How to create a healthy household medicine

Clearly products have to be trustworthy, outstanding and effective. They also need to deliver, but at the end of the day it's design and pack copy that cuts through the clutter on the shelf and makes you reach for one pack in particular -- a decision made literally in a few seconds. Put quite bluntly, it's a battle for hearts and minds and it will be the companies and brands that focus more on consumer drivers than product characteristics that stand to win the high ground and benefit in the long term.

Obviously, I'm not a chemist, so what are my credentials to be talking about this? As a branding and design consultancy the company that I co-founded, Creative Leap, works with clients to better understand customer and consumer attitudes and behaviour in the selection and use of products and brands. We have spent years looking why people behave in the way they do when they are faced with choice, and God knows there is a bewildering choice nowadays in any high street chemist.

Based on these insights we specialise in developing impactful brand identity, product and packaging ideas and solutions for our clients. We have been fortunate to have worked with some of the UK's leading healthcare brands and over the years have built up a depth of understanding of how to deal with some of the industry's current and compelling issues.

Changes in the healthcare market, driven both by socio-political forces and growing consumer confidence in self medication, have lead to a growth in both over the counter medicines and those available for self selection under a general sales licence. This has resulted in consumers being faced with an ever-expanding range of products and brands from which to choose to treat or relieve their ailments and illnesses.

From time to time a new active or molecule comes into the market with the potential to create or redefine a category and create a high level of consumer interest. The switch from prescription only medicine to pharmacy status of the anti viral Aciclovir helped create Zovirax, one of the most successful switches of recent times. While still a relatively successful brand, lack of investment over the years, particularly in the area of new product development has seen its market share steadily eroded from the heady days of "owning" the category.

Another innovation, the development of Ibuprofen by Boots, created a new shining star in the analgesics category. While sales of generic Ibuprofen continue apace, a well planned and supported marketing strategy has propelled Nurofen, the branded version of Ibuprofen into one of the leading brands in its field.

However, with very few new actives coming into the market, it is increasingly difficult for healthcare companies to differentiate their brands on the basis of innovation or functional product benefits alone. The regulatory environment also impacts heavily in this regard.

Each product marketing license holder can make only specific claims around a particular product based on the summary of product characteristics, the legally approved copy, based on the license, detailing what the product is and how it works.

Generally, the wording of this document is the domain of the medical and regulatory department rather than the marketing department in the client company. As such the final document will often have little reference to what, ideally, the end consumer may want to know or value, as far as product information is concerned. This will even extend to what the product is actually called.

In a market environment with a limited number of licensed products, the same product from the same license holder is ever more increasingly being marketed under different brand names and packaging liveries. The constraints imposed by the fact of this very real and tangible product parity makes the issue of differentiation even more complicated. In other words it's basically the same stuff in different packs with different brand name "badges".

The problem is further exacerbated by literacy, increasing consumer understanding of the category, readily available information via the internet, the growth in generics and copy-cat own label packaging strategies from retailers that often simply "borrow" the visual and verbal language of the category leader.

So, for brand owners there is a dramatic lack of functional differentiators, and to respond to this challenge they are increasingly looking at how to engage consumers on a different level by reinforcing the emotional ties between brands and their customers.

Freed from the burden of having to differentiate their offer at a functional level and where high levels of trust and emotional attachment can be developed and leveraged, more and more businesses are seeking to grow their strongest brands outside of their traditional therapeutic categories.

The challenge of building a brand's emotional equity while attempting to move it outside of its traditional heartland creates new and interesting issues for brand strategists, packaging designers and the regulatory authorities that control what is allowed at point of purchase.

Basically, brands have to create signposts, a visual language or iconography that consumers can easily follow. A signage if you like that makes immediate sense, something like the pictograms on public loos, images that simply don't need to be explained. Above all else this visual language needs to be able to trigger the correct emotional response, delivering the re-assurance that the purchaser is making the right decision by putting their trust in this particular brand.

