Brand pain points: Tracking Tylenol’s consumer performance through a turbulent year

Key insights:

• Following President Trump’s comments on September 22, 2025, Tylenol’s Consideration score among Republicans fell from 48.8% to 39.4% within five weeks, a drop of 9.4 points.
• Over the same period, Consideration among Democrats moved in the opposite direction, rising from 49.6% to 54.2% by early November, a rise of 4.6 points.
• Among parents, Consideration surged from 43.5% to 60.3% in the weeks after the announcement, before returning to pre-comment levels by year-end.
• Despite short-term volatility across some groups, Tylenol ranked 10th overall in YouGov’s 2025 Best Brand Rankings in the U.S., underscoring the brand’s resilience.

In late September 2025, comments from President Donald Trump put one of America’s most familiar over-the-counter brands in the headlines. Standing alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump told people, particularly pregnant women, to avoid Tylenol. The remarks were widely covered by the media and strongly disputed by medical experts. What followed was not just a news cycle, but a test of how public opinion toward a long-established brand responds under pressure.

Using data from YouGov BrandIndex, we tracked how that moment played out among different groups of Americans in the weeks and months that followed.

Two metrics are central to the story: Consideration, which measures the percentage of adults who say they would consider buying Tylenol when next in the market for drugs or medical products, and Index, a composite score that averages perception of Impression, Value, Quality, Satisfaction, and Recommend.

The sharpest movement following the September 22 announcement appeared in Consideration among Republicans. On the day of the remarks, Consideration for Tylenol among Republicans stood at 48.8%. Over the weeks that followed, that figure fell steadily, reaching 39.4% by October 28, a decline of 9.4 points in just over a month.

Among Democrats, Consideration moved in the opposite direction. Starting from 49.6% on September 22, the score climbed through October and early November, reaching a post-announcement high of 54.2% on November 9. Rather than a brief spike, the increase held across several weeks, pointing to a widening gap in how different political groups responded to the same set of events.

At a headline level, Consideration among the general public moved far less dramatically. From 48.2% on September 22, the score edged down to 45.0% by mid-December.

Index scores tell a related but distinct story. On September 22, Tylenol’s Index score among Republicans stood at 40.7. That figure continued to decline into early November, reaching a low of 31.8 on November 8 before stabilizing toward the end of the year.

Democrats again showed a contrasting pattern. From an Index score of 46.6 on September 22, sentiment strengthened through October and early November, peaking at 53.1 on November 11.

Among all adults, Index scores fluctuated within a narrower scope. From 43.3 on September 22, the score dipped to 41.5 in early October, before recovering to 45.1 by early November.

The most complex pattern emerges when looking at parents of at least one child under 18. In the weeks immediately following the announcement, Consideration among parents rose sharply. From 43.5% on September 22, the score climbed to 60.3% by October 14, a gain of nearly 17 points in under a month. The increase stands out as one of the larger short-term movements for the brand in recent years. That rise, however, did not persist. After peaking in mid-October, Consideration among parents gradually eased over the following months, settling closer to earlier levels by the end of the year.

Looking at the brand’s Index score among parents adds another layer to the picture. The score stood at 36.9 on September 22 and showed some early improvement, before softening through the remainder of the year and reaching a low of 22.8 by January 6, 2026. Taken together, the two metrics highlight how different aspects of brand health can move on different timelines: willingness to consider the brand increased in the immediate aftermath, while broader brand sentiment adjusted more gradually over time.

Moments like this underline the value of continuous brand tracking. Public controversies rarely produce a single, uniform reaction, and they don’t move all audiences in the same way or on the same timeline. By looking at both Consideration and Index performance, and by examining how different groups respond, BrandIndex data captures not just whether a brand is affected, but how those effects unfold beneath the surface.

Methodology: YouGov BrandIndex collects data on thousands of brands every day. Tyelnol’s Consideration score is based on the question: When you are in the market next to purchase drugs or medical products, which of the following would you consider buying? and Index scores are an average of Impression, Value, Quality, Satisfaction, and Recommend scores. Consideration scores are reported as percentages, and Index scores are reported as net scores from –100 to +100, based on daily surveys of US adults. Data is weighted using a propensity scoring methodology with targets from the American Community Survey (ACS) to ensure representation by age, gender, race, education, and region. Figures are shown as a 4-week moving average.