Keepable trade card

The pattern

This still is filed under Keepable trade card.

Define

A small card people keep (pretty, useful, or collectible) that carries the brand after the encounter.

Mechanism

Retention object. The gift is the media. Recall is paid for by usefulness or delight, not by repetition.

Verdict

We can put a physical or digital keepable in someone's pocket and they will not throw it away.

Why it works

The picture acts out the name: 'Cherry' Pectoral becomes a cherry tree hung with red fruit, with two birds carrying cherries off in their beaks, so a cough medicine borrows the look of something sweet enough to steal. A small girl in a white dress stands under the tree, which puts the childhood illnesses on the list, Croup and Whooping-Cough, beside the kind of child they strike without showing anyone ill. The quiet road to a farmhouse keeps the card calm even as the text names Consumption.

The big idea

Cherry Pectoral pictured as a cherry tree full of fruit with a small girl beneath it, so a medicine for croup and consumption looks as gentle as an orchard.

The offer

Ayer's Cherry Pectoral, for the cure of coughs, colds, asthma, croup, bronchitis, whooping-cough and consumption, prepared by Dr. J. C. Ayer & Co., Lowell, Mass.

Lines from the ad

AYER'S CHERRY PECTORAL

For the cure of Coughs, Colds, Asthma, Croup, Bronchitis, Whooping-Cough, and Consumption.

PREPARED BY DR. J. C. AYER & CO., LOWELL, MASS., U.S.A.

Steal this when

When a product name holds something pleasant, like a fruit, and the product treats something frightening, picture the pleasant word and let the small type name the problems.