H&B REPORT: WOMEN’S HEALTH A TOP WELLNESS TREND IN 2023

According to Holland & Barrett’s (LetterOne) Wellness Trends Report 2023, areas of particular interest to consumers this year will include:

• Women’s wellness – a big business in 2022 – will ramp up even further, with personalised solutions and FemTech founders continuing to help lead the revolution on breaking down taboos around menopause, menstrual health, fertility and more

• Wellness tech gets personal. From patches tracking dietary biomarkers to carbon levels in the breath determining metabolic function, the future is all about using health data for optimum health. Health tech innovation is also becoming more focused on key target groups, such as those suffering from, or at risk of, chronic conditions

• Sleep As well as vitamin D and magnesium, newly-trending ingredients include glycine, spearmint and plant polyphenols, EGCG and l-theanine. Meanwhile, consumers are keeping orthosomnia — the worry about getting enough sleep — at bay with remedies containing lavender, chamomile and CBD. There will also be an increase in smart tech to synchronise circadian routines

• Ayurveda Ayurvedic remedies such as ashwagandha and curcumin, combined with scientific scrutiny, are experiencing a rise in popularity 

• Beauty from within Collagen’s status as a skin-smoothing beauty superhero is here to stay, but people are also starting to understand the broader benefits, and younger customers are using type 2 collagen supplements to keep their joints in optimal health

^{To read the full report, click here.} 

Nicholas Hall Writes: Last Wednesday we held the NHC Start of the Year Meeting at our Southend-on-Sea HQ. What a pleasure after three years to have 35 team members in the room and most of the rest of our global team dialing-in. One of our main objectives was to brainstorm a new Strategic Narrative for the CHC industry, which will drive our Global Trends roadshow after the new DB6 data is published in early April. And, of course, the Strategic Narrative will be at the heart of New Paradigms for CHC 2023, which we have just scoped and which will be published in July. As usual I will write almost every word of this completely revised 4th edition, supported by what I truly believe to be the biggest and best market analysis and creative solutions team in the CHC industry – 54 out of our total headcount of 65 plus numerous network partners, associates and freelancers.

And many of the overarching issues to be discussed in New Paradigms are illustrated in the latest edition of CHC.Newsflash: women’s health, MedTech and FemTech, lifestyle products, natural remedies, sustainability and China (reviewed at a time when Dr Nouriel Roubini warns us in his latest book, Megathreats, of the dangers of deglobalisation). And even before we publish the new report, I hope to meet as many of you as possible at our April conference in London, when we will give you a sneak peek of the new Strategic Narrative.

I will be joined on stage in London by speakers from PAGB, Haleon and Perrigo, plus other industry experts, for our 33rd European CHC Conference 19-21 April. Exploring The Future Resumed, you can review the full agenda or explore group booking options by contacting elizabeth.bernos@NicholasHall.com.

Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz dies

Billionaire global businessman, Formula One figure and philanthropist Dietrich Mateschitz has died at the age of 74 years. The co-founder and 49% owner of Red Bull was working in marketing at Blendax (now owned by P&G) when he discovered Krating Daeng – the drink that would become Red Bull – while travelling in Thailand. Following a few modifications, the iconic beverage was launched in Austria in 1987 and went on to become a global market leader among energy drinks. In a statement, Red Bull noted: “In these moments, the over-riding feeling is one of sadness. But soon the sadness will make way for gratitude – gratitude for what he changed, moved, encouraged and made possible for so many individual people. We will remain connected to him respectfully and lovingly.” 

Nicholas Hall Writes: Red Bull is an outstanding marketing success, and not just because it has sold over 100bn cans worldwide since it was launched in 1987. But the story begins a lot earlier: pharmacist Chaleo Yoovidhya was the son of poor Chinese immigrants to Thailand. He set up TC Pharma which became a success with revenues of about US$300mn and a very nice business marketing stimulants in (I would have to say, boring) brown bottles labelled as Krating Daeng (Red Bull). The consumer audience consisted mainly of truck drivers who needed to stay awake at the wheel while navigating Thailand’s famous traffic jams. Chaleo always claimed that Krating Daeng was a stroke of “divine inspiration” when he launched the brand in 1976. Dietrich Mateschitz was the second “angel” to become involved in the progress of the brand. He bought a bottle to overcome jet lag during a visit to Thailand, saw the immense potential lying dormant within the brand, invested US$500,000 alongside the same amount from Chaleo, and simply reinvented Red Bull, making it an energy drink for sportspeople and other on-the-go individuals, and a sexy lifestyle product for young nightclubbers.

