Brands - My Universal Palliative

Saw an article today in Retail Week announcing Lloyds’ online Tamiflu offer, which genuinely made me relieved. Why?

Because I’m a sad product of my (and other marketers’) own making and I actually trust that Lloyds won’t put rat poison, phenol or roofies in my anti-virals! I also know that I’m mad and that probably 90% of the online stores already selling Tamiflu (variants or genuine) are legit. Let’s face it, the most likely ill effect of buying from the lesser known etailers would be a severe credit card fleecing at the hands of some Eastern European hacking house.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that I have a casual addiction to Nurofen, casual because I’m not actually addicted, but do harbour the belief that Ibuprofen can’t rid pain - but Nurofen can.

In true White Noise style, the complex marketing campaign mechanism ‘within’ these special Nurofen pills not only cures the headache before it physically, actually could - it also renders other drugs useless, irrespective of the fact that they have the same levels of active Ibuprofen ingredient.

The fact that the architect of the Nurofen marketing strategy probably possesses a similar scientific grasp of the facts to myself perhaps explains why I suffer this anti-placebo effect with unbranded Ibuprofen.

I have it on ‘good authority’ that Ibuprofen (Nurofen to me) combined with bed rest, Paracetamol and fluids is an adequate treatment for Swine Flu. So if I get it, I won’t be bothering with Tamiflu, and will opt for my universal palliative.

Someone out there wants you to buy from Lloyds and the NHS, and they probably look something like me. Given the hysteria, I reckon they’d have been better off just saying that offshore ‘Tamiflu’ gives you Swine Flu, which would have been just about as credible.