Swearing isn’t big. But it is clever.

This is the story of how Nurofen turned a simple human observation – our compulsion to swear when we’re in pain - into a powerful brand and business opportunity.

One that turbo-charged them from 0% of the medicated plaster market to 3.3% (just behind market leader, Voltarol), helped them to grow at a 3x higher rate vs the overall topicals category, and positioned the brand as true experts when it comes to body pain.

Not f*****g bad, eh?

The world is getting older and the body pain category is growing; but Nurofen is missing out.

Nurofen may be a market leader in headaches, but we were a challenger brand when it came to body pain, occupying only 2% value share of the lucrative £115m topical body pain market. Miniscule when compared to Voltarol (37.2%)

We were armed with a game-changing new product that gave us a real right to play - a medicated plaster that can deliver 24 hours of relief. But with limited category salience or credibility, and 0% SOV in the previous year, we risked not being heard.

We needed to get noticed and taken seriously in this challenging category.

Objectives:

1. Launch/ drive sales of Nurofen’s brand-new medicated plaster product

2. Cut through the clutter to drive awareness and consideration of Nurofen for body pain

We instantly realized that Nurofen challenger status gave us an opportunity - as this category, with its penchant for technical messaging and overly staged, even cliched setups, was crying out to be challenged.

We also quickly realised that body pain is a very different beast to headaches, and much of the equity that made Nurofen a leader in head, really didn’t help us here. Nurofen is known for fast acting relief that’s relevant for headaches, but not for long lasting relief that’s key to body pain.

Research indicated that while headaches tend to come on gradually and last around 6 hours, body pain often comes out of the blue, triggered by sport or physical activity, and last for several days. Crucially, the sudden yet often debilitating nature of body pain can have a real emotional impact on sufferers, with 43% feeling ‘frustrated,’ 42% ‘irritable’ and 56% ‘resigned to it.’

These research statements stood out to us like swear words. We realised that for active ‘body pain’ sufferers who are suddenly hit by a bout of pain, the first thing you do is let out a f*****g loud expletive. And then you look for a suitable pain remedy.

What if we treated body pain in the language of regular people, not a pharmacy brand?

What if we really empathised and talked the true language of pain?

Our hunch felt interesting, but we knew we’d need scientific rigor to back it up. We turned to emerging academia and were hit by moment of serendipity: an expert, Dr Richard Stephens from Keele University, exploring the hypothesis that swearing has short-term pain-relieving properties.

This reframed our story. What if we encouraged people to swear for immediate pain relief, but then directed them to use our 24-hour pain relief patches for something longer lasting?

Our creative idea, SwearLab, explored the impact swearing has on pain.

We wanted to find socially acceptable swear words for people to shriek when they tweaked a muscle or sprained a back. We invented new words that sounded like existing swear words (our winners: ‘Fouch’ and ‘Twizpipe’), and then put them to test under lab conditions.

Turns out our peer reviewed study was a total f*****g failure.

Our made-up swear words didn’t work at all. What they did prove, however, is that swearing is more effective than anyone had ever realised - improving pain tolerance and thresholds - but only in the short term.

While our study didn’t work in the way we had originally hoped, it certainly served as dynamite for our comms, fuelling PR, TV and Radio.

The takeout: swear for short term body pain relief. But for long lasting relief, use Nurofen 24 Hour Patches.

We always wanted to drop an f-bomb on BBC news and we F**king did it!

• SwearLab generated 248M earned media impressions (equivalent to the whole UK seeing it 4x), including segments on BBC and GMB.

We made the serious stuff too:

• SwearLab findings were published in Frontiers in Psychology: Swearing as a Response to Pain: Assessing Hypoalgesic Effects of Novel “Swear” Words.

We sold a sh*t tonne of product:

*Sales exceeded target by 30%

*Market share surged from 0% to 5.4% during the campaign peak (in line with market leader, Voltarol), and achieved a benchmark of 3.3%, (just behind Voltarol). This launched also helped Nurofen grow at a 3x higher rate vs the overall topicals category.

AND made people think differently about Nurofen:

*18% uplift in spontaneous awareness; 13% uplift in consideration.

*Increases across range of brand image statements including Recommended by Experts (23%) and Effectiveness (10%).