What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?
“NATHANIEL and JOHN TWEEDY, Druggists, near the Court-House, Philadelphia.”
Druggists Nathaniel Tweedy and John Tweedy advertised frequently in the late 1760s. They advertised in the Pennsylvania Gazette. They advertised in the Pennsylvania Journal. They advertised in the Pennsylvania Chronicle. They spread their marketing efforts across multiple publications to increase the likelihood that colonists in Philadelphia and its hinterlands would encounter their notices.
The Tweedys also varied the content of their advertisements. Some listed an extensive assortment of “DRUGGS and MEDICINES” as well as surgical instruments and other medical supplies. Others focused exclusively on the Baume de Vie, a patent medicine. The Tweedys proclaimed that they had been “appointed the sole vendors … in America by the patentee.” To further convince potential customers of the efficacy of the Baume de Vie they sold “a narrative of the extraordinary effects of said medicine, and the book of observations” for one shilling and six pence. For those who did not wish to make such an investment, the druggists also offered to “lend them to those who will be kind enough to return them after perusal.” Even though the Baume de Vie was the primary focus of some of their advertisements, they still devoted nearly half of the content in those notices to marketing their shop more generally. In both newspapers and pamphlets, the Tweedys used print to promote their wares.
Compared to most other advertisers, the Tweedys were particularly savvy when it came to one aspect of newspaper advertising. Rather than running one advertisement at a time and eventually replacing it with an updated or new advertisement, they simultaneously published several advertisements at the same time. On occasion they even inserted multiple advertisements into a single issue of a newspaper, perhaps believing that each would enhance the effectiveness of the others. Vendue masters in Boston frequently adopted this strategy, but their turnover in merchandise at each auction explains their decision to do so. The Tweedys, on the other hand, operated a shop with a fairly constant inventory. Given the length of many of their advertisements, they certainly could have combined listing their wares and promoting the Baume de Vie into one advertisement. Yet they chose instead to saturate newspapers with greater numbers of advertisements, increasing the likelihood that readers who perused the notices would encounter and remember their shop and the goods and services they offered. Readers of the April 24, 1768, edition of thePennsylvania Journal, for instance, would have seen the Tweedys’ advertisement for the Baume de Vie on the second page of the supplement as well as a lengthier advertisement listing their merchandise on the fourth page. By the end of the eighteenth century inserting multiple advertisements into a single newspaper became common practice, but the Tweedys experimented with the technique decades earlier, demonstrating its potential to other advertisers.