Sales of cough and sore throat drops decrease precipitously in the summer months, when the cold-season sniffles turn to hurricane-season sweats.

In the 13 weeks that ended on June 13, sales in the US for cough drops totalled $245 million, compared to $351.1 million for the blizzardy 13-week period that ended March 29, according to Circana data provided to Retail Brew. That’s a drop (a drop drop!) of 30.2%. Similarly, sales in the category plummeted 38.7% in the second quarter of 2025 compared to the first quarter, per Circana.

Now Ricola, the 96-year-old Swiss herb drops brand, has a strategy to increase sales in the warmer months that, in every sense, is nothing to sneeze at. It’s introducing three flavors of lozenges that are not for colds or coughs but rather for everyday use. Instead of addressing coughs or sore throats, packaging describes them as “refreshingly mouthwatering.”

“The throat care category right now is really about when that consumer is sick, and we know and see that consumers want to utilize the category for when they’re not sick,” Becky Spruck, senior director of marketing at Ricola USA, told Retail Brew.

But as much as boosting warm-weather sales, the new products are also meant to appeal to the lifestyles and taste buds of younger consumers, who Spruck said increasingly turn to home remedies such as gargling with salt water over throat drops.

The flavors had “high appeal” when tested with Gen Z and millennials, who Ricola aspires to draw into the category with the new products.

The goal is “high consumer acquisition—that’s our lead strategy here,” Spruck said.

Keep reading here.—AAN

Shopify shoppers turned back the clock to invest in simpler things including better sleep, dumb phones, and fixing old devices instead of just buying new ones, according to June sales data shared first with Retail Brew.

Shopify orders for night light projectors, the kind used to help kids fall asleep, shot up by 661%. People also shelled out for sleep sprays and mists (with orders up by a whopping 632%) to prepare for a deeper reset. Orders for related items like mouth tape (up 69%), neck and cervical pillows (up 33%), and eye compresses and masks (up 20%), also took off in June.

With prices for consumer electronics set to rise, Shopify shoppers chose to invest in old-school phones. Landline phone orders peaked 277%, demand for corded phones surged 115%, and orders for basic feature phones spiked 99%. This at a time when, in June, Apple raised prices on MacBooks and iPads by as much as $300 on some models to offset the rising cost of memory and storage chips.

Keep reading here.—VC

There’s no product in higher demand than an ice-cold beverage at a World Cup stadium in the middle of June—expect, perhaps, a stick of deodorant.

Enter CPG giant Unilever, which owns brands including Axe, Dove, and Degree, and is activating its World Cup sponsorship in several host cities across North America. And while the 360-degree marketing effort includes pro athlete endorsements, influencer partnerships sit at the center.

Keep reading here on Marketing Brew.—AM