A Palo Alto molecule and a Cincinnati marketer.

Aleve began with a molecule from a company founded in Mexico. English Wikipedia says Syntex was formed in Mexico City in January 1944 by Russell Marker, Emeric Somlo and Federico Lehmann to make steroids from Mexican yams, and that its name, according to the American Chemical Society, joined “synthesis” and “Mexico”. In 1959 the company moved its operating headquarters to Palo Alto, California. Its anti-inflammatory compound naproxen, Wikipedia says, was patented in 1967; Syntex marketed it on prescription as Naprosyn from 1976 and launched the sodium salt, naproxen sodium, as the prescription brand Anaprox in 1980.

The idea of a shop-shelf version came from a partnership. Supermarket News reported on 24 January 1994 that Syntex and Procter & Gamble had formed a joint venture back in 1988 to develop and market a non-prescription version of Naprosyn, and that the partners had later switched their application to a lower-strength form of Anaprox. On 11 January 1994, the trade paper said, the companies received clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration to sell it without a prescription under a new name: Aleve.

The division of labour was set out in the same coverage. Supermarket News wrote on 14 February 1994 that Aleve would be manufactured by Syntex in Palo Alto and marketed by Procter & Gamble of Cincinnati, in tablets and caplets, with shipments expected “in the spring”. The product went on sale in mid-June 1994; the paper’s report of 19 September 1994 said it had been launched by Procter-Syntex Health Products Company, the joint venture of the two companies.

The pack was part of the launch story. Supermarket News, in its January 1994 report, described Aleve’s bottles as “safety squeeze bottles” that could be opened easily by adults, including people with restricted movement in their hands.

From Procter & Gamble to Roche, then Bayer.

The launch advertising gave the brand its best-known line. In a case study for the Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns, republished by Warc, Jack Rummel wrote that Procter & Gamble worked with the agency D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles on a multi-track campaign built on the slogan “All Day Strong, All Day Long”. The line is built from two short halves that rhyme on their last word.

The launch drew an immediate legal response from a competitor. Supermarket News reported on 19 September 1994 that American Home Products, the parent of the maker of Advil, had filed a lawsuit on 9 August 1994 in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, alleging false advertising and promotion of Aleve.

Ownership moved within two years. Syntex itself had agreed to be acquired by the Roche group in May 1994, Wikipedia says, citing The New York Times of 3 May 1994; Roche later closed what remained of Syntex in September 2008. The Tan Sheet reported on 1 July 1996 that Roche would acquire Procter & Gamble’s half of the US joint venture, an agreement the companies announced on 27 June 1996, giving Roche sole rights to Aleve and the yeast-infection treatment Femstat 3.

Roche did not market the brand for long. The Tan Sheet reported on 23 September 1996 that Bayer would take over Aleve’s marketing by the end of that year under a 50/50 joint venture with Roche announced on 16 September. Bayer’s Consumer Care Division in Morris Township, New Jersey, would handle US sales and marketing of the venture’s brands, which joined Aleve and Femstat 3 with four Bayer brands: Actron, Vanquish, Midol and Mycelex-7.

The final step came eight years later. Manufacturing Chemist reported on 6 January 2005 that the sale of Roche’s non-prescription business, Roche Consumer Health, to Bayer had closed on 31 December 2004, and that the transaction included Roche’s 50 per cent stake in its US joint venture with Bayer. Bayer has owned Aleve since 2004. Announcing the combined business, Gary S. Balkema, then president of Bayer’s Consumer Care division, named Aleve alongside Bayer Aspirin, Rennie, Alka-Seltzer and Bepanthen as brands of the enlarged company, chemeurope.com reported on 4 January 2005.

Design and documentation.

Over-the-counter remedy brands live on a crowded shelf, and their identities have to work at the distance of an aisle and at the closeness of a medicine cabinet. Much of that work is done by colour: a carton colour held steady over many years, a tablet, caplet or liquid with a colour of its own, and a logotype set large enough to be read at a glance.

These brands also carry text that design does not control. Packs for remedies sold without a prescription usually include a regulatory panel whose layout, headings and wording are shaped by the rules of each market, so the brand’s own voice has to sit beside a block of standard information rather than replace it.

Sound has played a part as well. Radio and television advertising gave many remedy names a slogan or a jingle, and for some the tune became as recognisable as the pack. Each guide in this group sets out who started the brand, who owns it now and how its name, colours and advertising have changed, keeping to what dated sources record.

A slogan and a bottle that outlasted three owners.

Aleve’s identity was assembled at launch and has travelled through every change of owner since. The name, coined for the 1994 switch from prescription to shop shelf, replaced the clinical brand names Naprosyn and Anaprox with something short and soft. The campaign line that Encyclopedia of Major Marketing Campaigns credits to D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles, “All Day Strong, All Day Long”, gave the name a spoken rhythm, and the squeeze bottle that Supermarket News described gave it a physical one.

Each of those elements was designed by one company and inherited by another. Procter & Gamble, as marketer, ran the launch; Syntex, as manufacturer, made the product; Roche, through Syntex, owned half of the venture and then all of it; and Bayer, from the end of 1996, ran the marketing before taking full ownership at the close of 2004. The brand therefore spent its first decade passing between a soap and household-goods company, a Swiss drug group and a German chemical and pharmaceutical house without changing its name.

The brand has also travelled across borders under Bayer. English Wikipedia, citing a Bayer press release, says Aleve became available without a prescription in some Canadian provinces on 14 July 2009, reaching British Columbia in January 2010 and Quebec in 2023. Bayer placed it in the same consumer portfolio as Bayer Aspirin and Midol.

Read as a design history, Aleve is a case of an identity built quickly and kept steady. The name, the line and the bottle were all public by the summer of 1994, and the owners that followed added distribution rather than a new voice. That is the point a designer can take from it: a short coined name and a rhyming slogan travelled through three corporate homes without needing to be replaced.

For a design guide, Aleve shows how a coined name and a two-part slogan can give a prescription molecule a consumer voice that survives a change of owner. Compare it with Bayer Aspirin, its stablemate at Bayer, and Advil. For this guide we use Aleve blue and deep navy with sky on frost with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Aleve’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.