Panadol – Relieve The Pain (2020)

Review

American Gothic by Grant Wood

Image one is of the famous American Gothic painting by Grant Wood. There are many different interpretations of this painting, but we cannot recall any of them being that the couple were in pain in any way. Miserable, joyless or even plain bored, yes, but in pain? Nope. Also, why would they remove the pitch fork? Could that be where the pain came from? Who knows.

The Scream by Edvard Munch

Image two is the classic painting based on the scream emoji. Now, we can kind of see where they were going with this one. The person is screaming, so they’ve just assumed it’s because of pain. It’s an easy step to take. Although, it’s a little too far from the truth to work. The painting shows anxiety and fear, which is why the image of the face is a universal symbol for anxiety. Not sure a couple of Panadol is enough to get this person to give a thumbs up.

Self-Portrait With Bandaged Ear by Vincent Van Gogh

The third image is Vincent Van Gogh’s Self-portrait where he is usually sporting a rather fetching ear bandage. In this image the bandage is missing. What makes it all the more fascinating that they’ve chosen this piece, is the fact it was painted a few months after he chopped his ear off. That’s right, he chopped his ear off. So what is this ad telling us? That popping a couple of Panadol will allow severed body parts to grow back?

These ads would work perfectly for a campaign for anti-depressants. The images of miserable, anxious or downright insane characters would benefit well from popping a couple of anti D’s, but I doubt very much these paintings would have been any different if they’d have taken a Panadol.
What they should have done with this campaign is thought more about what images to use. There are plenty of well known images depicting pain and suffering. Or maybe art wasn’t the way to go on this one? Maybe movie scenes would have been a better option. All we know is that this did not work.