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Building the Brand Book Behind McKesson's Foster & Thrive OTC Expansion

Positioning • Brand Architecture • Messaging

Key Results

80+

PAGE BRAND BOOK

AUDIENCE MESSAGING FRAMEWORKS

270+

OTC PRODUCTS IN THE LAUNCH PORTFOLIO

At a glance. Client: McKesson Foster & Thrive. Program: McKesson's 2023 private-brand launch, which consolidated its Health Mart and Sunmark OTC products into one brand of more than 270 health and wellness products. My role: original brand positioning, brand narrative, messaging architecture, and an 80+ page brand book. Audiences: pharmacists, pharmacies, clinicians, and patients and caregivers.

Executive Summary

In June 2023, McKesson launched Foster & Thrive, bringing its Health Mart and Sunmark private-brand products together under one name with an assortment of more than 270 over-the-counter health and wellness products. A launch of that scale needed one brand strategy that could speak credibly to pharmacists, pharmacies, clinicians, and the patients and caregivers buying the products. I built the original positioning, brand narrative, messaging architecture, and an 80+ page brand book.

The Challenge

Private-label health products have to earn trust in a category where shoppers default to national brands, and every audience in the chain needs a different reason to believe. A pharmacist needs clinical confidence. A store needs a commercial case. A caregiver needs reassurance at the shelf. All of it has to sit under one consistent brand, across a portfolio moving from two legacy names to one.

What We Did

I developed the brand positioning and pillars, the tone of voice, and a messaging architecture with distinct, channel-ready frameworks for pharmacist-facing, pharmacy-facing, clinician-facing, and patient and caregiver communications. These were assembled into a brand book of more than 80 pages that internal teams and agencies could execute from.

What It Means

In regulated consumer health, the brand book is a working tool for every team that writes a claim, a label, or a shelf message, and it has to hold up in all of those places at once. A private brand of this size succeeds when the pharmacist recommending it and the shopper choosing it hear the same promise.