A Clinton, New York, partnership and its family of household brands.

Excedrin was born inside Bristol-Myers. Wikipedia’s history of Bristol-Myers, citing Jim Cox’s 2008 book Sold on Radio, says that in 1887 two graduates of Hamilton College, William McLaren Bristol and John Ripley Myers, bought the Clinton Pharmaceutical company of Clinton, New York. In May 1898 they renamed it Bristol, Myers and Company, and it later became the Bristol-Myers company.

Long before Excedrin, the company had learned to sell through brand names. Wikipedia says its nationally known products included Sal Hepatica, a mineral salt introduced in the 1890s, and Ipana toothpaste in 1901, and that the group later ran divisions such as Clairol hair colour and Drackett, the household-products maker behind Windex and Drano. The analgesic Bufferin also belonged to Bristol-Myers, Wikipedia records, so that by mid-century the company already had an over-the-counter pain brand on American shelves.

Excedrin joined it in 1960. English Wikipedia, citing a Bristol-Myers Squibb news release of 7 October 2002, says that in 1960 Bristol-Myers introduced Excedrin Extra Strength for headaches, and that its formula was changed for the last time in 1978. The brand is a combination of three familiar ingredients, acetaminophen, aspirin and caffeine, Wikipedia says, in the form of tablets or caplets.

Over the following decades Bristol-Myers added variants under the same name. Wikipedia lists Excedrin PM in 1969, a headache product combined with a sleep aid. In 1989, according to a Los Angeles Times report of 28 July that year cited by Wikipedia, Bristol-Myers agreed to merge with the Squibb Corporation, and the combined company, Bristol-Myers Squibb, became Excedrin’s owner.

From Bristol-Myers Squibb to Novartis, GSK and Haleon.

Under Bristol-Myers Squibb the family grew. Wikipedia records that at the start of 1998 the US Food and Drug Administration cleared Excedrin Migraine for sale without a prescription, and that the product launched with the slogan “Excedrin is now Excedrin Migraine”, which, Wikipedia notes, signalled that the new name sat on the same formula as Extra Strength. Excedrin Tension Headache followed in 2003, announced in a Bristol-Myers Squibb release that June, then Excedrin Sinus Headache in 2005 and Excedrin Back & Body in 2007.

Ownership changed in the middle of that run. Reuters, in a report carried by CNN Money on 12 January 2005, said Bristol-Myers Squibb planned to divest its United States and Canadian consumer medicines, including Excedrin, to concentrate on prescription drugs, while keeping its consumer medicines in Japan, China, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The New Jersey Daily Record reported the sale to Novartis in April 2005 under the headline “Novartis swallows Excedrin”, and English Wikipedia dates the purchase to July 2005, together with other products from Bristol-Myers Squibb’s over-the-counter business.

A decade later the brand moved again. A GSK press release dated 2 March 2015 announced that its three-part transaction with Novartis had been completed, creating a new consumer healthcare joint venture in which GSK had majority control. English Wikipedia says that from March 2015 GSK held majority ownership of Excedrin through that joint venture. On 9 January 2012, before that move, Novartis had announced a voluntary recall of selected Excedrin bottle configurations, conducted with the knowledge of the Food and Drug Administration.

The most recent change came in 2022. English Wikipedia, citing the company’s prospectus, says Haleon was established on 18 July 2022 as a spin-off of GSK’s consumer healthcare business, with its main listing on the London Stock Exchange and a secondary listing in New York, and that Excedrin went with it. Haleon has owned Excedrin since 2022; its brand pages list Excedrin in its pain-relief portfolio alongside Panadol, Voltaren and Advil.

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 brand name turned into a kind of headache.

One enduring piece of Excedrin’s identity is a phrase rather than a picture. English Wikipedia says the brand became known for advertisements built around especially unpleasant headaches, which the commercials of the 1970s called “Excedrin headaches”; it cites a commercial dated 1976. Later advertising, the same article says, spoke of “Excedrin tension headaches”.

The brand was also advertised outside the United States. Wikimedia Commons, the image library used by Wikipedia, holds an Excedrin magazine advertisement in Persian from the Iranian weekly Zan-e Rooz, dated 16 January 1971, which Wikipedia uses to illustrate the article on the brand. In Canada the story ended differently: English Wikipedia, citing Health Canada’s drug database, says Excedrin is no longer sold there.

The naming system is the other constant. From the 1960 Extra Strength to the 1969 PM, the 1998 Migraine and the 2003 Tension Headache, each product kept the single brand word in front and added a plain descriptor. The brand’s own website, as fetched in October 2026, still follows that pattern, listing Extra Strength, Tension Headache, Migraine, PM Headache and a newer Rapid Relief, and gives its editorial pages the name “Headache & Migraine Academy”. Across Bristol-Myers, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, the GSK joint venture and Haleon, the word Excedrin and its two-word variant names have stayed in place while the owner’s name on the back of the pack has changed.

For a design guide, Excedrin shows how a single coined brand word can anchor a whole range when each new product is named for its occasion rather than given a new identity. Compare it with Advil, which also sits in Haleon’s pain-relief portfolio, and Tums. For this guide we use Excedrin red and leaf green on caplet white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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