A Skin You Love to Touch

Why it works

Until 1911, soap ads mostly showed soap. For Woodbury's Facial Soap, J. Walter Thompson copywriter Helen Lansdowne Resor showed what the soap might win you instead: an elegant young woman receiving the admiring attention of a man in evening dress, above the line "A skin you love to touch." Selling soap through romance caused an uproar, and the campaign is widely regarded as the first to use sex appeal to sell a product. It is studied for that shift from the product to its user, and for its author: Lansdowne Resor, considered by some the first female copywriter, set up a women's editorial department at JWT and promoted women into creative roles. The results were hard to argue with. Sales reportedly rose 1,000 percent in eight years, and Woodbury kept the slogan for more than three decades. Ad Age ranked it No. 31 of the century's 100 greatest campaigns, and Duke's Hartman Center featured a Woodbury ad in its 2007 exhibit on sex appeal in advertising.