Cold comfort

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Winters in Taiwan are cold and humid, and colds and flu affect many people. For Panadol Cold Extra, the challenge was to remind cold sufferers during the “cold season” that it was the best remedy.
To stand out in a crowded media environment it decided to take a humorous approach, playing on the fact that sneezing unexpectedly is culturally embarrassing and that face masks are a common “solution”, with many office workers choosing to wear one at work while suffering a cold.
Panadol’s solution was a comical visually-dramatic OOH approach in an otherwise conservative category, focusing on the image of someone sneezing while wearing a mask.
A 5m-high 3D billboard placed in high-traffic commuter routes conveyed a powerful sneeze blowing a face mask yards away from the model’s face, with the giant mask actually flying away from the billboard. Placing the ad in the two financial and metropolitan centres of Taipei turned it into the talk of the town, with thousands of commuters stopping to laugh and take photos.
Touching this nerve sparked huge media interest in the campaign, generating more than US$152,000 in free publicity and triggering widespread media commentary on the treatments of colds and flu. Sales of Panadol Cold Extra increased 68%.

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