Chaleo died in 2012 aged anywhere between 80-90! He gave various birthdates, maybe to get more birthday presents, and was reputed to be worth US$5bn when he died. Unlike Chaleo, we can be sure of Dietrich Mateschitz’s age, but not his wealth. In 2008 Forbes estimated that Chaleo and Mateschitz were worth US$4bn, but presumably the company is worth a lot more now. I mention these eye-watering amounts just to prove that real innovation can pay back handsomely. And if you say that Red Bull is just 5 cups of flavoured coffee in a can, I think you miss the point that innovation is not just about formulation, but is the whole marketing clothing of a brand. That is especially true in consumer health, where product innovation is frankly quite limited.

And that raises another question: is Red Bull a CHC product? Well, energy is an OTC indication, and every sale of Red Bull is US1.65 (the global average price per can) not spent on, say, Berocca Boost. It remains an aim of our industry to offer consumers and retailers a non-addictive energy product with vast scale, but we are nowhere near … yet!

Join Nicholas and a group of industry experts to explore key trends impacting CHC at our Asia-Pacific e-Conference, taking place online on 23 November. The event will also include the presentation of our Regional CHC Creative Marketing Award. For more information, or to register, please contact elizabeth.bernos@NicholasHall.com.

OTC hormone replacement therapy now available in UK

Following a landmark reclassification by the UK’s Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in July 2022, postmenopausal women in the UK can for the first time access a low-dose, locally applied hormone replacement therapy without a prescription. Effective 8th September 2022, leading health & beauty retailer Boots (Walgreens Boots Alliance) is offering Gina vaginal tablets (Novo Nordisk, estradiol 10mcg) OTC to women aged 50+ years who have not had a period for at least one year.

The tablets, which cost £29.99 (US$34.60) for a pack of 24 plus applicators, treat vaginal atrophy, which is experienced by around half of postmenopausal women. Symptoms include dryness, soreness, itching, burning and uncomfortable intercourse caused by oestrogen deficiency. Boots Pharmacy Director Anne Higgins described the move as “another important milestone in women’s health”.

^{Novo Nordisk’s new OTC brand Gina}

Comment from Proprietary Association of Great Britain CEO, Michelle Riddalls: This is a huge step forward helping women to take control over their health by enabling and supporting self-care. The pandemic forced us all to rethink the way that healthcare is delivered and brought to light the central role that self-care can play in managing health issues. Our research has shown that this is what consumers want. It has also brought huge benefits to patients, healthcare providers and to taxpayers via more efficient and effective use of NHS resources.

Nicholas Hall Writes: This week I am writing very little as a mark of respect for our beloved Queen Elizabeth. I know – the show must go on! But what a show that was, running for 70 years through good times and bad, almost never putting a foot wrong despite a vastly changing world, not to mention wayward family members. I am spellbound by what the Queen stood for and achieved. But we will have dried our tears by this time next week, when it will be business as usual, even though the memories will never fade!

In just over a month’s time, you can sharpen your skills and increase your understanding of Self-Care at the CHC Training Academy workshop in Bucharest. Taking place on 26 October, the workshop will be followed by a free 1-day conference, hosted by RASCI, focusing on Health Literacy, opening with a keynote speech from Nicholas Hall. To register, or for more information on group booking rates, please contact elizabeth.bernos@NicholasHall.com without delay.

CHC regulation: News from EFSA and FDA

The European Food Safety Authority has stated that its scientists “cannot currently establish the safety of cannabidiol as a novel food owing to data gaps and uncertainties about potential hazards related to CBD intake”. Following the submission of numerous applications under novel food regulations, the European Commission asked ESFA to give its opinion on whether CBD consumption was safe for humans. EFSA’s expert Panel on Nutrition, Novel Foods & Food Allergens (NDA) believes there is insufficient data on the effect of CBD on the liver, GI tract, endocrine and nervous systems and psychological wellbeing. While studies in animals show significant adverse effects especially in relation to reproduction, it is important to determine if these effects are also seen in humans.

In other notable CHC regulatory news, the FDA has placed Sanofi’s Actual Use Trial to support the Rx-to-OTC switch of ED treatment Cialis (tadalafil) on hold, owing to concerns about the protocol design. Cialis is the only PDE-5 inhibitor that offers men a choice when it comes to treatment for ED – for use as needed and for once daily use. The AUT has not yet recruited any patients, but Sanofi noted that it “continues to work with the FDA to move the programme forward and will engage the agency in upcoming meetings as it determines the next steps”.

