Buckley's Cough-Syrup: Tastes Like Hippie-Festival Runoff....But It Works!

From the annals of WSJ's Media & Marking section comes a 2007 article by Jeanne Whalen. (See below)

Buckley's Cough-Syrup is a foul tasting concoction akin to drinking the water that has been stored for three weeks in your brother's ten-year-old tennis shoes. (This is a set up for the rest of the story.)

November, 2007 Novartis began a nationwide marketing campaign for Buckley's Cough Mixture, an 88-year-old product owned until 2002 by a Canadian company.  Available since 1919 it was the "best selling but worst tasting" cough medicine any Canadian had ever encountered.  (Neither sugar nor alcohol - taste enhancing ingredients - are added to the camphor, pine needle oil, menthol and Canadian fir balsam gum that make up Buckley's.)

With a tag line, It Tastes Awful. And It Works, Buckley's had bucked market trends.  Despite being dramatically outspent by competition and tasting a whole worse,  it grew its Canadian market share over ten points on the back of this decidedly quirky campaign.  As the new owner, Novartis decided to build on Buckley's successful work for its U.S. launch.

There were a variety of components to the tastes bad, works good campaign.  Television ads featured a woman sipping from a cup marked "Buckley's" and another marked "Used Mouthwash" before asking someone whether they were the same.  Other comparative cups were marked "Public Restroom Puddle", "Trash Bag Leakage" and "Snail Trail Accumulation" with Buckley's faring about equal to all.

According to Jose Rodriguez, vice president of marketing for Novartis's North American OTC division, the campaign was targeted at adults who wanted efficacy over taste.

My favorite component of the campaign was a radio spot featuring a recorded voice on a Buckley's hotline:

"If you are inquiring about your cough mixture tasting like expired milk, trash-bag leakage, a postpedicure foot bath, a state fair porta-potty, decomposing meat fat, monkey sweat, used denture soak, New Jersey, or hippie-festival runoff, please hang up. Your cough will be gone shortly."

Blog Note:
In Canada, this humorous and singleminded campaign worked. From 1987 when it began until 1996, the brand recovered from a decline to a 2 share to a 12.3 share in a highly competitive environment.

If you check out the Buckley's web-site you'll see them still working a variation on this approach.

The point of sharing this is a reminder to be honest with yourself when you're evaluating your product's unique selling proposition. If Novartis had focused their campaign on efficacy, it likely would have led to a consumer response of "yeah, but at what price?"

This campaign worked and works because it's smart enough to poke fun at itself and then credibly deliver the punch line that the bad taste is well worth it, because that nagging cough that's keeping you up all night and terrifying your fellow workers is about to get its butt kicked.

I loved this approach in 2007 and love it today.