Aleve was a brand with no soul. It stood for nothing. Just the typical problem-solution approach with a bunch of robotic claims. Advertising that looked just like any other brand in the category and made you feel nothing but indifference.

We needed something ownable for the brand.

Aleve stands out from the competitors in a very clear way: it provides 12 hours of uninterrupted pain relief. In other words: while you need to take 2 or 3 pills from any other brand, you can just take one Aleve. No interruptions, no up and downs between doses.

And that led to a powerful insight: lower class American workers are the ones we should talk to because only Aleve puts their pain on hold so they can carry on with their long workday without interruptions. The effects of one Aleve can outlast any of their shifts.

We decided to own that.

So we celebrated all of those people that can’t let pain stand in the way. And while there’s no denying that they take Aleve to ease their pain, they also take it because they want show up for others. They can’t afford to take a day off because their families depend on them, because their effort helps their community or because they simply want to be there for their team.

Who do you take it for? was our way to remind all of them that their commitment to others was stronger than pain.

It was a very honest look at the everyday reality of millions of American workers and we wanted it to be truthful, real, gritty, dark, almost harsh. Because that’s what pain feels like. And because no other competitor ever goes there.

In order to connect with our target, we needed to show that we understood what they were going through. So we captured the crude reality of pain without sugarcoating it.

This is just the main film but we also launched a series of individual 15” stories and sales and awareness improved drastically and in a matter of weeks.