Sex Sells Soap

The psychoanalyst determined the soul of the thing and then the Madison Avenue men (on occasion) made art, after budget approval from the organization men.

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?”

Was Ernest Dichter A Materialist?

Ernest Dichter (b. 14 August 1907 in Vienna; d. 21 November 1991 in Peekskill, New York) was a psychologist and marketing expert who is widely considered to be the "father of motivational research." He received his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1934 and emigrated with his wife Hedy (née Langfelder) to the United States in 1937. http://www.wikipedia.com/

Born an Austrian Jew, he was one of few with the foresight and wherewithal to emigrate in the late 30s, first to Paris and then to the U.S. Nearly all his family was killed during WWII, many in concentration camps.

From The Handbook of Consumer Motivations, “The Soul of Things” 1964 By Ernest Dichter

The bedraggled column of refugees struggle down a muddy road, their backs bent under their few possessions. A few pieces of clothing, sometimes a mattress, or even a sewing machine stick out weirdly. They mean life to people. Some of the things are important for survival; most of them, however, such as the child’s doll or the long since faded and useless wedding dress of the woman, are a tangible anchorage, as accent on life’s continuity. They are needed for the glow they give, however weak, in the bottomless darkness of human despair. Hollow hands clasp ludicrous possessions because they are truly lost.

During World War II literally tens of thousands of people refused to leave their homeland because they felt they could not leave their possessions behind. They were eventually caught and immediately killed or dragged off into concentration camps and punished because of their infantile attachment to tangible, hard, security-giving but deadly things and objects.

Cleaning Up the Debris Left Behind by 20th Century Crazes

Current ebay listing
http://cgi.ebay.com/2-Fire-King-Esso-Exxon-Tiger-Cereal-Bowls-LOOK_W0QQitemZ180154644558QQihZ008QQcategoryZ1019QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem#ebayphotohosting
From my grandparent's estate...

You are bidding on a set of vintage Fire-King cereal bowls from an Esso or Exxon gas station. The bowls feature a tiger face on the inside bottom, from the "Put a Tiger in your Tank" ad campaigns. These bowls were made with Fire-King's mold number 20, which is marked on the bottom. The diameter at the top is approximately 4-7/8 inches; the bottom diameter is approximately 2-5/8 inches. They are about 2 inches deep.Bowl #1 (right): Clean white glass color; tiger colors deep and distinct; 'popped bubble' flaw in top rim that feels like a chip.Bowl #2 (left): Creamier colored glass with some discolored pits on interior surfaces (factory second?); tiger colors not as deep as other bowl; no chips or bubble.













When I was 15 years old, for two of my speeches required in Mrs. Braden’s speech class, I presented short satires on advertising. One of the speeches poked fun at the ethical problem of setting up an experiment in which some children developed more cavities than others [see earlier blog on Dental Hygiene] and one speech was a narrative of juvenile delinquent boys and their nighttime car burglary of an Esso tiger’s tail; the tiger tail promotion must have reached a height of interest in Dallas in summer, 1964.

From Hidden Persuaders, 1957
The McCann-Erickson advertising agency made a study for Esso gasoline to discover what motivates consumers, in order more effectively to win new friends for Esso. The agency found there is considerable magic in the word power. After many depth interviews with gasoline buyers the agency perfected an ad strategy that hammered at two words, with all letters capitalized: TOTAL POWER.

Ernest Dichter is usually given credit for the 1959-64 Esso/Exxon “tiger in your tank “ ad campaign. Esso had used the tiger in ads in the 1930s, but the slogan and expensive advertising assault in the 1960s were apparently masterminded by Dichter. According to one source, Dichter liked the tiger because it is such a universal symbol of power, and Esso needed a global advertising plan to aid in its expansion. And Dichter, whether selling tooth paste or gasoline, was master of the branding needed to differentiate commodities.

