By law, claims in advertisements, including over-the-counter (OTC) medicine advertisements, must be truthful and cannot be misleading or unfair.

To show the world what a migraine really looks like through a sufferers' eyes by developing the world's first augmented reality migraine simulator. Now sufferers can finally feel understood. Seeing is believing.

The simulator was developed using a virtual reality headset, twin mounted HD cameras and a wireless controller to manage the intensity of symptoms.

For the symptoms, we teamed migraine sufferers with VR developers in order to recreate the exact visual effects of a migraine.

Then, friends, family and coworkers of four migraine sufferers were challenged to use the Migraine Simulator and to take on the visual symptoms of the sufferers as part of a regular day.

We filmed them experiencing the symptoms in a variety of controlled environments, from a crowded cafe to a busy subway train, creating “The Migraine Experience,” a wealth of content that demonstrates the true impact of migraines.

“The Migraine Experience” campaign was launched in the US in April 4, 2016 on TV and online.

To raise further awareness, we developed The Migraine Experience app. Now anyone can see what a migraine really looks like. (Released in May 2016)

The campaign launched on April 4, 2016. In the first three weeks we saw:

• 400MM impressions from 294 placements

• 3.9MM views on YouTube

• The campaign doubled the number of people who had heard of Excedrin through YouTube

• 1.49MM hours of brand exposure

• 18.4k hours of brand interaction time, which is the equivalent to watching the video nonstop for more than two years

• The campaign took Excedrin to a new level, increasing “Brand Love” on social media. It generated 390K social engagements. Majority of engagements are “high value” sharing/retweeting and commenting — with extremely positive consumer reactions, moving many migraine sufferers to tears

• No business results to date as campaign launched in early April but we can already see some direct impact on brand interest, with searches surging 53%. Additionally, “Excedrin Migraine” was the fastest-growing search term in the headache and migraine category as a result of the campaign

“I want my loved ones, my colleagues, to finally understand, to see what I am going through when I have a migraine. I want them to see how debilitating migraine can be.”

Our strategy was rooted in the above insight and the strong belief that migraine sufferers should be involved through the whole process: from the development of the migraine simulator to the finalization of “The Migraine Experience” film.

This enabled us to create a piece of standout communication that spoke to our audience in a personable and honest way, and also demonstrated Excedrin’s empathy and unique understanding toward migraine sufferers.

An estimated 36 million Americans suffer from migraines, but most people think they’re just bad headaches. In fact, it can be a debilitating condition, and migraine sufferers often feel misunderstood and discriminated against by non-sufferers.

With more than 50 years of research, Excedrin is the only pain reliever focused solely on head pain, making the brand uniquely qualified to understand and treat the condition.

In this context, the brief was to demonstrate Excedrin's deep understanding of the emotional and physical pain that migraine sufferers go through and to tackle their great frustration about not being understood.

This campaign aims to reinforce the brand’s leadership positioning in the head pain category, showing empathy and expertise, with the objective of driving strong brand consideration and favorability among migraine sufferers.