New Approaches to Advertising

As late as the 1880s most advertisements still performed the traditional function of informing consumers about the availability, costs, and characteristics of products. Two product categories, however, pioneered a fresh approach that was more purely based on hype. The leading advertisers of the late nineteenth century had been the patent medicine sellers and soap manufacturers. (Food products came in third.) The soap ads made luxury, glamour, and wholesomeness as much a selling point as cleanliness, while the patent medicine notices promised bogus cures for everything from neuralgia to baldness. Coca-Cola, a drink concocted as a tonic by an Atlanta pharmacist in 1886, was first advertised like the patent medicine it was meant to be: “THE IDEAL BRAIN TONIC” ran an 1892 ad headline, “For Headache & Exhaustion.” Not only soft-drink manufacturers but cereal makers as well copied techniques learned from the patent medicine sellers, placing notices full of testimonials in national magazines, advertising cures for all sorts of vague maladies, and even putting on public displays not unlike the fabled medicine shows.