CINCINNATI - After three years of discarding its marginal brands, Procter & Gamble Co. is trying to revive one by launching a national advertising campaign and expanding product offerings that carry the Sinex name.
The “Clear Your Head Medicine” will be continue to be sold as a nasal spray, but is now adding two liquid-products: LiquiCap Convenience Packs and Nighttime and Daytime LiquiCaps.
“Our research has found that sinus lacks a true category leader,” said Dave Tomasi, commercial director for P&G’s personal health care unit. “With 63 percent of sinus sufferers looking to a variety of medications that might not do the job for their sinus symptoms, this expansion of the Sinex line will offer one-stop-shop relief from a trusted brand.”
It’s a change of pace for P&G, which shed 105 brand lines since 2014 as part of a broad strategy to “streamline and simplify” P&G’s product portfolio so it could focus resources on brands with better long-term growth potential.
Sinex is part of the Vicks family of products that P&G acquired in 1985, a business line that includes NyQuil and DayQuil cold medicines and the sleep aid ZzzQuil. Sinex competes in a category dominated by private-label brands and generated about $20 million in 2015 sales, according to data provided by Statistica, an online statistics portal.
Sinex was originally launched as Medi Mist in 1959, but became a market leader after adopting the Sinex name in 1962. That leadership ended in the mid-1990s, but P&G’s research indicates consumers still associate the Sinex name with “long lasting relief” and its long-used “Clear Your Head” tagline.
P&G had been selling liquid capsules under the name QlearQuil, an allergy brand.
“What we learned with QlearQuil is that allergy and sinus are actually very different,” said P&G spokeswoman Velvet Gogolbennett. “Segmented categories should not be treated the same with one brand offering. While QlearQuil offered a lineup of sinus and allergy products, Sinex consumers remained loyal and we decided we could build on the high awareness and loyalty of the Sinex user by expanding Sinex to both the sprays and liquicaps forms.”
P&G is supporting the Sinex relaunch with national TV ads, online video, in-store displays and coupon offers.
