Nuprin Comeback Team

Bristol-Myers Products (BMP) joined the family of Olympic sponsors for the 1992 games and chose to associate its Nuprin brand pain reliever with the Olympic movement. The communications challenge was to differentiate Nuprin from the literally hundreds of other “official sponsors” of the United States Olympic Committee and to support the brand’s business goal of positioning Nuprin as the body pain reliever Olympic athletes use.

PCI determined that Nuprin could own the “comeback” concept among USOC sponsors and designed the Nuprin Comeback Team to separate the brand from the Olympic sponsor pack. The objectives were to:

• Establish Nuprin as the official pain reliever of the 1992 United States Olympic Team.
• Highlight Nuprin’s sponsorship of the 1992 Olympic Team by through the brand's association with well-recognized Olympic spokespersons who had been injured while training or competing in their sport, but overcame their injuries and the pain associated with them.
• Associate the brand with the Olympic values of dedication, commitment, competition and achievement.

PCI developed a two-year media relations program for launch in April 1991, just as the American public and media began to turn their attention to the 1992 Olympic Games.

PCI researched and identified compelling spokespersons with inspiring stories that illustrated the Olympic values. We sought out athletes who had suffered major injuries while training or competing in their sport and overcame those injuries to achieve Olympic success.

An Olympic athletic trainer was included on the team to stress that Nuprin values the role a trainer or physical therapist plays in an athlete’s success and to target an audience the brand values as influencers, decision-makers and purchasers as well as users of the product.

The Nuprin Comeback Team was made up of seven active or retired Olympians plus the trainer. The Team reflected a balance between summer and winter sports, male/female and ethnic diversity.

The communications goals were to:

• Position Nuprin in the media and with the public as an official sponsor of the 1992 United States Olympic Team in a way that tied directly to the product’s use and benefits.
• Highlight Nuprin as the pain reliever Olympic athletes use.

The communications plan focused on the following strategies:

• Link Nuprin to the ability to overcome pain and injury through its association with credible, well-recognized Olympic athletes who recovered from serious injuries to compete again.
• Capitalize on heightened media and public interest in amateur sports and athletes during the pre-Olympic and Olympic years.
• Focus on targeted national, top-market and brand-priority market media opportunities for members of the Nuprin Comeback Team.

In order to reach as many people as possible, the 1991 program targeted 15 of the top 20 ADI markets. To leverage syngeries within the brand marketing mix, the 1992 program targeted a combination of selected top 20 ADI markets and markets identified as priorities for brand marketing activity.

Nuprin said “Olympics” with more than 400 million consumer impressions during 1991 and 1992, as Olympic athletes famous for their comebacks from pain and injury told their inspiring stories during 30 United States major market tours.

The Nuprin Comeback Team spoke out in influential media such as:

• USA Today
• The Los Angeles Times
• The Chicago Tribune
• The Boston Globe

and dozens of network affiliate television news shows and national radio programs that reached consumers in key markets.