From Claude Hopkins: The First To Revolutionize Medical Advertising

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The New York Sun: This newspaper was started by a businessman by the name of Benjamin Day, with its first issue hitting newsstands September 3, 1833. Unlike newspapers prior to The Sun, this paper would not be published by the elites of society for the elites of society to push a particular political agenda, but this paper was purely to turn a profit for Day. He wanted to publish this paper and make it accessible for the common man, and he did so by selling the paper for the cost of everyday items (a penny). Day’s ability to turn a profit would be based on the selling of advertisements and selling the paper en masse because a larger group of people could afford to purchase the paper.
The Sun ended up becoming the leading newspaper in the city, …show more content…

He was a pioneer in turning human attention into demand for products and therefore into profit. Hopkins got his start in advertising at a popular medicine business out of Wisconsin. The medical field had relied on word of mouth for generations, which is essentially a form of advertising. There was always a promise in medical advertising about curing one of their ailments or having a secret ingredient, the former ringing a bell within Hopkins highly evangelical upbringing. Hopkins was able to revolutionize advertising in the medical field through mailouts, similar to campaigns used by Sears. Hopkins implemented this same strategy with other businesses, which is a strategy still used today. He was also the first to implement sending out free samples, allowing consumers to test a product before purchasing it, a revolutionary idea. Hopkins became a very wealthy man, but also known for being the man with the next big …show more content…

He found his segway to do just that through patent medicine. There was no FDA like we have today to keep nefarious activity from happening inside this industry, so Adams found his purpose in exposing this industry for what he saw it really was, a fraud manipulation of the poor. Adams wrote of the harmful ingredients used in these medicines, the negative side effects (including death), shady business practices and the willingness of the press to ignore these issues. He also came after people like Claude Hopkins and Douglas Smith, calling them out on their shady, money hungry advertising falsehoods. Due to Adams’s article, a push for new legislation was enacted, with requirements for listing harmful side effects and ingredients and to end the false advertising among these products. These all led to the beginning of the end for the patent medicine