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.