Help Remedies Builds OTC Brand Based On Simplicity, Young Adult Appeal

Like many other firms, Help Remedies seeks a growing share of the OTC drug market through innovation. The difference is Help innovates through subtraction.

By offering single-ingredient drug products in minimalist packaging, along with an irreverent website and burgeoning social media presence, New York-based Help targets consumers in their 20s and 30s without a lifetime allegiance to any particular OTC brands.

"There are some really fantastic drugs that have been overcomplicated and have alienated people in a way that isn't very helpful," said Richard Fine, Help's CEO. Fine co-founded the company with Nathan Frank in 2009 after becoming frustrated with convoluted OTC drug offerings.

"We're going to take the things that really work and we're going to make the brand appealing, versus trying to do some arbitrary difference to the drug," such as a change in delivery form, Fine added in an interview.

Help Remedies' product line

Help's current line of six products comprises four drugs and two first-aid bandages. Among the drugs, "Help I have a headache" is acetaminophen 500 mg, equivalent to Johnson & Johnson's Extra Strength Tylenol, and the firm's top-seller, "Help I can't sleep," contains the same diphenhydramine 25 mg as J&J's Benadryl.

The Help line is a response to OTCs that combine active ingredients that work effectively on their own or novel delivery formats that add little or no value to a drug, Fine said.

The simplicity of Help products extends to their relatively few excipients and mostly biodegradable packaging, made from paper pulp and corn-based bio-plastic.

Despite lacking the cachet of large established brands and pricing higher than private-label OTCs, Help Remedies is growing rapidly.

Fine said the company in 2011 already surpassed 2010 sales, which were up 200% over 2009. By year's end, the CEO said Help's portfolio likely will feature 20 stock-keeping units and be available in all Target stores and at least one national drugstore chain.

Each Help drug SKU sells at a suggested $4 and contains 16 tablets or caplets, except for "Help I have allergies," which contains eight tablets of loratadine 10 mg.

Battle Of The Brands

Going up against giants such as Tylenol and Pfizer's Advil is no easy task, even with a fresh marketing angle, said branding expert Tim Calkins.

"If you're going to succeed with entering a very mature category like this, you've go to do something very different," said Calkins, a professor of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

"I think, to their credit, they are clearly trying to differentiate by creating a brand with a very different approach and attitude," he added.

Help's website features a section called "Help I'm bored," in which the company takes scenarios submitted by consumers and turns them into deadpan visual jokes – "a breath of fresh air" in the historically "sedate" arena of OTC marketing, Calkins noted.

Fine said Help aims to become a lifestyle brand for younger consumers and has little interest in attracting middle-aged loyalists to Tylenol and Advil.

"These are big brands, but they're not powerful brands," he said. "It's not like people walk around with a Tylenol t-shirt. Nobody loves their Tylenol like they love their Apple computer or whatever great brand you want to think of. It's just a utility item.

"So for a 25-year-old who's entering this category, our values match up, to me, much better than our competitors' do."

In much the same way that alternative products such as homeopathics are capitalizing on J&J's extensive 2010 recalls of Tylenol and other OTCs, Help is winning over consumers and retailers with its non-traditional approach, Fine said (Also see "Homeopathy Gains From J&J Recalls As Consumers, Retailers Seek Alternatives" - Pink Sheet, 4 Apr, 2011.).

Chris Malone, who studied consumer perceptions of the Tylenol brand following J&J's recalls, said it appears Help is building a foundation for the same kind of trust and loyalty that Tylenol fostered over the decades and still enjoys, for the most part (Also see "Tylenol Yields Positive Results In Consumer Perception Study Despite Recall" - Pink Sheet, 6 Sep, 2010.).

"In particular, [Help's] honest and transparent approach suggests they are working hard to put the consumers' and society's best interests first," said Malone, chief advisory officer with the Relational Capital Group research firm, in an email.

"While these are inherently appealing at an instinctively human level, they also tend to be in sharp contrast with the practices of large OTC companies and brands," he added.

Eyeing OTC Industry Citizenship

Help Remedies' current mission is to gradually transform itself from an edgy upstart to a major OTC player.

After retail customer Duane Reade advised the firm it needed more "well-seasoned sales staff," Fine said, Help hired Mark Cieslinski, a veteran of The Mentholatum Company, to join its 10-person Manhattan office as senior VP of sales.

While Help is most interested in word-of-mouth marketing, the firm plans a national television campaign within the next six months to accompany its expanded distribution.

Without delving into details, Fine said he expects the theme of Help's TV ads "to be the subject of some controversy, especially amongst the OTC community."

Despite its outsider mindset, Help is moving toward the OTC industry mainstream and considering involvement with trade groups, Fine said.

"We need to make sure that we both keep our rebel perspective but also make sure we work within the confines of the system to make the changes that we want to make," he said.

One change Fine has in mind involves proposing reforms to FDA's Drug Facts label requirements, which he says bury dosing instructions under excessive warnings. The CEO hopes eventually to put Help's design team to work on creating a template for a simplified, more elegant label.

"I think what you've got is well-meaning and well-intentioned people making things more complicated and alienating" for consumers, Fine said. "I think Drug Facts are just a classic example of that."

By Dan Schiff