Andrew at Apathy Sketchpad has posted on the topic of Nurofen, its dubious advertising and the incredible bullshit they feature on their website. Go have a read there’s some interesting stuff.
I only have one slight problem with the piece - the sense of surprise that quackery would be pushed by a brand like Nurofen. Nurofen is not made by Big Pharma. It’s owned by Reckitt Benckiser, the same company that introduced the world to Barry Scott and “Limescale is just calcium that sticks”. The company are not Big Pharma, they make general consumer products particularly in the lifestyle and home markets. There business is not at threat from homeopathy and the other bull they have on their website.
Reckitt and Dumpitt make a whole raft of stuff including a fair deal of borderline MHRA stuff like E45, as well as such delights as airwick.
You’d think they’d learn and stick to a consistent story, but I think this is probably due to the mergers and suchlike that have been going on recently.
IMHO it will be a combo of 2 things
1) A fluffeee marketeer who never did copy for this sort of thing has been let loose and not properly supervised and corrected
2) The MHRA are not looking properly, and not stamping on this sort of shit good and hard. The stuff I see on borderline that is going beyond these days is incredible. They need to get off their arses and start enforcing for a change
Rant over
Agreed valueaddedwater. I realise they make a reasonable amount of stuff that be classed as pharmaceutical but a lot of is so well established, at least in brand, that it isn’t going to be affected by publicising woo.
The MHRA and ASA should really clamping down on this stuff, considering the some of the claims. It may be time to put in a complaint along the same lines as the one from GSK in Australia.