As always, some of the biggest brands in the market face the biggest challenges. Not only do they need to maintain their position in a crowded marketplace but they also need to grow their brand footprint usually through brand extension.

There are some great examples of how leading brands have created a packaging iconography and architecture that has enabled them to maintain their market share and also to tick all the boxes mentioned above.

Strepsils, for example, had an increasingly diverse portfolio of products across different therapeutic categories, which required a full-scale review of the global brand architecture to ensure a coherent and differentiated portfolio of products within multiple geographical territories.

The identification and separation of key brand visual equities from graphic structure lead to a global redesign of the brand identity and packaging and paved the way for a bold programme of new product development at both ends of the severity spectrum (mild-severe).

The creation of an iconic brand identity, based around the Strepsils "S" motif provided the opportunity to register and protect the brand's visual identity to ensure differentiation at point of purchase. A re-organisation of the product portfolio based on clearly positioned sub-brands helped facilitate consumer navigation of the range and category and facilitated focused marketing strategies around specific added value product propositions as well as providing a platform for integrated brand marketing initiatives.

Fundamental to the creative strategy was a clear understanding of the consumer relationship with the brand as an "approachable expert" basically a well-informed, professional and friendly "voice" in the healthcare arena.

The core consumer benefit of superior taste and mouth feel, encapsulated in "appetite appeal", was visually articulated through the brands unique mix of vibrantly coloured flavour cues combined with white, a key consumer semiotic representing medical heritage and efficacy.

Taking these all important steps worked exceptionally well for the brand and the new identity, architecture and packaging graphics reduced complexity within the business and helped contribute to year on year growth in both new and existing markets.

Another example of getting it right comes from Benylin, the UK's best selling cough medicine. The brand faced a huge challenge, basically to expand its profile in the Cold and Flu category, to build category penetration and drive incremental market growth.

The cold and flu category is the fastest growing sector of the winter ailment market and is worth £118.5m. A key issue for Benylin entering this category was the automatic association between Benylin and cough, so it was vital that the therapeutic category was clearly signposted within the information hierarchy. Also, given the dominance of brands such as Lemsip and the colour green, it was critical to ensure stand out within the category -- hence the decision to use purple, one of the Benylin brand flag colours, to create a powerful block merchandising effect.

The impactful packaging solution features a "well burst", a graphic device that draws on the powerful consumer emotional connection with the transition from feeling ill to feeling better as a condition or symptom is treated or soothed by the brand. The well burst is formalised graphically as an optimistic radiating white "sunburst" against a bright, lively coloured background.

At initial new product development stages packaging concepts using this device were created and tested to ensure that the graphic design also harnessed the image consumers held of the medicine physically driving out the illness. It was also imperative to ensure that consumers understood the well burst device before it was formalised as part of the brand graphic architecture.

The words Max Strength and the colour red are used to reinforce the efficacy of the individual products and simple graphic illustrations clearly communicate the product format (a key part of the purchasing decision in this category). Brand efficacy has been reinforced with the introduction of an improved Benylin logotype within a surrounding "well glow".

The new Benylin logo uses an italic font, which suggests greater dynamism, increased moulding to add three-dimensionality and the introduction of a silver foil-blocked key line surrounding the Benylin badge. The brand's premium status has been further enhanced by a reworking of the packaging reprographics, to use pure line colours rather than four colour process and to ensure fresh, vibrant colours and maximum shelf stand out. The resulting Cold and Flu packs have a simplicity and confidence that reflects the brand DNA of a market leader. The new look has worked exceptionally well with sell in significantly in advance of initial targets and market share is growing month on month.

Alison Hall, senior product manager for Benylin, sums up the effects: "The great packaging design and significant advertising support and the motivating claim of Nothing is more effective without prescription for Cold and Flu, has achieved real standout among existing GSL offerings."

By working to better understand the consumer relationship with the brand and category on both a functional and emotional level it is possible for brands to develop greater insights which will inform and enhance the brand positioning and creative strategy. Basically, get this right and your brand will be able to deliver a bigger emotional punch and really connect with consumers on the high street.