Why is pain such a pain for P&G?

Why is pain such a pain for P&G?

This month brings the news that P&G is selling to Wyeth Thermacare, a product that established a whole new sub-segment of topical pain relief. When P&G launched Thermacare it had all the hallmarks that anyone looked for in a new brand: new technology, new name, “relatively” unmet consumer need. But, only six short years later, the brand was put on the block and jettisoned due to under-performance and a desire for brand portfolio rationalization.

For such a savvy marketer, P&G has a long inglorious history of finding pain painful as a product category.

P&G entered OTCs in 1982 by acquiring Norwich Eaton and marketing enteric-coated aspirin. Never went anywhere.

Then it teamed up with Syntex to launch naprosyn in the OTC analgesics market under the name Aleve. Much fanfare. Ballyhooed $100 million launch spend. Sold to Roche/Bayer.

Okay, so maybe systemic analgesics were too tough for this smart marketer.

Detergents, oral care, cosmetics – all deal with external structure and function claims. P&G is brilliant there.

Thermacare is external. Kind of like an OTC. Competes against Chattem’s Icy Hot and Pfizer’s (now J&J) Bengay. Maybe P&G would do well there. Nope. Sold to Wyeth, which has an extensive pain portfolio led by Advil.

Maybe P&G just doesn’t get consumer healthcare.

Pepto-Bismol, Metamucil, Vicks? All under-performers.

And you heard it here first: Someday soon P&G will sell Prilosec.

Consumer healthcare requires a different kind of sensitivity to the magic bullets that drive OTCs vs. consumer products. In OTCs, marketers sell active ingredients that actually do something to the health and wellness of the body.

These products don’t just thrive on new colors and new flavors. They live by claims supported with relevant line extensions and forays into a category adjacency. The ultimate promotion is the professional marketing of OTCs where a company markets its products to doctors based on claims derived from clinical trials published in a peer-review journals. That isn’t Home Made Simple as promoted in P&G’s online and offline magazine.

P&G knows this; it is very smart. The company regularly accomplishes feats of derring-do with Tide and Crest and Pampers.

But when it comes to products that require a higher level of scientific and regulatory understanding, P&G never gets it quite right. Prilosec was a year late because P&G hadn’t truly aligned its claims to its clinical trials.

There is a subtle difference between OTC and consumer products. OTCs demand that you really and truly understand the difference between what you do and what you say and how it affects the health of your brands and your consumers.

A Wii bit of medical advice: Try mABs

I am not going to get the Nobel Prize for this, but, I believe I have made a major scientific discovery: Wii-mABs.

Ordinarily, mABs or monoclonocal antibodies are monospecific antibodies that are identical to each other as they come from one type of immune cell that are all clones of a single parent cell. Since you can create monoclonal antibodies that specifically bind to most substances, they can then serve to detect or purify that substance. mABs are used in treatments for such diseases as rheumatoid arthritis, leukemia, and lymphoma.

So I got to thinking what I could do to help fight Wii-itis or inflammation of the elbow. I thought this would be a particularly important disease to fight given the Nintendo’s mission to turn couch potatoes into fried potatoes through the use of its motion sensitive game remote and the recent launch of its exercise-focused Wii-Fit board.

I posit that the Wii-itis or Wii elbow is a common affliction of Wii users. This injury is also common among tennis players and represents an inflammation of the elbow joint. I think it is probably under-diagnosed among Wii-ites, indicating a seriously under-treated population given the popularity of the game and a true unmet medical need.

However, upon further research, I also uncovered several other diseases associated with the Wii:

TNF-α factors, also known as, They Never Fail, which afflicts alpha males who are determined to win these games at all costs.

B cells: Small committed groups of users who try to bowl a 300 every time.

T cells: Similar to the bowlers, this group of tennis players never settles for love.

RSV proteins: These users are infected by Repeated Swinging Values caused by their single-minded desire to over and over again try to win their games.

Others have noticed a similar issue, and I would like to build on their research. In a past issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Julio Bonis reported awakening with a sore shoulder. He was puzzled since he hadn't played any so-called sports recently, but he had played several long sessions of Wii tennis.

In the past, gamer joysticks have been known to cause arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, ganglion cysts and tenosynovitis.

Now, many patients can benefit from a Wii bit of exercise. The Wii console burns more calories than classic game consoles. For an average weekly use of 13 hours, 1,840 calories would be burned, that is 40 percent more than classic consoles. Plus the new Wii Fit offers ways to do yoga, balance games, aerobics and strength training.

So what is the solution: like so many sports injuries and people who suffer from such co-morbid conditions as diabetes, coronary heart disease and hypercholesterolemia, the best recommendation is changes to one’s lifestyle. In this case it is important to pursue those mABs, moderately active body breaks. In order to ensure that players get the most out of their mABs, they should actually consider reading something. Personally I am reading the new translation of War and Peace by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, and it is fantastic.

If you don’t take my recommendation, then please note that the august British Chiropractic Association (BCA) has advised that a Wii player to take breaks every 20-20 minutes. The BCA also says that gamers should treat a 'Wii session' like any form of exercise and warm-up adequately beforehand to prevent stiffness and possible injuries." The Association has a five-point "Wii warm-up" for the shoulders, wrists, arms, neck and back that can be downloaded from its web site at www.chiropractic-uk.co.uk.

Now excuse me, I have to return to Rock Band. I believe I have nailed Blitzkrieg Bop.

Nothing Is More Natural Than Artificial Beauty

Nothing is more natural than artificial beauty.

Are you really reducing your carbon footprint (and your wallet) when you purchase natural cosmetics from Dr. Hauschka?

According to Mark Landler in The New York Times, stars like Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston, Richard Gere and Robert Downey Jr. use and advocate the use of Dr. Hauschka.

Now who can argue with this A-list who, by association, have helped WALA Heilmittel the maker of Dr. Hauschka, double sales to over $150 million in the last five years. Can these stars even pronounce the name of the brand?

WALA stands for Warmth, Ashes, Light and Ashes and is based on an early 20th-century European philosophy called anthroposophy developed by Rudolf Steiner that postulates the existence of a spiritual world that can be accessed by the human intellect. The practical aspect of this philosophy was organic farming, hence the natural production of natural ingredients.

This gets even better: natural, spiritual, expensive – a trifecta for beauty. You simply can’t refuse this offer if you worry about your looks, have money to burn and want to be trendy.

I do not believe that these stars are accounting for all this sales growth. Surely there are some less beautiful people buying into this product line.

So, in the end, we have class cosmetic marketing. A cosmetic brand supported by a reason why (in this case, natural ingredients) that is promoted by glamorous stars and riding a trend.

Decade after decade, year after year, this formula works.

Or maybe I should say millennia after millennia.

After all, look at the Egyptian hieroglyphics. You won’t see any overweight, unglamorous people depicted there. Those Egyptians really looked good on their People magazine pyramid walls.

And all they ever used was natural cosmetics; probably well along the line promoted by Rudolf Steiner.

I guess the formula works. But wouldn’t it be interesting to try something truly different.