How Covonia delivered growth in a declining category through strategic creative and iterative pre-testing
Cough category brand Covonia knows a thing or two about standing out in a functional, low-emotion category, most notably through its iconic bull character. However, as the category evolves, with shifting dynamics, emerging demographics, and younger buyers entering the market, Covonia and agency Bray Leino recognised the need to refresh their approach.
The ambition was to create a campaign with broader appeal that could cut through using distinctive brand assets, including reintroducing the Covonia sonic and their “dormant” fluent character, the Bull. At the same time, the brand sought to evolve its core positioning, shifting perceptions from simply powering through illness to powering recovery.
To ensure the campaign delivered against these objectives, Covonia adopted an end-to-end creative effectiveness approach, placing consumer insight at the heart of the development journey rather than using it purely as a post-rationalisation tool.
Partnering with creative effectiveness platform System1, Covonia, together with Bray Leino, embedded an iterative testing approach using the Test Your Ad platform, evaluating creative at every stage from pitch, to storyboard, to finished film. This enabled earlier, more objective decision-making and continuous optimisation throughout the development process.
Core measures such as Star Rating were used to assess long-term, broad audience appeal at a nationally representative level. With the OTC category averaging just 2.2 Stars, standing out is critical to driving memorability and sustained brand growth. In a category where around 50% of consumers feel nothing towards advertising, Covonia and Bray Leino faced the challenge of sparking emotional responses in a space with inherently lower engagement than categories such as chocolate, travel or desserts.
System1’s Fluency metric was also used to evaluate how effectively distinctive assets, including the sonic branding and fluent device character, the Bull, drove brand recall. With a category average of 82%, many brands operate within a sea of sameness, making strong, recognisable brand assets just as important as emotional cut-through.
Final finished film test results exceeded category norms across all core measures, including a significant uplift of +1 Star versus the category average for mass appeal. System1’s second-by-second emotional FaceTrace and FluencyTrace also showed clear spikes in both brand recall and positive emotional response at key moments, particularly on the introduction of the sonic asset and the Bull, highlighting the power of consistent, distinctive branding in driving cut-through.
Crucially, these results have translated into strong commercial performance. Covonia cough liquid delivered positive growth of +13.3% in a category otherwise in decline, while market share increased by 2.3% (versus January 2025) during the campaign period. Media investment paid back within the first eight weeks of the campaign and has continued to build momentum since.
“These results are a testament to creativity and commercial outcomes working hand in hand with consumer insight. While strong strategy and creative choices shaped a compelling campaign idea, testing with System1 gave us the confidence to lean into what was working and continuously refine the work to improve effectiveness where it mattered most to the business,” said Edd Southerden, Strategy Director, Bray Leino.
"These results are a testament to creativity and commercial outcomes working hand in hand with consumer insight. While strong strategy and creative choices shaped a compelling campaign idea, testing with System1 gave us the confidence to lean into what was working and continuously refine the work to improve effectiveness where it mattered most to the business."
Edd Southerden Strategy Director, Bray Leino
As World leaders in predicting and improving advertising effectiveness, Test Your Ad provides the most accurate/predictive metrics.