Kids cough-cold hype quiets, but sales significantly drop
NEW YORK —The meeting on kids cough-cold held in October certainly kicked off this year’s cough-cold season on a dour note, but it does not appear that the echoes of that meeting reverberating through the consumer press will have any lasting effect on the category. In fact, it may turn out that having this meeting just before the cough-cold season really takes off was a blessing in disguise—the news already will have moved onto the next big topic before any real illness activity takes off—leaving the question of efficacy and safety in kids cough-cold meds a fading memory.
Already, the buzz surrounding kids cough-cold is quieting. “The whole month of October was fairly dedicated to a lot of noise [around kids cough-cold],” stated Scott Hanslip, vice president of global sales with Surveillance Data Inc., a company that tracks both media impressions and upper respiratory illness trends. “Most of that [on] network television followed by some newspapers.” However, it clearly was an October phenomena. Into November, the number of media mentions concerning kids cough-cold has dropped significantly, he reported.
The most immediate impact appears to be the 16 percent drop-off in sales of kids cough-cold medicines for the four weeks ended Nov. 3, according to the Nielsen Co. tracking sales across food, drug and mass (minus Wal-Mart), which reflects both the voluntary withdrawal of kids cough-cold medicines marketed toward children under the age of 2, as well as any market reaction to the October kids cough-cold meeting. And there’s no telling how much of that drop-off also can be attributed to a slow start of the season.
A sharp sales decline in cough-cold medicines that correlated with an increase in patient visits over respiratory concerns was likewise attributed to the January 2006 American College of Chest Physicians’ claim that cough medicines were ineffective.
And while the cold season has not necessarily kicked off with a slew of coughs and colds in classrooms and offices, there are early indicators that this may be a strong season with regard to illness. “We are seeing strong pediatric markets, and big population markets, moving into pre-alert status,” Hanslip stated in early November. “Of those pre-alert markets, there’re some good quality markets—New York, Chicago, San Antonio. These big markets didn’t move at this pace this early into a pre-alert status condition until well into December [last year].”