In 1959, as tiger ads waned in Europe, the tiger came to life in Chicago, Illinois, where an advertising copywriter sat at his typewriter thinking up symbols of power for a local Esso campaign. In two minutes, a famous advertising slogan was born: Put a Tiger in Your Tank. Unlike his fierce forebears, this tiger emerged as a cartoon character - friendly, whimsical but still powerful. From his original Chicago habitat, the fun-loving cat eventually roamed Esso ads and promotions throughout the world. The tiger tail emerged from thousands of gasoline tanks. Tiger faces and stripes appeared on T-shirts, towels and other trinkets. Within five years, the tiger was so well known, Time magazine dubbed 1964 "The Year of the Tiger Along Madison Avenue." An astonishing 2,500,000 tails were [sic] sold [i.e., distributed. ][www.esso/Exxon.com]

Dichter . . . claimed to have “laid the groundwork for the symbolism” of Esso’s “Tiger in the Tank” ad campaign by decoding a patient’s dreams of fighting with a powerful animal, which he recognized as “a symbolic way of fighting and loving his father”—an insight that could be translated into a gasoline ad’s appeal to the subliminal desire to incorporate the father, or the father’s power, cannibalistically. As Dichter explained: “The “Tiger in the Tank” [w]as another worldwide, successful translation of sex into sales. A gas tank is mysterious and dark like a womb. It can be fertile or sterile. The hose of the gas pump resembles you-know-what. Rational? Who cares? The symbol of power, of virility, of strength, goes through the oddly shaped nozzle into the receptive womb and gives it power and strength. It worked practically around the world. I want you to realize that I am as amazed as the infidels are. How can such a contrived mixture between sexual allegories, mysticism, and caveman symbolism result in millions of dollars of very unmysterious cash through increased sales?”

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


The “Tiger in Your Tank” was a fad in which the primary product was gasoline and the sideline swag was for amusement. In the early fifties, Disney had a fad marketing bonanza with the Davy Crockett coonskin hat and related paraphernalia. {See previous blog “One Man’s Dream Was Our Reality.”]






And many of us Reinhardt kids also experienced the hula hoop craze, with other Wham-O follow-up products such as the Frisbee, Slip 'N Slide, Chubby Checker Limbo dance game, Water Wiggle and others.



Fads could be marketing bonanzas for a company like Wham-O, but could not be started by advertising alone. The Wham-O entrepreneurs picked their products with care (in tests with kids, they saw that the hula hoop had a remarkable average “playtime’ per child), used much word-of- mouth, and somehow were simply in the right place at the right time. Between 1957 and 1959, Wham-O sold more than 20 million hula hoops, most at $1.98. According to one source, if extended as one piece, the hula hoops would stretch around the earth. And where did all that Marlex plastic end up? Likely in U.S. landfills.















[Did I attend a Limbo party at her home in about 1961?]

In the mid-fifties, marketing researchers such as Dichter, observing the Davy Crockett craze, theorized that crazes could be scientifically produced, but a successful craze’s causes likely were complex and unpredictable.

From Hidden Persuaders, 1957
An evidence of how big the business can be is that the Davy Crockett craze of 1955, which gave birth to 300 Davy Crockett products, lured $300,000,000 from American pockets. Big persuasion indeed.
American merchandisers felt a need for a deeper understanding of these craze phenomena so that they could not only share in the profits, but know when to unload. Research was needed to help the manufacturers avoid overestimating the length of the craze. Many were caught with warehouses full of “raccoon” tails and buckskin fringe when. Almost without warning, the Crockett craze lost its lure. One manufacturer said: “When they die, they die a horrible death.”
The problem of comprehending the craze drew the attention of such motivation experts as Dr. Dichter and Alfred Politz. And Tide magazine, journal of merchandisers devoted a major analysis to the craze.
The experts studied the Crockett extravaganza as a case in point and concluded that its success was due to the fact that it had in good measure all of the three essential ingredients of a profitable fad: symbols, carry device, and fulfillment of a subconscious need. The carrying device, and the experts agreed it was a superb one, was the song “Ballad of Davy Crockett,” which was repeated in some form in every Disney show. Also, it was richer in symbols than many of the fads: coonskin cap, fringed buckskin, flintlock rifle. Tide explained: “All popular movements from Christianity’s cross to the Nazis’ swastika have had their distinctive symbols.”
As for filling a subconscious need, Dr. Dichter had this to say of Crockett: “Children are reaching for an opportunity to explain themselves in terms of the traditions of the country. Crockett gave them that opportunity. On a very imaginative level the kids really felt they were Davy Crockett. . . “
What causes the quick downfall of crazes: The experts said overexploitation was one cause. Another cause was sociological. Mr. Politz pointed out that crazes take a course from upper to lower. In the case of adult fads this means upper-income education groups to lower. In the case of children, Politz explained: “Those children who are leaders because of age adopt the fad first and then see it picked up by the younger children, an age class they no longer wish to be identified with. This causes the older children deliberately to drop the fad.”
Both Politz and Dichter felt not only that with careful planning the course of fads could be charted to ensure more profits for everybody, but also that profitable fads could actually be created. Tide called this possibility “fascinating.” Dr. Dichter felt that with appropriate motivational research techniques a fad even of the Crockett magnitude could be started, once the promoters had found, and geared the fad to, an unsatisfied need of youngsters.

