Despite the abominable name (sounds more like a drug or a laxative), Tarax was one of the great marketing innovators. Tarax was a great regional brand in Victoria dating back to the 1800s and reinvented itself in the 1970s.
In a great illustration of how marketing differs from advertising, Tarax developed the steel can as a soft drink container (for those too young to remember, soft drinks came in steel cans before they came in the aluminium cans we see today). The Tarax brand was well known through the company’s sponsorship of a children’s television program, the Tarax Happy Hour. They certainly knew who their target market was and knew how to engage with their audience. The sponsorship evolved into a complete adoption of the brand name for the show’s title, going on to become known as the Tarax Hour.
On the advertising front, Tarax made use of the risqué 70s to prove that sex can sell anything. Popular commercials featured Abigail from the television program, Number 96, which would even be considered a little risqué by today’s standards. There’s less exposure of human flesh than we see today but the commercials were pretty blunt in their sexuality.
But back to that less-than-enticing brand name – Tarax. The company’s founder brewed a herbal soft drink and called it Taraxale, with the “Tarax” part of the name come from “Taraxacum”, meaning dandelion in Latin. Maybe the business would have gone global if only it carried a better brand name? Even so, it carries a special place in the hearts of Victorians who grew up in that era.