Background:

Minor day-to-day pain affects 80% of people in their daily lives, according to the Global Pain Index. And most people take pills as the first response, even when the pain is minor. A study in the PLOS Journal of Medicine shows a spike in painkillers use in the UK. Nurofen, a brand that’s always explored new ways to relieve pain, wanted to target those who medicate unnecessarily and prevent a pill-taking epidemic. 

Strategy:

As the inventor of ibuprofen, the Nurofen brand has innovation in its DNA. The brand has, over the years, consistently researched new and unconventional ways to solve people’s pains. The focus is always on people, not pills, as brand seeks to make people’s lives easier while they ‘leave the pain to us.’ With that sort of brand pedigree, they were the right brand to notice the upward trend in unnecessary painkiller use, and then do something innovative to solve it. 

The strategic approach was to create a new kind of helpful Nurofen innovation for first-line pain treatment. That way, the Nurofen brand could become a safer new entry point to the whole category. The call-to-action was simple and transformative for the category: Don’t swallow a pill. Listen to this.

Solution: 

Launched during Pain Awareness Month, Nurofen created an entirely new way to relieve pain that’s free, safe, and usable everywhere. ‘Tune Out Pain’ is a piece of music scientifically engineered to manage smaller pains. Created in partnership with researchers at University College Dublin and music producer Anatole, a conservatory-trained multi-instrumentalist, it’s the first-ever piece of music composed to pharmacological principles to target the brain and is clinically proven to help relieve pain.

The Execution:

‘Tune Out Pain’ is a new way to respond to minor pains. It’s music composed to pharmacological principles, engineered to trigger the pleasure centres in the brain, just as many pharmaceuticals do. 

Co-created by University College Dublin and the multi-instrumentalist music producer Anatole, the music contains instruments of different textures in syncopated tempo to induce active listening (piano, strings, percussions, etc). It also contains sounds such as children's voices or splashing sounds, evoking familiar settings and connecting the listener with the music by inducing wonder and nostalgia. Listening to the track releases a burst of dopamine in the neural reward network, activating the endogenous opioids which work as natural pain relievers in our brain, forcing it to focus on pleasure.

Going a step beyond pre-existing research, the innovation was clinically proven in a study by University College Dublin to relieve pain in 77% of patients.

Available to all for free on Spotify, ‘Tune Out Pain’ transforms the way health professionals can treat minor pain and has been recommended by pharmacists, dentists and GPs, played in doctors’ waiting rooms, as hold music on GPs’ phone lines, and been adopted by UK medical provider Simplyhealth to reach 3 million patients nationwide.

Results: 

5.5 million weekly listeners on Spotify.

More than 94 million impressions.

More than 30 million reach.