A Fifties Family Makes an Impulse Buy

The Madison Avenue men made some advertising that rises to art.


Apparently, in the late fifites, Chevrolet made some big-budget two-minute ads that attempted to tell a story. After all, what kind of story can you tell in 30 seconds or one minute?

I'm not sure what impact motivational researchers had on this commercial, but the production team did an masterful job with casting and direction. I wish I had had this woman for a mom. She is sexy and also practical, showing concern for the family budget. The dad is generous and sensitive, just like a fifties dad was supposed to be, and just like my dad.

Ernest Dichter did much to help fifties families overcome their puritanical restraints and jump on the bandwagon of the juggernaut of the U.S. economy of the fifties and sixties.

He can be forgiven for being part of that fifties-sixties delusion, idiosyncratic to American culture, that the new “social sciences” had methodology that would have real effectiveness--to accurately predict human behavior. Packard and Friedan apparently were under the same delusion (with a paranoid strain), with their neat stories of marketing problem, psychologist recommendation and success. It’s unfortunate that that early arrogance of the social “sciences” became institutionalized in our universities and their academic departments. Many of the advertising men understood all along that they were creating art and fantasy. The Dichters of the world found easy marks in the corporate “organization men” who controlled advertising budgets. Psychoanalysis is a tool amazingly versatile in its range for explanation, but it is hardly a science. More about "The Organization Men" in future posts.

Cigarettes, Whiskey, Beer and Fast-Food Hamburgers

The Hidden Persuaders, by Vance Packard, 1957
Chapter 5
Self Images for Everybody

People have a terrific loyalty to their brand of cigarette and yet in tests cannot tell it from other brands. They are smoking on image completely.” Research director, New York advertising agency (name withheld upon request).

The subconscious salesmen, in groping for better hooks, deployed in several directions. One direction they began exploring in a really major way was the molding of images: the creation of distinctive, highly appealing ”personalities” for products that were essentially undistinctive. The aim was to build images that would arise before our “inner eye” at the mere mention of the product’s name, once we had been properly conditioned. Thus they would trigger our action in a competitive sales situation.


A compelling need for such images was felt by merchandisers, as I’ve indicated, because of the growing standardization of, and complexity of, ingredients in most products, with result in products that defied reasonable discrimination. Three hundred smokers loyal to one of three major brands of cigarette were given the three brands to smoke (with labels taped) and asked to identify their favorite brand. Result: 35 per cent were able to do so; and under the law of averages pure guesses would have accounted for a third of the correct identifications. In short, something less than 2 per cent would be credited with any real power of discrimination. Somewhat comparable results were obtained when merchandisers tried “blindfold” tests of beer and whiskey drinkers.
----------------------------------------
Reading The Hidden Persuaders in 2007, I don’t find Packard convincing when it comes to cigarettes and whiskey. I’ve been a steady purchaser of these two products for forty years or so. I also am a big purchaser of beer and fast food hamburgers. In all my thousands of purchases of cigarettes, whiskey, beer and fast food hamburgers, I can say confidently that advertising has never had an impact. I shop only on the basis of price and taste, and I can tell my hamburgers apart by taste. Some days I prefer a Whataburger. Some days when I’m in a more frugal mood, I’ll take two MacDonalds double cheeseburgers. On a splurge day, I might have a Wendys with fries. I usually try to avoid Burger King due to the burgers’ overdone charcoal taste, but sometimes stop for the two-for-one deals. If a depth psychologist were to peer deep into my subconscious, he would find little in the way of hamburger advertising or self image brand extensions. On a typical day, I eat a hamburger, drink a beer, smoke a cigarette, and have a bowel movement—all parts of my human condition concerning which I have no pride and would just as soon do without.

