“It’s not just for the NBA; it’s for you, too. Cue Health: The official COVID-19 home test of the NBA. Go Cue. Go You.”
The thing about this ad, featuring Karl-Anthony Towns of the Minnesota Timberwolves, that feels like a total disconnect is that it exists in the first place, to be honest. It’s great that rapid testing exists that can give you results in 20 minutes. But advertising and brand affinity implies that there’s money to be made by offering these tests.
And given that it’s already hugely controversial that COVID testing already costs lots of money and is totally inconvenient to access, it just feels like it’s sending the wrong message to the public to have a basketball league profit from something that everyone has to do.
And, let’s be clear: It’s not like people often get the choice of where they get their COVID tests, anyway. A few weeks ago, I ended up needing a COVID test (negative, by the way), and I tried to get one fairly responsibly—I ordered a couple via delivery using an app, at a cost of something like $25 a pop. And this process was a bit of a nightmare; I actually had to order twice because the pharmacist at the first location refused to give the test to a delivery driver for reasons none of us actually understood. So this endeavor took half the day and multiple purchases to finally resolve, a nerve-wracking experience given the risks of exposure.