Hidden Persuaders 1957
Procter and Gamble ‘s image builders have charted a living personification for each of their cakes of soap and cans of shortening. Ivory soap is personalized as mother and daughter on a sort of pedestal of purity. They exude simple wholesomeness. In contrast the image charted for Camay soap is of a glamorous, sophisticated woman.
From How Advertising Works: The Role of Research By John Philip Jones, 1998
http://books.google.com/books?id=VLh-LSg6GyAC&pg=PA136&dq=Perceptual+Map+of+Toilet+Soaps&sig=7DXNGXqW8HsUmhonXwx_y4uzqRk#PPA136,M1
My mother, nearly always a brand shopper, tended to prefer Zest and Dial for our family. Today, I incline toward the house brands, such as Equate, but recognize the importance of brands in a few selected areas--Levi's 501s , O'Reilly's over AutoZone for front end parts such as ball joints and electronics such as distributor caps and plug wires, high-priced Lipitor to prevent death from heart attack but unavailable in generic, and "true taste" products such as pizza, cigarettes and whiskey. In Texas, we can get bargain prices for some unpopular premium beers such as the Coors 24 oz., but in quantity, the second-tier brands are a better value. Regarding soaps and other packaged chemical products, I have accumulated over 30 years hundreds of cans, bottles, tubes, boxes which are partly used. I regret that they were bought, and I wish I knew how to get rid of them--most being toxic to my septic tank and to the environment.
Handbook of Consumer Motivations, by Ernest Dichter, 1964
Bubble baths and the glamour attached to them reflects the deep gratification provided by lather. The lightness and "unreal” character of lather “born out of foam” has much significance. Lather has a caressing effect on the skin, which explains why people soap themselves more than would be necessary if they merely wanted to get clean. The urge to caress ourselves is a deep-seated, complicated psychological tendency which we usually try to suppress. Soap and lather supply an accepted pretext to fulfill this natural desire to pat and smooth our skin.
From "Getting the Id to Go Shopping: Psychoanalysis, Advertising, Barbie Dolls, and the Invention of the Consumer Unconscious," David Bennett
http://publicculture.dukejournals.org/cgi/reprint/17/1/1.pdf
[In 1939], Dichter proceeded to make $200 by discovering the autoerotic associations of soap lather for the Compton Advertising Agency and its client, Ivory Soap. Observing that “one of the few occasions when the puritanical American was allowed to caress himself or herself was while applying soap,” he conducted “a hundred non-directive interviews where people were permitted to talk at great length about their most recent experiences” with soap—a technique that he would later dub “the depth interview,” modeled on the psychoanalytic session. The depth interview’s free-association technique could be supplemented with another technique from the psychoanalytic armory, called the “psychodrama,” which he described as “penetrat[ing] just a few pegs deeper than the depth interview” and “where we ask people to act out a roduct”: “You are a soap, let’s say. . . . How old are you? Are you feminine? Are you masculine?”
