Mike's Blog

This is a post I wrote a while ago about branding and ibuprofen. For some reason I didn’t post it. But having just written a post about migraines, and mentioned ibuprofen lysine, I thought this was appropriate, so I’m posting it now.

The press in the UK prominently featured a judicial ruling in Australia against Reckitt Benckiser (one example) – the UK-based manufacturer of Nurofen. Nurofen’s a brand name for ibuprofen – an anti-inflammatory drug generally known as a NSAID.

Generic ibuprofen is available in the UK for as little as 16p a pack of 200mg tablets (1p per tablet).

However branded Nurofen is more expensive. That’s known as “branding” by marketers. Branding is a normal way of trying to maintain a price premium in a commodity market. And Nurofen has (or had) a very good brand reputation in the UK – but if what you want is generic ibuprofen, you can buy that more cheaply.

But generic ibuprofen, the active ingredient in standard Nurofen, isn’t very soluble, so it takes a little while to work its way into the bloodstream. There is a compound of ibuprofen that will provide faster pain relief: ibuprofen lysine. It’s highly soluble and therefore enters the bloodstream very quickly. It’s marketed by Boots (for example) as Rapid Ibuprofen. Reckitt Benckiser markets it as Nurofen Express which is more expensive than the Boots’ version, but it’s the same stuff. It’s NOT the same as generic ibuprofen – it contains an equivalent dose, but it starts to work more quickly.

So what’s everyone getting upset about?

First, much of the press – including the Daily Mail linked to above – is confusing generic ibuprofen and ibuprofen lysine. Although they contain equivalent doses, they are different and you would normally expect there to be a price differential. If you don’t care how long the drugs take to work – for example you’re using this drug to reduce swelling and don’t need immediate relief, then buy the cheapest generic. If you have a migraine and want your pain relief as fast as possible then you can pay more for a faster acting version of the drug.

But beyond this, the marketing guys at Reckitt Benckiser have been creating different packages for Nurofen Express and branding it as Nurofen Migraine Pain, Nurofen Period Pain and other variants. The press is getting excited because these are all the same drug in different guises. It’s true that the packaging conveys the impression that the contents are formulated to specifically target different types of pain. However if you read the details and compare the packages to one another it’s clear that each of them contains the same dose of ibuprofen lysine.

So are they trying to fool the public? I don’t think so. Let me try to explain.

In my past I’ve done some work in retail marketing. Retail packaging is all designed to sell your product, so there are three things you design your packaging to do:

1. Be more attractive to potential customers than the competition – target your market segment
2. Occupy more shelf space than the competition
3. Describe the product (complying with relevant legislation)

So by labelling a package “Migraine Pain”, for example, the vendor makes it more attractive to someone suffering with a migraine who’s looking for fast relief from the pain. If they’ve got an excruciating headache they’re unlikely to read the packaging, or the leaflet inside, to see if something generically labelled as “Ibuprofen Express” is actually useful for migraine pain. They’ll simply pick up the one with “Migraine” in big letters on the package. This means Nurofen Migraine Pain is likely to sell in greater quantities to migraine sufferers than Nurofen Express even though it’s the same stuff.

Secondly, if the vendor manufactures multiple packages each for a different market segment (migraine sufferers, period pain sufferers and tennis elbow sufferers, for example) and each of those packages occupies a slot on the retail shelf then they’re denying that space to their competition – so increasing their sales and reducing those of their competitors.

This is an entirely normal retail sales strategy and you see it everywhere. Remember there were different covers printed for the Harry Potter novels – one aimed at adults and a different one at children? Same strategy – segment the market, take up more retail space, increase sales volume.

Is this a problem for the customer?

I don’t think so. Be an informed customer. If you want to know what’s in the packet, read the blurb on the back before you make your buying decision. Buying Nurofen Migraine Pain rather than Ibuprofen Express is no different from buying your electricity without checking to see if there’s a better deal from another supplier, or complaining that the adult version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is the same as the children’s version.

As a nation we’re getting a bit more savvy about knowing what we’re buying, both in retail and online, but we can still be influenced by imaginative marketing.

Read the packet!