Fur, Hair, Sex and Virility

Most of the information provided in recent blogs by journalists such as Vance Packard and Betty Friedan was actually developed by a psychologist named Ernest Dichter, who wrote many books through the 1940s-70s, and I find him to be a tough hombre, just like this guy from a Marlboro commercial he likely influenced. I occasionally smoke a Winston (Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should) but in 2007 what's left but Marlboros? Does this guy have a tattoo on the back of his hand?


From Dichter’s 1960 The Strategy of Desire:

“The Soul of Things”

To want material things, then, is a natural human desire, engendered partly by biological forces, the wish for security and protection, and reinforced by our contemporary culture. . . . . There is no sharp dividing line between materialist and idealistic values. To make such a distinction is unscientific. It is cheap moralistic hypocrisy. Let’s look at the amoral facts of human behavior. Doing so does not mean we approve of it. But even to think that nature needed our approval for the way we are put together is blasphemous and arrogant in itself. How do we behave always comes before how should we behave.

I buy a book. Is this materialist or idealistic? A book offers opportunity for new adventure, education. Raising vegetables, taking a trip, the child’s thrill with a new pair of shoes, the new Broadway shows, what are they all? What values do they represent? We still want suds in detergents, not being able to forget the stereotypes of all soap; we judge tools by their strength, we can’t conceive of aluminum beings as strong as steel. In all these cases ideas contaminate material things.
. . .

In many of our studies, we could demonstrate that the old proverbs “Clothes make the man,” “Tell me what a man eats and I’ll tell you what he is” are not too impractical and are not empty statements. Modern psychology has overlooked to a very large extent the real expressive power that objects have. Objects have a soul. People on the one hand, and products, goods, and commodities on the other, entertain a dynamic relationship of constant interaction.

Individuals project themselves into products. In buying a car they actually buy an extension of their own personality. When they are “loyal” to a commercial brand, they are loyal to themselves.
. . .

Take fur, for example. In our study conducted for the fur industry, the problem was, in addition to the commercial one helping to sell more furs, to also understand what the “soul” of the fur is. Few people today buy fur coats in order to keep warm. There must be other deeper reasons. We found that expensive fur coats are often being bought by men for their wives or girl friends. Mink stands out in this respect. Mink and most other fur coats are non logical buys, they are based on emotions, on the “ideological” meaning of these furs. In order to understand the meaning fully, to find the answer to the why problem of human behavior, we investigated the cultural anthropological meaning of fur. Originally , it was the warrior of the tribe who brought the fair maiden a skin, the trophy of his hunts and the proof of his prowess. The rarer and the more dangerous the animal, the more it serves as proof of the skill and virility of the warrior. This is replaced in the modern world by price. The more expensive the fur, the more it proves the earning power of the male giver of the fur coat, his earning virility. Fur, hair, sex, are of course all interrelated. The famous painting by Durer, entitled “Furlet,” and the painting of Botticelli, “The Birth of Venus,” show that many hundreds of years ago the real artist intuitively felt this relationship.

From a practical viewpoint our findings were developed for the fur industry in the following way. We found that a fur hierarchy had developed wherein furs are seen on a descending social scale on which each fur is assigned a rigid place related to the age, type and status of the woman who wears it. At the same time mink had become a too obvious symbol. In general, a new trend is developing particularly in the United States, to be more subtle in one’s conspicuousness. We are becoming more interested in keeping up with the “inner Jones,” than with the too obvious outer one. We want the neighbor to guess at our wealth and status rather than to display it too openly. At the same time we have learned that an easier way to stand out and to buy status is to resort to individuality and to be different.

