P&G’s “Men with Cramps” campaign is an example of Marketing 2.0 at its best

Stuart Elliott’s column yesterday about P&G's new marketing campaign to sell Therma Care, its new menstrual cramps product, is a big hit in my book.

The early results show that the campaign is generating a tremendous amount of consumer impressions (over 11 million to date), which should yield a real increase in awareness and product sales. Yet, I actually think that the more significant tidbit here is how a giant marketer like P&G is clearly taking a leadership position by leveraging and integrating the newest digital marketing disciplines with traditional advertising and public relations strategies to build real results. As a marketer, I am also excited to see that this company is willing to take some risk by being a little edgy to make this campaign as appealing as possible to target audiences.

I love the campaign theme because the marketer came up with a BIG IDEA by creatively turning this strictly female issue on its head to spoof the opposite gender and tap into some well deserved empathy. To hit the ball out of the park, P&G’s agencies came together to develop and integrate a number of eye catching approaches that just work so well together: a fake institute, web site, documentary, video clips on YouTube and it was all started through a teaser classified advertising campaign calling for men who are suffering from menstrual cramps.

Maybe part of why I’m so enthusiastic is because we created a similar strategy themed campaign for GE’s Washer and Dryer products a few years back through a campaign called “National men to laundry month.” This program also served to take advantage of the commonly known fact that men hate to do laundry and made fun of men, while simultaneously grabbing their attention in a variety of ways. I only wish that the current digital opportunities were more fashionable then (or at least more accepted), because we could have exponentially increased the results of our program through this medium.

I plan to use P&G’s campaign as a great case study with many of our clients to show them how we can leverage the digital space in all of its glory to integrate with our traditional program ideas to build greater ROI. Hopefully, many marketers will begin to take notice.

Comments

[JennyG]

Personally, I don't think the concept of "Men with Cramps" is very funny. I realize they are getting a lot of web hits, but I would like to know how much time people are spending on the site. Once you visit it, you realize it is just a big waste of time and not that funny. I doesn't make me want to go buy the product.

[med supply guy]

very interesting blog in that you highlighted a huge score for an ADVERTISING campaign. yes, it was using digital media which is important, but stuart's column mentioned nothing about PR. it seems like this was strictly a ad campaign that was a home run. would have been even more interesting to see the repman talk about this one- oh well :)

[ed]

The NY Times article doesn't highlight a pr agency, but I assumed that the institute was probably created by PR people. It has all the earmarks of a PR campaign.

[med supply guy]

we know what happens when one assumes...many assumed the jets would lose yesterday and the giants would have won...