page_title: Bile Beans
section_title: Marketing strategy
hierarchical_section_title: Bile Beans / Marketing strategy
caption_attribution_description: English: Music written by F. H. Fulford to promote Bile Beans.
context_page_description: Bile Beans was a laxative and tonic first marketed in the 1890s. The product supposedly contained substances extracted from a hitherto unknown vegetable source by a fictitious chemist known as Charles Forde. In the early years Bile Beans were marketed as "Charles Forde's Bile Beans for Biliousness", and sales relied heavily on newspaper advertisements. Among other cure-all claims, Bile Beans promised to "disperse unwanted fat" and "purify and enrich the blood".
  Although the manufacturer claimed that the formula for Bile Beans was based on a vegetable source known only to Aboriginal Australians, its actual ingredients, which included cascara, rhubarb, liquorice and menthol, were commonly found in pharmacies of the period. A court case initiated in Scotland in 1905 found that the Bile Bean Manufacturing Company's business was based on a fraud and conducted fraudulently, but Bile Beans continued to be sold until the 1980s nevertheless.
context_section_description: After setting up in England in 1899 the company spent about £60,000 a year in advertising its products, and according to Birmingham University Professor of Medicine Robert Saundby, "created a demand by flooding the country with advertisements, placards, pamphlets and imaginary pictures." Early newspaper promotions usually took the form of testimonials proclaiming "miraculous life changing cures". Often illustrated, they included letters from customers cured of lost appetites, severe headaches, indigestion and biliousness. A half-page advertisement in the Sheffield Evening Telegraph on 12 October 1900 featured a lady who had been cured by Bile Beans after ten doctors had failed to successfully treat her condition; copies of signed affidavits from neighbours were also printed. The level of advertising was not curtailed despite the adverse comments made by the judges in the court ruling.
  Among the more unusual marketing promotions undertaken by the Bile Beans Manufacturing Company was the "Bile Bean March", composed by Charles Fulford's older brother Frank Harris Fulford and first published in 1898. The music was described as "a bold, spirited composition" in a 1902 newspaper report. Readers could apply to receive a free copy of the sheet music by sending their address details to the company. Another marketing ploy was the production of a cookery book, which was also made widely available free of charge. A Bile Bean Puzzle Book was published during the early 1930s and also freely distributed. By that time advertising for Bile Beans had become increasingly targeted at women, promising them health, bright eyes and a slim figure if taken regularly.
  When Radio Luxembourg started longwave commercial radio broadcasts in English in 1933, its first advertisers were Fulford's Bile Beans and Zam-Buk.
  During the 1940s newspaper advertising was supplemented by a poster campaign. Aimed at maintaining high levels of purchasing by women, the posters featured young ladies dressed to participate in various activities, including horse riding, swimming and hiking; the designs were the work of S. H. Benson, a London advertising agency whose clients included Bovril and Guinness. The Bulletin of the North Carolina State Board of Health hypothesised in 1916–17 that many provincial newspapers relied heavily on the revenues generated by advertisements from manufacturers of suspect remedies, and it speculated that editorial control had been applied to restrict extensive reporting of the Bile Beans court case. Similar suspicions had been raised almost ten years earlier by medical director Eric Pritchard who went on to highlight a clause showing newspaper advertising contracts could be revoked if the publication carried any material considered "detrimental to the Company's interest".
caption: Frontispiece to the sheet music for the "Bile Bean March"
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