Tylenol Understands the Future of Marketing

An article in Fortune takes us through Tylenol's "Ouch!" campaign in which the pain relief medicine maker embraces its younger customer's propensity to thrive on pain rather than run from it and has developed a campaign that aligns with that mentality. It has become a "pain partner" with underground event organizers of skateboarding events, film festivals and breakdancing competitions. And it's all done with barely a mention of the brand. Yet the brand has, in fact, been embraced with users of a Tylenol-built but unbranded skateboard bowl referring to it as the Tylenol Bowl. The brand has even made its way into the song lyrics of a Ben Kweller tune (called Tylenol) sold on Apple's music store. To reach this audience, a media buy would be pointless because this group makes heavy use of all available ad blocking tools and even if any ads do slip through, they are viewed with great skepticism.