Challenge
It is a global truth that, in comparison to men, women experience significantly different responses to their pain issues. Women’s pain symptoms are under-diagnosed, poorly understood and even mistreated. The Nurofen team wanted to intervene appropriately in order to alter this uncomfortable dynamic.
Approach
We undertook a three staged approach:
- Qual and Digital Analytics exploration to uncover the influences affecting women in pain
- Quant research to size and prioritise the related Fuels and Frictions: What are the existing behaviours? What causes the issues? What help is needed?
- Framework creation, to land the leading intervention ideas across creative campaigns and comms
Insight
Many strong insights arose from the work into understanding pain and its treatment, as experienced by women:
- Age: Experiences differ by age, so pain solutions must be nuanced across the needs spectrum
- Change is wanted: Many women are tired of getting nowhere. Many have lost trust in the healthcare system and have accepted their existing pain as part of life. Clarity needed to achieve goals in overcoming ‘learned helplessness’.
- Empowerment: Women want to feel empowered and enabled, rather than ignored or victimised.
- Systematic issues: Women are aware of systematic issues (i.e. short appointment times) hence need help to operate within these contextual constraints.
Impact
An actionable framework was developed for Nurofen, setting the tone and direction for comms, based on our insights. The final McCann advertising campaign resulted in multiple measurable benefits:
✔ +2000bps growth on key equity metrics
✔ Drove Halo effect to the Nurofen brand
✔ £67m incremental revenue
✔ 1:2.37 return on investment