Reframing Reality

When GlaxoSmithKline developed ‘Night Nurse’ for colds and flu, they thought they had made a mistake. In this Vlog, Grant shows that by creating a different way of looking at a problem, GSK’s marketing department turned the situation around and in the same way, London Transport’s satisfaction ratings soared.

After a lot of research, the pharmaceutical company had a problem.

They’d created the most amazing remedy for flu and colds, but the problem was, it left people drowsy. They gave it to the marketing department and said, we’ve got a problem. We’ve got a product here and although it’s very effective, it makes people drowsy, so it’s not going to work.

The marketing department gave it some thought and they decided to call it ‘Night Nurse’, and they said; ‘It’s a positive. Not only is it a remedy for colds and flu, but it also helps you sleep at night, which is notoriously difficult when you’re all bunged up’.

We live in a world where people often look for rational, logical answers to challenges and of course, sometimes, they’re relevant but often by reframing the challenge and just thinking in a different way, you can create real value.

You don’t hear people complaining about the length of flights but of course, when you go on an airline, you get meals served in your seat, nonstop films, and an array of drinks given to you, and in that case, actually most people enjoy the few hours of time out where they can just relax.

There was a limit to what London Underground could do with its Victorian train system – in terms of making it more efficient – but actually by putting the dot matrix display on the platforms and informing customers of length of time between trains, they allow people to plan better for their journeys and created a great deal of satisfaction. It wasn’t a change in the quality of service, but in reframing things in people’s mind, that actually enabled them to be more satisfied with the product they were getting.

So what’s your equivalent of Night Nurse?

Do you have product or service which customers sometimes complain about and can you take it and use it as a positive by reframing? Because that’s an area where marketing can really add real value to your business.

There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order to facilitate the readability of the written English