^{Source: EFSA}

Nicholas Hall’s Touchpoints: Why am I not surprised at the latest EFSA ruling on CBD? Even though the Chair of the NDA Panel, Professor Dominique Turck, has let a crumb of comfort drop from his high table when he said, “It is important to stress at this point that we have not concluded that CBD is unsafe as food”, the announcement will have disappointed an industry and the many manufacturers who have sunk millions into proving the unique benefits of this new class of consumer healthcare products. This is, after all, the organisation that won’t allow probiotics to be named as probiotics on packaging, although it seems to me highly significant that the authorities in Spain and Netherlands are leading the way to override this ridiculous ruling by the Dr.No’s at EFSA. 

In much the same way, California is pioneering the move for hemp-derived CBD to be treated as supplements and eventually brought under the DSHEA umbrella. This is another crumb of much-needed comfort at a time when the FDA seems in a state of paralysis regarding the regulation of medicinal cannabis. And I’m extremely concerned with the recent news that the FDA has stopped Sanofi’s Actual Use Trial for the switch of Cialis, which my good friend Mary Alice Lawless believes could be a threat to the whole switch process in USA.

Explore the best CBD and lifestyle launches from 2021 in the Innovation Showcase featured in our recent Innovation in CHC report. Drawn from CHC New Products Tracker, you can also explore innovation by marketer, region and country. To order your copy, or for further information, please contact melissa.lee@NicholasHall.com.

Future and Cooper in European MED3000 licensing agreement

Futura Medical has entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with French-based Cooper, a leading European independent self-care company, for the rights to commercialise its gel-based ED treatment MED3000 throughout the European Economic Area, UK and Switzerland (where it will be marketed as Eroxon). Under the agreement, Futura will receive an (undisclosed) upfront payment, as well as cumulative sales milestone payments and will manufacture and supply the product (through its 3rd party contract manufacturers) to Cooper. In compliance with EU competition law, the initial licence agreement term is five years.

Nicholas Hall’s Touchpoints: This is an outstanding product, which my colleague Ian Crook, who authored our recent Sexual Health & Fertility report, describes as: “The first clinically-proven topical device for erectile dysfunction.” He tells me that MED3000 has the potential to shake up the ED market and that Futura believes it has identified a significant unmet need for an ED treatment that is efficacious, well-tolerated and works within minutes.

Six months after securing its first licensing agreement with Co-High Investment Management in China and SE Asia (March 2021), Futura struck a deal with US-based specialty biopharmaceutical company m8 to exclusively develop and commercialise MED3000 in Brazil and Mexico. This latest deal with Cooper, covering EEA, UK and Switzerland, brings the marketer a step closer to a planned launch in Europe, after the product received CE mark approval as a Class II(b) medical device in May 2021. Several positive factors – medical device status, lack of an active ingredient (the brand’s mode of action utilises a unique evaporative mechanism) and the fact that once approved it will be available without a prescription – contribute to MED3000’s sizeable potential.

Sexual health is one of the most dynamic sectors in the CHC market and a product like this is “la crème de la crème”: unique features and benefits, excellent performance, easy to use, no appreciable side-effects and – above all – significant need and high unmet demand. It is with highly innovative new products like this that we can look forward to industry growth even greater than our latest 5.5% forecast (all channels of distribution).

ED products are among the categories analysed in our recent Sexual Health & Fertility report. With reviews of other key categories including contraception, menopause, FemTech and intimate care, the report also highlights key trends and NPD. For further details, or to place your order, please contact melissa.lee@NicholasHall.com.

Food Intolerance as Infinity Zone for Future CHC Growth

The parents of a 15-year old who died in 2016 from anaphylaxis have set up a groundbreaking £2.2mn (US$2.7mn) oral immunotherapy trial focusing on children and young people with milk and peanut allergies. The 3-year oral immunotherapy (OIT) trial is the first major study funded by The Natasha Allergy Research Foundation, a charity set up by Natasha’s parents. The aim is to prove that everyday foods containing peanut or milk, which when taken carefully according to a standardised protocol under medical supervision, can be used as an alternative to expensive pharmaceuticals to desensitise patients. “This project presents a unique opportunity to establish immunotherapy as a practical treatment that will allow people with food allergies to live a normal life,” said Professor Hasan Arshad from the University of Southampton, which is leading the trial in collaboration with partner universities and clinical allergy centres.

