Blog Post #5: The Cultural Marketing of Anacin and Excedrin

In thinking about drug hybrids, what immediately came to mind for me were literal drug hybrids – or drugs that market themselves by focusing on the claimed extra efficacy that comes from combining multiple active ingredients into the same pill or capsule. One example of this is Anacin, which is still around today, but was more popular during the early to mid-twentieth century.

Anacin combines aspirin and caffeine to “relax tension,” and “help overcome depression,” and was invented by a Minnesotan chemist in 1915. The thought that an over-the-counter pain reliever could “help overcome depression” definitely seems odd today, but Anacin was specifically marketed (like in this ad) to foster this belief, as well as invent the idea of mental “tension” as a physical problem separate from headaches – that only Anacin, with its magical combination of ingredients, could alleviate.

An Anacin advertisement that I found especially interesting was this one from the 1960s. In it, a man dressed in a suit and tie comes home, and snaps at his wife rather aggressively due to headaches caused by stress from work. But the advertisement is also selling a set of beliefs to the consumer: you’re a hard-working man, you get stressed, you don’t want to yell at your wife, you should take this pill to suddenly become happy and more sociable with your family. It sells a heteronormative point of view combined with a sense of the Puritan work ethic, with the commercial focusing on a man coming home from work to his wife. After all, what is the man to do? Quit his job and fail to provide? Give up on trying to support a conventional nuclear family? Treat his wife like a person? (surely not that last one). No one is coerced into asking why one has to work a job that consistently causes them headaches when they can just take a pill to relieve that “tension.”

A newer drug I found operates similarly to Anacin, both medicinally and culturally. Excedrin, another over-the-counter pain reliever, contains acetaminophen, aspirin, and caffeine as active ingredients (adding only acetaminophen to Anacin’s mix). This Excedrin commercial from late last year features an unusually handsome EMT who suffers from migraines – and details how Excedrin helps him perform in such a high-stress job. To do this, the commercial illustrates how the “camaraderie” the EMT feels with his co-workers makes him feel that he needs to be capable at all times, instead of suffering from migraines that would distract him while on the job. This advertisement seems to repackage the same selling points of the second Anacin commercial linked above. The man (who seems conventionally handsome like the man in the Anacin commercial) is under stress because of his job, has social responsibilities that motivate him not to fail his partner (in this case, his fellow EMT and not his wife), and thus needs Excedrin to make him more capable of handling workplace stress. While this commercial is more modern and subtracts the heteronormative aspect from the marketing – the social obligation being with his co-worker – it still sells the idea to the consumer that one must be competent in their work. Sure, not everyone is an EMT, but the advertisement features an EMT because everyone can relate in the stress they feel from their own job, and the idea that they have to be at the top of their game. Additionally, as Anacin did, Excedrin sells the belief that if you want to be a man’s man who is capable in their work (because what’s more manly than saving lives?), Excedrin will help you get there.

Both Anacin and Excedrin aren’t just formed in laboratories, but are also culturally formed. Both utilize marketing to be relatable to the consumer while offering a way to overcome stress from the workplace. Both draw on the multiplicity of ingredients in their drug to claim extra efficacy (even though the multiple ingredients, in their similar functions, are probably redundant). And both profit from making the consumer visualize the amount which other people depend on them, in order to bring the consumer to the conclusion that they need the drug to feel better, for the sake of the other people in their life.



Other sources: https://www.madeinchicagomuseum.com/single-post/2016/10/14/anacin-company