Researching the Sneeze and How to Handle It

THE paper products aisle generally is not seasonal, with consumers using about the same amount of toilet paper, napkins or paper towels every month. But not so with facial tissue: as cold and flu season rears its congested head, monthly sales increase as much as 65 percent over the summer months.

Generally that surge is good news for Kleenex, the Kimberly-Clark brand that invented facial tissue 87 years ago. But both Kleenex and Puffs, a Procter & Gamble brand, lost market share during the economic downturn to cheaper store brands.

In the 52 weeks that ended on June 13, 2010, for example, Kleenex sales dropped 5.5 percent from the previous year, and Puffs, a Procter & Gamble brand, dropped 3.2 percent, while store brands climbed 6.4 percent, according to SymphonyIRI Group data, which does not include Wal-Mart.

Now Kleenex has something it claims is a first: Along with lotion, Kleenex Cool Touch contains ingredients that promise cooling relief to sore noses. A Cool Touch commercial — by JWT New York, part of the WPP Group — is scheduled to be introduced Monday, and the campaign will include print and online advertising as well as social media marketing.

“This really is a game-changing innovation,” said Craig Smith, the brand director for Kleenex. “This is the only tissue that releases a cool sensation, and it takes soothing to a whole different level.”

Kleenex, which declined to reveal how much it will spend on the campaign, spent $51.9 million on advertising in 2010, compared with $29.5 million by Puffs, according to Kantar Media, a division of WPP.

Soon after being introduced in 1924 as a “sanitary cold cream remover” for women, who had tended to reuse towels for that purpose, a Kimberly-Clark researcher with hay fever began using Kleenex tissues for his sniffles, and advertising soon declared them “the handkerchief for health.”

Internal Kleenex research indicates that softness is the most important quality for 84 percent of facial tissue purchasers, but the company and its competitors still pursue other innovations to stand out on the shelf.

Puffs, for example, which began in 1960, introduced Puffs Plus with lotion in the United States in 1987, and Kleenex responded with its first lotion tissue in 1996.

In 2004, Kleenex introduced antiviral tissues, which promise to contain germs from sneezes better than conventional tissues.

And P&G in 2007 introduced Puffs Plus with the Scent of Vicks, a lotion-infused facial tissue that smells like menthol, with the selling point being not that Vicks helps comfort skin but rather that it has a comforting smell.

Kleenex Cool Touch, in contrast, is unscented. Among households that use facial tissue, 89 percent buy unscented varieties, while only 19 percent buy scented varieties, according to Mintel, a market research firm.

“We find that scent quite frankly is polarizing, with some who really enjoy it and some who don’t,” said Tracy Buelow, the Kleenex brand manager. “When consumers are doing excessive wiping, they get what they term a ‘hot, sore nose,’ and while cooling tissues counteract that hot and burning feeling, scent doesn’t address that need.”