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Do Zombies Really Help Sell Medication?

By: Beth Minnigerode | 01/15/2009

I guess GlaxoSmithKline's Treximet^® received an outpouring of disgust for its commercial featuring women who look like they've decapitated themselves due to their migraine headaches.

As a result, Treximet has altered the commercial to look less like a trailer for a zombie movie.

I couldn't find a link to the new version, but they use a slightly less offensive technique of presenting what looks like a talking photo (of a non-beheaded woman), and then tearing the "picture" to separate her head from her body.

GlaxoSmithKline probably went the traditional route of spending thousands of dollars on focus groups to test this advertising/marketing campaign and, from the looks of it, didn't get the feedback they needed. For a much smaller investment, they could have posted the commercial to an online community of migraine sufferers to get their input. We all know online communities have strong opinions and can sometimes make or break the success of a campaign - so why not start by asking them what they think.

In fact, I was surprised to see how many people posted their opinions in response to an MSNBC Ads of the Weird article about the zombie-version of the commercial.

What other forms of research do you think are becoming more important for today's communications and reputation management campaigns?

Posted in Brand Positioning, Digital Communications, Public Relations, Reputation Management