>“It’s raining, it’s pouring the old man is snoring…” That’s the usual song my toddler sings when she wakes up from her afternoon nap and sees that there’s a heavy pour outside. This has been our scenario for a couple of weeks now and I’m worried she might get cough and colds since our stay-out-nanny is presenting the symptoms already.
I have asked my Nanny to buy whatever cough medicine she’s taking and I’ll be paying for it. I told her to buy a set good for 7 days. When she got home she bought herbal cough medicine. I was curious why she chose it and what are her reasons for buying it because honestly, herbal cough medicines do not quite work for me or for my toddler.
Apparently, she was “enlightened” by the TV commercial of Ascof, a herbal cough medicine, which says it’s safer and proven effective plus it’s 50% cheaper than the Synthetic cough medicine she used to take. It has raised my curiosity even more. How do you choose your cough medicines?
I posted this question on my social media accounts to get ideas from my friends and here’s what they said:
From Plurk
From Facebook
Basically they take cough medicines depending on the degree and duration of the symptoms. Rarely are they affected by the advertising pitch that TV commercials of different cough medicine brands sell with the exception of my Nanny who thinks everything said on TV is true and believable.
My personal opinion in choosing the right cough medicine for myself and for my family depends on what they are comfortable in taking and what is effective. I cannot give my daughter something that’s hard to swallow for fear of choking. I cannot give my husband drowse-cough medicine because he needs to be alert all day. And herbal medicine do not work for me. I have tried taking it but it did not relieved me at all. I still needed to take a synthetic/chemical cough medicine. We’ve all tried herbal cough medicine but it’s not working for us. But I’m still willing to try it in the future hoping it improves it’s effectiveness.
One cannot deny how TV commercials affect the buying decision of C and D consumers (like my nanny for example). And it pains me to see how even on these brands politics arises. I have read this nice article, Politics of Cough Medicine: Synthetic versus Herbal Cough Medicine and it shows how brand bashing happens on TV commercials which by the way is also true even on other brand commercials of things like laundry soap, dish washing, toothpaste and so on.
I have mentioned this “politics” with my Dad who’s in the US and he gingerly told me that the same has been happening in the US and there, it’s even more blunt. Sigh, really how low can a brand go to get their consumers’ attention?
I hope that over the years we could have a better informed consumers because these TV commercials are certainly not helping. Here’s also a post I did about toddler cough.
How about you how do you choose the right cough medicine? 
