Brands focus on lasting legacies
This may be the year of the legacy brands as two companies that recently acquired separate brand portfolios from GlaxoSmithKline focus on reinvigorating consumer attention to their respective product lines.
Prestige Brands will be adding 17 former GSK brands to its stable of legacy brands that already includes Luden’s and Dramamine. The company recently identified the five key GSK-acquired brands that Prestige will be focusing on in terms of both marketing support and new product development — BC, Goody’s, Debrox, Gaviscon and Beano.
That will build off of five new recent product introductions from Prestige — Chloraseptic warming sore throat, Clear Eyes Cooling Comfort, Dramamine for Kids, Efferdent Power Clean Crystals and Comet stainless steel.
Meda Consumer Healthcare, meanwhile, already has revitalized an iron supplementation category with the rebranding of a multi-SKU Feosol line and plans to similarly invigorate the cough-cold category this year with a Contac relaunch.
As part of its product divestiture plan, GSK has sharpened its focus in OTC across four key categories — wellness, oral health, skin health and nutrition. “The category approach that we now are able to take allows us to focus on [a] better and stronger solution,” GSK chief marketing officer John Graham told DSN, “as we move from ... a brand-centric model, to a much more category-growth, category-focused model.”