For years, and today more than ever, the pharmaceutic industry has been selling painkillers as if they were candy. They incentivized disproportionate levels of consumption and came up with all kinds of reasons to justify their need.

After doing a lot of media and social listening, we found that consumers respond to these messages by just accepting whatever they’re being told, without realizing the risks of self-medicating.

In Argentina alone, over 60 people die everyday, and more than 100,000 are hospitalized a year, for this reason.

With all this data, there was just one thing left to do: disseminate the right message.

The big challenge was to advertise for a painkiller without participating in the merciless schemes the industry resorts to that harms consumers instead of curing them.

We decided to put together an honest and responsible campaign, putting people’s health before sales, and it couldn’t have worked out better.

The fact that people aren’t speaking up about self-medication in no way means it’s not an issue worth addressing. Painkiller abuse has catastrophic consequences. In Argentina alone, 22 thousand people die every year due to overmedication. The labs’ irresponsible communications are at least partially to blame.

A Responsibility Dose is the first time a lab puts together a campaign that doesn’t push people to consume their most sold product – namely, painkillers. Instead, it promotes alternative pain relief methods to mitigate discomfort before deciding medication is the best option.

A Responsibility Dose seeks to expose a hidden problem and modify this culture of irresponsibly consuming over-the-counter painkillers.

We could have just done another advertising campaign, but we decided to develop a campaign that changes the pharma industry for good instead.

We decided to do what no lab has done before; we told people not to consume our product.

A Responsibility Dose is a crosscutting campaign that discourages people from taking painkillers and self-medicating, offering natural solutions to alleviate physical discomfort that people traditionally take painkillers for.

Every outlet transmitted a targeted message.

A hero video started the conversation of self-medication, focusing on the body’s ability to heal itself.

The Anti Self-Medication Pack offered alternative solutions to alleviate the most common discomfort before deciding to take a pill.

We relied on a search algorithm to indicate which symptoms people Googled the most, and we responded to them with messages that strongly discouraged self-medication, while offering to set up an online appointment with a health professional.

We were able to reach consumers at each point of contact with a simple message: there are many healthier options you can choose before painkillers.

People are self-medicating more than they should all over the world, and the pharmaceutic industry has a lot of responsibility given how they’ve chosen to communicate to consumers so far. In Argentina alone, 50% of people self-medicate, which in turn leads to over 60 deaths per day.

Fabogesic Ibuprofen’s strategy is powerful: we needed to send a responsible message and make sure people wouldn’t be taking our painkiller for minor issues.

The campaign’s objective was to raise awareness on the potential risks of self-medication, and to change people’s minds about pain: a certain degree of discomfort is only natural if we’ve been doing any sort of effort. That’s why we suggested people try several alternatives to painkillers (e.g. ice, resting, stretching, etc.) at every touchpoint.

A Responsibility Dose is a comprehensive campaign that discourages self-medicating at every point of direct communications.

Hero content explains that pain is simply part of life, and a healthy body doesn’t need painkillers to overcome it.

A mixed-media approach amplified the message at the right time.

When it came to Search, we focused on the most-commonly Googled symptoms, and developed an algorithm capable of detecting them and replying with alternative solutions that could prevent self-medication.

We replicated this same idea on social media and banners. We redirected people to a landing page with tips and tutorials on how to alleviate the most common types of discomfort without having to resort to painkillers; you could even set up an online appointment with a health professional.

We redesigned our packaging to create the Anti Self-medication Pack, which offered different healthy solutions to deal with pain, prior to deciding to take a painkiller.

Although the campaign is in the initial stages, results look promising:

Landings on our tutorial website increased by 235%.

Google searches for “alternatives to painkillers” and related terms, increased by 36.8%.

Online checkups for the most common physical discomfort increased by 206% while the campaign was running.

With US$0 allocated to media support, the campaign had 94% positive comments on social media platforms.

The campaign’s success not only endorsed Fabogesic and their responsible message, sales also increased by 18.2% while the campaign was running. Although this would seem to contradict our goal, in fact it didn’t. Total painkiller purchases dropped by 2.9% during the same period indicating that consumers migrated from other brands to Fabogesic.

A Responsibility Dose was Fabogesic’s way to speak boldly and responsibly in the painkiller category – one that is known for the ruthless way it communicates for the sole purpose of increasing sales.