Nicholas Hall’s Touchpoints: Anyone who has attended one of my recent Global Trends presentations will know that I am passionate about “The Future Resumed”, picking up the Infinity Zones from the CHC New Paradigms report I co-wrote in 2019. These are as attractive today as they were then, with just a two-year delay in progress caused by Covid-19. One of the most exciting prospects is what we now call Health through Digestion, a broader category than just gut health, and stimulated by fairly new research proving that probiotics can assist the vital work of the gut-brain axis and deliver benefits to other parts of the human body. Conversely, food allergy and intolerance can have a negative influence on other parts of the body, which is why it is surprising that the CHC market for these conditions is so poorly developed.

^{Source: Nicholas Hall’s New Paradigms For CHC 2019}

When I reach this part in The Future Resumed presentation, I refer to a number of high-profile deaths of mainly young people, such as Natasha Ednan-Laperouse, who inadvertently ate unlabelled foods with what for them were toxic substances. These are extreme examples, of course, and most of us will experience very mild side-effects, but let’s not forget that almost every person on this planet has at least one form of food allergy or intolerance.

Preventing or treating this widespread condition divides into three parts:

1. Diagnosis, which will tell us the foods and drinks to which we are allergic or intolerant. At the moment this is a clinical procedure, but there is no reason why consumer health products can’t take over and build a very successful early-stage franchise
2. Prevention. The second part is to avoid eating the particular foods to which we are intolerant, or if that is impossible to take some form of preventive agent, such as Lactaid (J&J) or Beano (Prestige)
3. Treatment. If prevention is not possible – and often it isn’t as we just don’t know what is included in restaurant and fast foods – there will be very high demand for treatment products. Indeed, along with products for sleep and mood, this is the greatest area of unmet consumer demand in CHC

I strongly believe that most of this market will roll out in the consumer sector, but our industry seems shy of investing in the necessary R&D and clinical work and unwilling to build successful brands in what could be a US$10bn market in 10 years’ time.

Our newly-published 2022 edition of CHC Yearbook offers a comprehensive overview of leading markets and companies, global retailing and category and brand reviews. To order your copy, or for more information, please contact melissa.lee@NicholasHall.com.

Nicholas Hall’s 2022 Marketing Awards

Nicholas Hall’s 32nd European CHC Conference took place last week in Athens, and below are the winners of this year’s awards for marketing and innovation in the consumer healthcare industry.

For the Colin Borg European Marketing Award, the top three awarded were as follows:

1st Place: Procto-Glyvenol from Recordati
2nd Place: Otrivin from GSK
3rd Place: Enandol from Menarini

The Winners of the Worldwide Marketing Award were as follows:

1st Place: Xyzal from Sanofi
2nd Place: Eno from GSK
3rd Place: Doril Enxaqueca from Hypera

We finally gave a Special Achievement Award to HRA Pharma (now owned by Perrigo) for Hana, with an honourable mention to Maxwellia’s Lovima, which has the same ingredient as Hana. For this award we celebrated the 360 degree marketing campaign run by HRA for Hana.

Nicholas Hall’s Touchpoints: “The Athens conference … has been a very special meeting; as well as the high level of content and great foresights shared, just to be together as a community will remain fresh in our memories for months and years to come.

The awards we presented this year were particularly welcome as they celebrate achievements made under the extreme circumstances of the pandemic. Not least, we presented a Special Achievement Award for only the 7th time in the almost 35 years of holding events. Three of these awards were given to individuals who made outstanding contributions to the industry, and three to marketers of truly significant new brands. It was in this tradition that we presented the 7th Special Achievement Award to HRA for the launch of Hana, the world’s first OTC daily oral contraceptive supported with 360° marketing support. An honourable mention was given to Maxwellia’s Lovima.

The hope and expectation is that these two new brands will trailblaze a new CHC category, which is vital as our market goes forward. If you look at the DB6 forecasts (see this week’s Dashboard infographic) – growth at 2021 levels is unlikely to be sustained. The only way to put us onto a higher trajectory will be to launch more significant new products and entice increasingly large numbers of consumers to participate in the self-care revolution. Hana is a superb example of how this can be achieved.“

We have now released DB6 forecasts to 2026 & 2031, following the recent publication of our year-end 2021 data. Arrange a demo to take a look for yourself, exploring the expanded channels dataset, which now includes internet & mail order, direct sales and CBD. DB6 offers over 150,000 pieces of data, with more than 30,000 records covering 13,000+ brands and 3,000 companies across 63 countries. To find out more, or to set up a free demo, please contact kate.fieldingsmith@NicholasHall.com.