enquiries, creator content or subsequent purchases gives the brand something it can use again.
And then there's the bit behind the pink ice cream truck.
Getting the activation live wasn't straightforward. Hello Nancy lost two venues during planning, including one after a contract had been signed, and the commercial ice cream vendor withdrew just 24 hours before opening despite having been paid. The team rebuilt with Park Village Productions inside 48 hours.
That's not the part of experiential marketing anyone puts on the mood board. But it matters.
If events are going to carry more of the marketing load in this category, contingency needs to carry a little more of the budget too.
Meanwhile, everyone was apparently having sex outdoors
Well, 84.9% of JOYclub's survey respondents had, anyway.
ETO reported in July that JOYclub had surveyed more than 800 adults aged 18 to 82, with cars and vans the most popular location at 57.8%, followed by forests at 50.4% and beaches at 41.1%.
We'll leave you to decide whether that makes your next woodland walk more or less appealing.
Four days earlier, Adam & Eve published a masturbation survey of more than 2,000 US adults, timed to National Orgasm Day.
Interesting stats. But, again, it was what the brands did with them that caught our attention.
Brands that can't easily buy attention are commissioning it.
Original research gives brands something that straightforward product promotion often can't: a reason for journalists, consumers and the trade to talk about them. And, importantly for this category, data can travel into places where product-led creative often struggles to.
But there's another layer to this.
JOYclub and Adam & Eve used essentially the same tactic - original research - but the resulting stories went in two very different directions.
ETO turned JOYclub's findings into a trade story with a clear stocking opportunity around travel-friendly, discreet and waterproof ranges. Adam & Eve distributed its research through PR Newswire to a broader consumer audience.
One study became a buyer conversation. The other became a consumer one.
That's a distinction worth making before the survey goes out, not after the results come back.
Who do you actually want the research to reach? Retail buyers? Consumers? Journalists? Existing customers? And what do you want them to do once they've seen it?
Because research can do much more than generate a headline. Done with the destination in mind, it can help build a listing, an audience, a PR story or a much better understanding of your customer.
More routes to market. More distance from the customer?
July also brought a run of distribution news.
Westridge Laboratories, the manufacturer behind ID Lubricants, acquired Mayer Laboratories, bringing the Kimono MicroThin and Kimono MAXX condom ranges, Aqua Lube and Blossom Organics into its portfolio, alongside formulations developed but not yet launched.
Dreamlove secured exclusive distribution of Rocks-Off across Spain and Portugal. Dildos Assorted announced two exclusives on a single day, with KAOTIK Labs and Paradise Pleasure Products. And Lushense passed 300 onboarded brands.
All good news for reach. But reach through someone else comes with a different set of questions.
Distribution can give a brand scale, expertise and access to customers and markets it might struggle to reach alone. That's the opportunity.
The trade-off is that another business now sits somewhere between the brand and the person buying the product.
And that can affect more than the sale. Customer data, purchase behaviour, reviews, email relationships and even how products are categorised and discovered can all sit further away from the brand.
What happens after the reach?
Lushense offers an interesting counterpoint. As an approved comparison shopping participant in Google's ecosystem, it can route partner products into Google Shopping - giving sexual wellness brands access to paid-search visibility they can struggle to obtain directly.
There's still another party between the brand and the customer, but in this case that extra layer is opening a door that might otherwise remain closed.
And that's really the point. More distance from the customer isn't automatically a bad thing. The question is what you get in return.
A new audience? A new market? Better visibility? More sales? Customer insight you couldn't gather yourself?
The same applies to everything we've looked at this month.
An event can give you reach far beyond the people who actually turn up. Research can start conversations with buyers, journalists and consumers. The right distribution partnership can put your products in places you couldn't reach alone.
Those are all opportunities worth taking.
But the activity is only part of the value. What you learn from it, who you build a relationship with and what you can use again is what makes that reach work harder.
So perhaps that's our question coming out of July:
When the reach is over, what are you left with?
Hopefully, more than 1,000 empty sample boxes and a pink pickleball court.
Hard Data is Sciart Marketing's monthly read on the sexual wellness category, connecting the stories, numbers and shifts we think are worth paying attention to.