The PAGB has produced an important piece of work (see more) to demonstrate the role of brands in self-care. In simple terms brands are critical in helping people navigate complex categories and choose the products that best meet their needs. Specifically, on umbrella branding it highlights the opportunities to improve regulation to support better outcomes for people and how this would increase innovation and investment – essential to the long term economic need to increase self-care.
For non-OTC industry readers, umbrella branding has a specific meaning in OTC: it is the ability to use the same brand name across a range of products rather than, as is usually the requirement of regulators, using different brand names across a range, because they might contain a different active ingredient or respond to a slightly different need or indication. This adds huge complexity and cost barriers for manufacturers and in over 30 years of work in the OTC category this author has seen NO EVIDENCE it adds value to the consumers’ ability to choose products – in fact it can confuse.
This report sits alongside a second piece of important work the PAGB has done to demonstrate the positive Economic Impact of OTC Products. This is fabulous work, anyone interested in brands, healthcare or how government and regulation need to be developed to promote collective benefit should check out these data.
Summary: OTC companies are rightly regulated. These are serious products that need to be used appropriately. The 21st century challenge is to develop regulation that is people-centric and designed to promote the desired outcomes – better consumer experiences; an increase in effective self-care to help the NHS; more innovation, investment from business to drive economic growth. A brief look at the approach to umbrella branding over the past decades shows this is sadly lacking. Without rehashing the extensive evidence in the report – you can read it for yourselves – here are a few takeaways:
- People who self-care rely on brands and simple brand architectures to navigate categories and make choices. After Google Maps™ brands are the most effective navigation tool ever created. In self-care, umbrella branding supports this as it helps simplify complex choices and because it fits with the existing approaches people use to make product choices.
- People trust and rely on brands, particularly in categories like health. So, ranges with effective umbrella branding support category use. It is worth noting, that broader shopper behavioural evidence universally highlights that own-label buyers navigate via brands too i.e. this would bring a category benefit.
- Regulators are usually concerned that the use of umbrella brands will lead to confusion and people taking the wrong product or ingredient. The examples shown (Benylin and Anadin) clearly demonstrate how packaging (branding) can easily remove this fear by creating brand architecture that pulls needs, products and ingredients apart to increase, not hinder, the ability to choose the right product to meet a need. No brand ever wants a user to buy the wrong product; or be confused; it is why they invest heavily in packaging and communications. Evidence consistently shows in all self-selection categories, confusion can lead to no purchase rather than the wrong one. People are skilled and experienced in navigating complex competitive categories to find what they want or need – so trust them -umbrella branding would support this.
- The data also highlights how important brands are to younger consumers; this makes the issue critical to the on-going effectiveness of the government’s self-care agenda.
- Finally, it is well documented that building new brands and innovation is expensive and high risk. Effective umbrella branding mitigates some, but only a small amount, of this risk for manufacturers. The upshot, the current approach is a major barrier to investment, new product launches and therefore increasing the benefits of more self-care. Given the category is hyper-competitive this will create a category benefit not unduly support individual brands.
There are just a few of the points raised – kudos to the PAGB.
Conclusion: brands matter. They are important to help people make effective choices and they are critical to our economic prosperity – healthcare is no different.