Medium matters when promoting cough-cold

Cough-cold marketers like to strike just before the iron gets hot, placing most of their ad placements in support of cold and flu remedies in the two months leading up to the peak of cold and flu season. Almost half (44%) of all television ads in support of cough-cold products were placed in November and December last year, according to the latest Market Track analysis.

(Click here for the full special report.)



And the medium matters. “Retailer seasonal promotional strategy for cough-cold remedies is consistent across print, home pages and in TV — the majority of promotions run in Q4,” noted Ryne Misso, director marketing for Market Track. “Email is a different story. The majority of cough-cold email promotions run in Q1, suggesting retailers leverage email to drive in-the-moment purchase of cough-cold products during the cold and flu season,” he said.



“A lot of the difference in promoting that planning cycle and in-the-moment cycle is how each advertising media is effective,” Misso added. “In this case, we found that email is absolutely more in-the-moment driven, as opposed to some of the other mechanisms that may be more involved with consumers planning for the season.”



Promotions for nasal sprays and nasal strips extend well into the spring and early summer, by contrast, reflecting a similar strategy: build awareness around, in this case, allergy products just before the allergy season reaches its peak in terms of incidence. “[A total of] 63% of nasal spray promotions ran between January and June in 2015,” Misso said. “[This] compares to only 38% of cough-cold remedies and 40% of cough drop promotions.”



May is the first month of the year in which cough-cold categories see almost no promotion in circulars, or any other medium for that matter. Roughly 1% of all 2015 cough-cold remedies, cough drop and chest rub promotions ran in May, whereas 10% of nasal spray and 13% of nasal strip promotions ran in May.