Being more beautiful by washing your face in 1929


I've always had a fascination with advertising, which is part of the reason that I became a graphic designer, and while I haven't written very many ads in my day, I've been around advertising copywriting quite a lot. And it's amazing how everything can seem much more interesting, and glamorous. This ad, which I just found on the Duke site "Ad Access" is a great example of that. It's for soap, and it takes the simple act of washing your face before you go to bed in 1929 into some type of wonderful beauty treatment.

Nothing really has ever changed in advertising. Call it whatever you want, like "clickbait", the idea is grab attention and promise something spectacular even if all you're selling is as mundane as a bar of soap. I won't read the whole thing to you, but you get the gist:


And it goes on, and on, paragraph after paragraph, which really can be summed up by saying that it's good to wash your face, with soap. The format is still the same one in use today - a catchy headline and interesting illustration (I just love this one!) and then a wrap up at the end. This is a nice touch, you contact a person, not Procter and Gamble:


Now I'm wondering who Winifred S. Carter was? Was she a real person, like you and me, or was she fictional, like Betty Crocker? If you know, please tell me and I'll update this post. And here's some more information about this soap - it's 99 44/100 % pure (sounds more convincing than 100%, doesn't it?), and it floats!



Images from the Duke University Library Digital Collections.
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