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Dr. Shoop's Restorative

by stanigator
3 replies
I just finished making notes on these two swipe files: https://www.evernote.com/shard/s74/s...34a29995c02a83

According to my research, I believe they bought ads all over the country in 1903.

Here are my questions:
1. What's the purpose of "Dr. Shoop's Restorative"? Another branding gimmick to introduce what product is being sold?
2. What were the alternatives at the time? Status quo, or another drug that doesn't work as well?
3. Is the $1 bottle a risk reversal technique?
4. What kind of drug is it? Does it mostly work off of placebo effect?
5. Why "Indigestion" as the headline? What publication do you think this is published in? A newspaper with a certain demographic?
6. Why "One $ Free - Just to Prove" as the headline? What publication do you think this is published in? Another newspaper with a certain demographic? Do you think the demographic a reason why this ad is more direct?
7. Why is "humanity" used as a hook in the beginning?
8. Why the 3 column layout?

Thanks again!
#restorative #shoop
  • Profile picture of the author stanigator
    Bumping this back up again. Would love to hear your feedback!
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  • Profile picture of the author jimbo13
    Originally Posted by stanigator View Post

    Here are my questions:
    1. What's the purpose of "Dr. Shoop's Restorative"? Another branding gimmick to introduce what product is being sold?

    Gives authority. This had been done 60 years before by someone spectacularly successful.

    2. What were the alternatives at the time? Status quo, or another drug that doesn't work as well?

    Lot's of alternatives. This market had been around for over 60 years. Patent Medice it is called.

    3. Is the $1 bottle a risk reversal technique?

    I don't think so because you are never going to be paying for this. But $1 then was a lot of money. The Ad has a different aim from what you think. It wants paper requests from all over US in order to get druggists to stock it.

    4. What kind of drug is it? Does it mostly work off of placebo effect?

    Placebo like all the others. The one I know about was bought by Beechams now GSK. (Glaxo Smith Kline Beechams) Beechams still make all the cough medicines in UK which are basically flavoured syrups with no real medicinal value. It is psychological.

    5. Why "Indigestion" as the headline? What publication do you think this is published in? A newspaper with a certain demographic?

    Newpapers. Indigestion is a catch all for lot's of things back then. Medicines are restorative and sold as such. The word restaurants is from the word restore too.

    6. Why "One $ Free - Just to Prove" as the headline? What publication do you think this is published in? Another newspaper with a certain demographic? Do you think the demographic a reason why this ad is more direct?

    Normal newspaper. In England it would be The Times.

    7. Why is "humanity" used as a hook in the beginning?

    Don't know.

    8. Why the 3 column layout?

    Don't know but looks like many websites with sliders doesn't it?

    Thanks again!
    The man I am thinking about made ££ hundreds of millions in today's money. He built two buildings not far from me that are the size of palaces.

    He wrote thousands and thousands of sales letters all over the British Empire (basically the world)

    He was spending £50,000 a year on Advertising in the 1880s which is a colossal sum of money if converted into today.

    It was all his!! His company, his product, his Ads and his money paying for it all.

    A satirical magazine spoofed his headlines.

    Here is a bit about him. I like that he had an unconcealed prejudice against doctors, lawyers and parsons. Quite right too!

    Professor Holloway. (He was not a Professor)

    Thomas Holloway"s Universal Ointment - Dr. Dulcamara's Pots & Potions

    Dan

    PS: I wonder how many people here know this guy as Hopkins would have known about him for sure. His stuff was still being sold after the Ads you put up and he had been dead nearly 25 years by then.

    He Advertised to US soldiers in The Civil War. His Ads were in every language known to man all around he globe.
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  • Profile picture of the author The Copy Nazi
    Banned
    "Basically flavoured syrups with no medicinal value". Not really. Cough syrups have all sorts of drugs in them. There is some, arguable, medicinal benefits but for the main part they are very dangerous and addictive when abused.
    While there are probably some people who drink certain brands of cough syrup for the alcohol, when you hear stories of teens taking it at school, for example, the substance in question is actually something called dextromethorphan, and it will feck you up proper. It's an antitussive, which is a fancy term for cough suppressant, and it's the active ingredient in products like Robitussin. At normal doses, it has little to no psychoactive effect. When taken in recreational doses, though, it produces a high that's more along the lines of PCP or ketamine than alcohol.

    Read more: 4 Insane Details of Cough Syrup Addiction (An Inside Look) | Cracked.com


    BTW that Holloway link is a beauty - http://www.potsandpotions.co.uk/Thom...l_Ointment.htm

    thanks Dan.

    More -
    Holloway had become extremely wealthy by the late 1860s and bought a Georgian House at Sunninghill, near Ascot, Berkshire called Tittenhurst Park. Holloway lived there with his wife. Her sister, Sarah Anne Driver, also lived there with her husband George Martin, as did Holloway's sister Matilda, an invalid who died soon after.[6] Jane died in 1875, aged 61; Holloway died there on 26 December 1883, aged 83.
    A century later, from 1969–71, the building became the home of John Lennon with his then new wife Yoko Ono, having been married on 20 March 1969 in Gibraltar.[7] Another member of the Beatles, Ringo Starr, lived there after Lennon until the late-1980s.
    So Lennon bought the house from Peter Cadbury of the chocolate family. He was quite eccentric by all accounts -
    Cadbury was known for his frequent rows with neighbours, the press, fellow club members and liverymen (he was a Currier), as well as even with his own board of directors. He was more than once involved in fistfights on roads over his driving. He owned an Aston Martin V8 Vantage, a Ferrari, a Bentley, numerous yachts, racehorses, properties in the West Indies, and a succession of grand country mansions, one of which had an airstrip and a hangar for five aircraft. As a result of his ongoing conflict with the IBA — the then-regulator of ITV — Westward lost the round of franchise renewals in 1980, and were replaced by TSW.
    Cadbury's country estate was Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill in Berkshire. He was an animal lover who kept a parrot, a great Dane, and a Rwandan gorilla.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Cadbury
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