How Would You Like a Hammer in the Head? Rosser Reeves, Anacin, USP, and Repetition
by James Twitchell

From Creativity Magazine with permission of the author
Find out more in *20 Ads That Shook The World* by James Twitchell
To be published by Crown.
Prof. Twitchell teaches at the University of Florida and is also the author of "AdCult: The Triumph of Advertising in American Society."

In the nineteenth century, American popular culture was carried on the back,of religion. In the twentieth, the workhorse has been advertising, and one of the products that has carried the heaviest load (right behind cars and cigarettes) has been aspirin. As different as these two delivery systems may seem, sometimes they criss-cross--especially when it comes to providing pain relief.

While Bayer has been the textbook example of how a product can go from laboratory to branded product, Anacin is the example of how advertising can show how a branded product works.

Dr. Johnson was surely right that "nothing so powerfully concentrates the mind as the prospect of imminent death," but the Anacin television ads of the mid-1950s showed how a real nasty headache comes close. An upstairs hammer-banger can render a saint into a sinner and relief can indeed be blessed.

Who was more saintly in those years than Mom? Watching her let her demonic self out of Hyding while experiencing the dreaded "tension" headache was a frightful experience. How would you like it if your Mom were in such terrible shape that she would close her eyes in pain, massage her temples, and then explode "Can't you play someplace else?" And who can forget the rendition in which the young married slams the lid down on the pot and turns to her mom: "Please, Mother, I'd rather do it myself!"? How's that for ganging-up on momism?

Good thing her superego came to the rescue saying, in an angelic version of
her own voice, "Control yourself. Sure you have a headache, but don't take it out on them." And following this voice comes another, a man's voice from on High. "You need Anacin for fast relief. The big difference in Anacin makes a big difference in the way you feel."

This last voice, the disembodied voice held over from radio days, now delivers what the ad was all about--the famous Unique Selling Proposal. This Voice of Authority tells how to stop the pounding hammer, uncoil the spring, and unplug the lightning bolt--all pictured so graphically in the skull-rattling illustration.

God-as-Doctor-as-Announcer tells us that "Anacin is like a doctor's prescription--that is, a combination of ingredients; the pain reliever most recommended by doctors plus an extra ingredient missing from leading aspirins, still missing with buffering, combined in Anacin to relieve pain, to relax tension, and sooth irritability." We, who are in our fifties, know this refrain as well as we know what is inside a Big Mac ("two all-beef patties...").

The little morality play of Anacin advertising (sin, guilt, divine intercession, redemption) was probably the most hated ad of all time. It makes "Stop squeezing the Charmin," How 'bout a Hawaiian Punch," and "Ring around the collar" look like playground exercises.

Say what you want, this migraine of a campaign also increased sales from $18 million to $54 million in just 18 months. Reeves bragged to The New Yorker} that just the spot with the skull bangers "made more money for the producers of Anacin in seven years than Gone with the Wind did for David O. Selznick and MGM in a quarter of a century." It cost all of $8,200 to produce.

Why so successful? First, of course, it makes a dead-on-target claim. Anacin is like a doctor's prescription. The simile is made metaphoric, however, by the visual analog. For as we hear the announcer, we see three dishes of powdered analgesic being sucked back into the package. This stuff does have added ingredients! We can see them being added. Who cares if the added ingredient is caffeine; the point is that it has more than the other pain relievers plus the pain reliever most recommended by doctors, namely, aspirin!

In his best-selling Truth in Advertising (1961), Rosser Reeves explained what separated his technique from the celebrated claim-staking of his predecessor Claude Hopkins. Hopkins said it doesn't matter what you say as long as you say it first. Who cares if all brewers clean their bottles with steam as long as the consumer thinks that your only your product does it? The competition always will be perceived as Johnny-come-latelys. Reeves said that what you say must be inherent in the product and relate to customers needs by promising a clear benefit. In fact, when you think about it, Hopkins and Reeves were both defining what "positioning" is all about.

But to think that USP is why the Anacin ad worked is to miss what's really going on. Reeves, raised in a strict Methodist family, knew the power of repetition, the power of invocation, and the power of prayer. As John Lyden, his colleague at Bates, commented without really knowing the significance: "[Reeves] was a Methodist turned inside out."

Once you have the mantra, never let it go. You just keep spinning the prayer wheel. Bates ran this ad, and variations of it, for years and years and years. "Originality," as he said, "is the most dangerous word in advertising."

There was a perhaps apocryphal tale about a time when Rosser was out sailing with a client. The client made bold to ask why he should continue paying the same fee when the ad was never really changed. "What do you need all those people on my account when you never do anything?" Reeves, who could be surly, gruffed, "To keep your people from changing what I've done." More famously, Reeves wagered he could sell more by using a mediocre ad repeated ad nauseam than by using a good ad that had to be changed every six months.

Reeves knew more than the power of incantation. He instinctively knew the power of threes. Just as Christianity has the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the Anacin ads are filled with triplets. Here are just a few: the three icons raising hell in the skull; the three dishes with the added ingredients; the three bold words on the package "Fast Pain Relief" and below them in boldface: "Headache, Neuralgia, Neuritis" (whatever the hell the last two are); the three promises "Stops headache! Relieves tension! Calms jittery nerves!;" the three product claims:
relieve pain
relax tension
sooth irritability
and, of course, the announcer's insistent tag line, "For fast, Fast, FAST relief...."

The Age of Anacin is long gone. The fun's gone out of pain relief. Instead of getting a headache from the ad, you get a headache from the explosion of products. There's aspirin; acetaminophen (the generic name for Tylenol), and non-aspirin NSAIDs or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, such as ibuprofen (the generic name for Advil, Motrin, and others), ketoprofen (the generic name for Actron, Orudis KT and others) and naproxen sodium (the generic name for Aleve). This stuff comes in regular-strength, extra-strength, maximum-strength; daytime formulations, nighttime formulations and children's formulations. You can take it in pills, in gelcaps, liquid formulations, suppositories, injections, powders, and even through patches.

Worse yet, each of these products now has its own USP: the "no-upset-stomach" painkiller, the "you can't buy a more potent pain reliever without a doctor's prescription," the "one of ours is worth two of theirs," the kind that "Two Out of Three Doctors Recommend," the ones that "hospitals prefer" or that "Dr. Mom" prescribes, and all those Excedrin headaches. Enough already!

What brought the curtain down on Reeves and USP was not the profusion of parity products. Nor was it the constant badgering of the Food and Drug Administration. Nor was it the suave image-advertising of his brother-in-law David Ogilvy, or the lightly ironic approach of Bernbach, or even the tidal wave of California-cool advertainment. What did in repetitious Reeves was the technical wizardry of the remote-control clicker. Power moved from the voice of the god-like announcer inside the TV set to the wand in the palm of the god-like viewer. The next sound you hear after the announcer starts the litany of USP is...click! The hand-held remote was the cross to the too-often-returning vampire. RIP.