I’ve been fighting off a cold this week, and it’s the kind that starts with a nagging sore throat and clogged up sinuses.  So, I went for the Halls.  Though I have half a dozen bags of Breezers, I was out of the real cough drops, and that’s what I needed, so I had to buy a new package of Mountain Menthol.  I was surprised to notice that Halls has taken a sort of fortune cookie/cheerleader approach to communicating with consumers with sort throats.  The wrappers are full of brief motivational messages.

– Tough is your middle name.

– Flex your “can do” muscle.

– Get through it.

– Seize the day.

– Impress yourself today.

– Nothing you can’t handle.

– You can do it and you  know it.

– You got it in you.

– Don’t try harder. Do harder!

– Put your game face on.

– Let’s hear your battle cry.

I’m not sure how I feel about this.  First, I don’t have a battle cry, and even if I can do it and I know it, that doesn’t mean I want to do it when I’m sick.  Sometimes I like to think “tough” is my middle name, but not so often.  My “game face” when I’m sick is non-existent.  Even when I do just “get through it,” most people know because I can be a pretty whiny sick person.

Maybe they’re just trying to be cute.  Then again, maybe their marketers think if they push us to keep going when we’re sick, we’ll need to buy more and more Halls because it will take longer to get better.  Either way, I go through stretches of semi-addiction to Halls every year when I get a cold, so these messages will neither make me buy their product more, nor will it make me buy it less.

I think I would be much more entertained, though, if the messages were more along these lines:

– Tell them it can wait.

– Threaten to cough on them.

– If you must go to work, pass us out in meetings.

– Your bed is calling you…

– Stay home!

– Show off your blue tongue.