The category was contracting, so the first task was to separate market decline from brand performance.
Sanofi / Opella · Market activation
Turn market decline into country action.
- Role
- Portfolio strategy and market activation
- Period
- Feb 2025 – Jan 2026
- Business context
- DulcoLax and DulcoSoft · 3 markets
- Remit
- Diagnose decline and turn insight into action
- Decisions
- Brand roles, channels and country priorities
- What changed
- Clearer market-to-activation logic
- Evidence status
- Sanitized analysis + source records
I joined while the consumer-health business was separating from Sanofi to become Opella: systems changing, people leaving, reporting lines moving. Across three markets, my job was to make the DulcoLax and DulcoSoft portfolio readable again — what the market was doing, what the brands were actually delivering, and what to change next — and then turn that reading into activation the team could run.
The numbers
What the diagnosis found.
The lead brand needed visibility, claims, and distribution priorities grounded in resilience—not a generic decline story.
The second brand showed a different opportunity and required education and clearer product explanation.
TV, digital, and efficiency signals were brought into one planning view for the next cycle.
Campaign delivery was audited against plan so the next cycle could begin from evidence.
Each country left with priorities shaped by its own market, channels, and stakeholders.
The situation
A portfolio nobody could read, inside a company being rebuilt.
The market was declining and the easy conclusion — "the brands are losing" — was wrong. DulcoLax was outperforming a contracting category; DulcoSoft was growing inside a shrinking segment. But sell-out data, stock, competitor moves, claims, agency work, and media plans lived in separate decks, and the separation from Sanofi meant workflows and owners kept changing underneath them.
Three countries needed three different answers, and for a six-month stretch I carried the regional portfolio work with a high degree of autonomy while the structure around it moved.
What I did
From diagnosis to activation, in four moves.
01 · Market diagnosis
Separate brand performance from market contraction.
I split the category story from the brand story. One brand was resilient inside a contracting category; the other carried a distinct growth opportunity. That separation changed the conversation from defending a supposedly declining portfolio to assigning each brand a clear role.
02 · Portfolio logic
Treat DulcoLax and DulcoSoft as different businesses.
One brand needed defense: visibility, claims renewal, and distribution pressure. The other had a growth story that needed pharmacist education and clearer product explanation. Averaging them would have starved both.
03 · Media allocation
Put TV, digital, and efficiency signals in one view.
I audited actual delivery against plan and connected TV, digital reach, and efficiency signals in one view. The next-cycle recommendation moved beyond inherited allocations: clearer channel roles, stronger digital logic, and product content structured for search and AI discovery around real consumer questions.
04 · Activation
Turn the diagnosis into material people can run.
The plan connected campaign rollout, website timing, GP and pharmacist education, sampling, and point-of-sale material — including field leave-behinds and an 11-second in-pharmacy edutainment format for Austria.
What it changed
A handover the team could keep using.
- Each country left with its own action priorities instead of one averaged regional story.
- The next media conversation started from audited delivery and efficiency signals rather than simply repeating the previous plan.
- DulcoSoft's growth case got its own education and distribution push instead of being folded into the defense brand.
- The portfolio diagnostic, activation logic, and planning material stayed with the team after my fixed-term mandate ended.
Proof you can check
Public traces of the work.
Where this transfers
What this chapter proves beyond healthcare.
- Market diagnosis
- Portfolio strategy
- Media & budget logic
- Multi-country coordination
- Regulated-context communication
- Autonomy under reorganisation
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