Without the Boy Scouts, Band-Aids might not have stuck around [View all]

[FSogol]

Sales of Band-Aids were flagging until Johnson & Johnson made an ingenious marketing move.
In the 1920s, the company began distributing, for free, an unlimited supply of Band-Aids to Boy Scout troops across the country, according to this lesson from TED-Ed. Band-Aids also were included in the custom first-aid kits Johnson & Johnson produced for the Boy Scouts of America. The kits were designed to help Boy Scouts earn merit badges like First Aid. The original 1925 “Boy Scout First-Aid Packet” contained a triangular bandage for a sling, a compress and two safety pins. It came in a simple cardboard container.

In 1926, Johnson & Johnson and the BSA asked silent film cowboy Fred Thomson to show Scouts how to use the kits. He bandaged the leg of his horse, Silver King, for the demo. A few years later, Johnson & Johnson debuted an upgraded BSA first-aid kit in a tin box. Inside, Scouts found burn and antibiotic creams, first-aid instructions, and several kinds of bandages, including Band-Aids.

The collaboration with the BSA proved fruitful. Johnson & Johnson effectively made Band-Aids a default part of every Scout’s camping gear — a tradition that continues today in many packs, troops, ships and crews.

“This was the beginning of marketing to children and families that helped familiarize the public with the Johnson & Johnson name and their new product,” according to this article in Smithsonian magazine.

More at:

https://blog.scoutingmagazine.org/2018/01/18/band-aids-and-the-boy-scouts/