From this different and new viewpoint which we found to be operative in the psychology of fur buying, we found that mouton [or rabbit] was seen as a fur for typists, sales clerks, and college students; beaver for suburban housewives and professional women; Persian lamb for elderly spinsters; and mink for society women, chorus girls, and movie stars. Our advice thus was to develop specific personality profiles for non-mink furs. We suggested that furs be pulled down from their psychological pedestal and promoted as fashion items rather than status symbols. Wearing a fur coat would thus lose the blatant conspicuousness.

Learning About Dental Hygiene

From Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders, 1957.

Our toothbrushing habits offer a prime example of behavior that is at least seemingly irrational. If you ask people why they brush their teeth, most of them will tell you that their main purpose is doing so is to get particles of food out of the crevices of their teeth and thus combat decay germs. Tooth-paste producers accepted this explanation for many years and based their sales campaigns on it. Advertising men who made a study of our toothbrushing habits, however, came upon a puzzle. They found that most people brushed their teeth once a day, and at the most pointless moment possible in the entire twenty-four-hour day, from a dental hygiene standpoint. That was in the morning just before breakfast, after decay germs had had a whole night to work on their teeth from particles left from supper—and just before the consumption of breakfast would bring a new host of bacteria.

One advertising agency puzzling over this seemingly irrational behavior made a more thorough study of the reasons why we brush our teeth. It concluded we are motivated by differing reasons, based on our personality. Some people, particularly hypochondriacs, are really concerned abut those germs and are swayed by a “decay" appeal. (The hammering in recent years on all the wondrous anti-decay pastes has swollen the size of this group.) Another group, mostly extroverts, brush their teeth in the hope they will be bright and shiny. The majority of people, however, brush their teeth primarily for a reason that has little to do with dental hygiene. Or even their teeth. They put the brush and paste into their mouth in order to give their mouth a thorough purging, to get rid of the bad taste that has accumulated overnight. In short, they are looking for a taste sensation, as a part of their ritual of starting the day afresh. At least two of the major paste merchandisers began hitting hard at the appeal in 1955 and 1956. One promised a clean mouth taste” and the other proclaimed that its paste “cleans your breath while it guards your teeth.” (More recently one of these products got itself a new ad agency, as often happens, and the new mentor began appealing to the extrovert in us through the slogan, “You’ll wonder where the yellow went. . . “Good results are reported, which simply proves there is always more than one way to catch a customer.”)


Click here to watch a commercial on the possibilities that come with fresh breath.
. . .

Tooth-paste makers doubled their sales in a few years, and one explanation is that they succeeded in large part by keeping a great number of people feeling uneasy about their teeth. They hammered at the wondrous new ways to kill bacteria and prevent decay. In the mid-fifties, Crest tooth paste containing a fluoride was unveiled with the typical modesty (for a tooth paste) as a “Milestone of Modern Medicine” comparable to the discovery of the means to control contagious diseases in the eighteenth century. The marketers themselves were less reverent in discussing among themselves. Advertising Age called the fluoride paste the latest gimmick of a series of big promises (ammoniated, chlorophyll, antienzyme) and added, “The feeling persists that public has responded appreciatively to every new therapeutic claim that has come done the pike in recent years. . . . The hope is that it will exhibit the usual alacrity at the sight of the fluorides.”

Click here to learn about harms to children in human testing of fluoride.

An interesting success story among the tooth pastes is that of Gleem, which on the surface had nothing spectacular to offer in the way of killing the dragons in our mouths. It had an ingredient called GL-70 that was apparently a competent bacteria killer, but as Fortune pointed out GL-70 seemed pretty puny as a peg for ad copy when compared to the more spectacular cleansers that had been ballyhooed. Gleem, however, had discovered a secret weapon. Investigators had uncovered the fact that many people—as a result of being subjected for years to the alarums of tooth-paste makers—felt vaguely guilty because they didn’t brush their teeth after every meal. Gleem began promising tooth salvation to these guilt-ridden people by saying it was designed for people who “can’t brush their teeth after every meal. “ (This, of course, includes most of the population.) Two years after it was introduced Gleem was outselling all but one rival dentifrice.

Click here for a solution to dangers from once-a-day morning brushing.