Nycomed has launched a new print campaign, which includes an ad poster for their new intra-nasal spray system for painkillers. The shocking image of a woman’s back being sheared by a tool suggests the kind of pain that cancer patients go through when they face the ‘breakthrough cancer pain’. The exaggerated picture is nothing less to the real pain experienced by patients whose agony doesn’t subside even with morphine.

In my opinion, this ad image strikes the right note and hits the target audience bluntly. Though advertising drugs and sensationalizing a terminally ill patient’s pain is anything but ethical, it is an intelligent ad concept. It sure will appeal to doctors as well who may be interested in drugs that relieve pain among cancer patients.

Pharmaceuticals and advertisers share a bond that isn’t easily understood nor justified. This ad puts me into a dilemma about the ethics of advertising painkillers meant for terminally ill patients in a sensationalized way. I would say, the poster is intelligent and creative enough to shame any copywriter but leaves one with the bitter after taste of a cancer patient’s pain being commercially utilized.

Via: PixelPasta