Reckitt Benckiser did everything right, and they did everything wrong with their Nurofen brand.
How can that be?
The ACCC has now successfully prosecuted Reckitt Benckiser in the federal court for misleading consumers with their Nurofen brand of painkillers, requiring them to pull product off the market within three months.
There will also be a fine, potentially a significant one to drive home the message.
In the process, years of investment in the brand will be trashed.
Who will ever trust Nurofen again?
On one hand, I have absolutely no sympathy for a corporation of any type that knowingly and deliberately perpetrated this sort of misleading communication. The writing has been on the wall some time after Nurofen won Choice magazine’s coveted “Shonky Award” which garnered a fair bit of publicity at the time, including a star appearance on the ABC’s ‘Checkout” program. That Reckitts chose to ignore the ‘social warnings’ and voluntarily adjust their communication is a huge failure in leadership.
The marketing however has been very good over a long time.
Having run large corporate marketing departments, I can understand exactly how it all evolved.
An experiment with a brand extension generated added market share, consumer preference and retail shelf space at premium prices and margins. The marketing people responsible were recognised and rewarded by their employer and peers. Who would not take the next step, and seek new segments?
Back pain, period pain, migraine relief, et al, commercially seductive stuff.
Nobody would tinker with that sort of success. Anyone who dared to suggest that it was wrong, and they should walk away from the measurable short term success in favour of being a brand worthy of long term trust, a truly difficult notion to measure, would find themselves seeking other opportunities very quickly.
The failure is in the leadership of Reckitt Benckiser.
Reckitt Benckiser management simply failed to reconcile the short term financial benefits of successful brand marketing with the long term benefits of having a brand and business that demonstrated leadership by building trust. They failed the basic test of personal leadership which is to do what is right, even when it is not necessarily expedient.
Clearly the ‘leaders’ of Reckitt’s were there not as leaders, but as managers. They are undoubtedly good at managing the numbers, negotiating the deal, maneuvering amongst the corporate politics, but would you want them beside you when the going got really tough? Instinctively you know it would be all about them, they would not ‘ have your back’
It is easy to forget that business is about people, not corporations.
People buy products from people, not businesses.
While we all talk about ‘relationships’ endlessly, particularly in the digital and social spheres that now so dominate our lives, we tend to forget just how hard it is to maintain a real relationship.
One night stands are pretty easy, there is no real personal investment, marriage is hard just because there is that investment required.
We should never forget the difference.
