Saturday, April 10, 2010

Lifebuoy ads, 1940s-1950s

From a 1944 Navy magazine, some cheesecake for a cake of soap. Not the Lifebuoy ad you'd find in Ladies Home Journal or McCall's.

 1944: Rosie the Riveter is reminded to bathe...

1945: Sweet Sue gets wise, thanks to her man in uniform.

1947: Back from the war, and women are off the assembly line, but their hygiene is still wanting...

1947: Even when the man stinks, it's the woman's fault!

1951: Ah! Admission that the old Lifebuoy might not have smelled that great. Some early TV stars deliver the news that the new Lifebuoy smells better, not medicinal.


1953: Very clever, very modern ad campaign--turn the tables on your own product, play to the reader's sense of humor and intelligence. There's still too much type in this ad, but the witty headline, including typeface, is the wave of the future, and would turn up in ads and feature articles (think Esquire and New York magazine) in the 1960s-1970s.

1 comment:

  1. Those bad marketers! We think it's funny now, but those poor women of yesteryear must have been so paranoid about all of their potential shortcomings.

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