Joan, Lawrence and James went against what was common thought and practice of the time to create an absolute empire.

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom-and-pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is… Well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

[Tapper’s Jewelry Ad]

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here, with Stephen Semple. And Stephen, we’re diving into more feminine territory for me. You keep triggering my relationship with my sisters, when we talked about Barbie dolls and things like that, and now it’s Clairol.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

The beauty product. I’m trying to even remember. I should know this, right? I had three sisters and raised four daughters, and Clairol should be firmly entrenched in my vocabulary. I know it’s a female beauty product line, hair, skin, makeup, that kind of stuff, all of it.

Stephen Semple:

So hair’s the big one. That’s the one we’re going to talk about because that’s basically the origin of Clairol was dyeing hair. But I was thinking I almost need to pick one of these ones in the future and have your sisters on with you. I think that would be quite a lot of fun.

Dave Young:

Oh, please, sir.

Stephen Semple:

I even have the title for the podcast, Dave Young, angsty.

Dave Young:

Angsty.

Stephen Semple:

So, Clairol, it’s an old company. It was founded in 1931 by Joan and Lawrence Gelb and a business partner of theirs, James Romeo. And what they saw was this hair coloring preparation in France called Clairol. So it was already called Clairol, and it was being done in France. So what they did is they co-founded the Clairol Company to import products from France. Here’s how big they got. And I don’t know when it changed to them having the international rights and things along that lines. I didn’t really go down that rabbit hole, but give you an idea how big they got. In 1957, so you’re basically talking 26 years after they founded, they were sold to Bristol-Myers, and then in 2004, they hit 1.6 billion in sales. And today, they’re under a company called Coty, which was acquired from P&N for $12.5 billion. So they became a really big company in the space. But the thing that we don’t realize is how revolutionary a product Clairol hair dye was, because hair coloring at the time was very looked down upon.

It was very frowned upon. And today, it’s really common, like half of all American women between 13 and 75 color their hair.

Dave Young:

Right.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, and Dave, there’s hope for you. It’s becoming more popular with men as well.

Dave Young:

I believe that. And I’ve known men that do it, that I have a feeling always believed that nobody knew they were doing it. They believed that.

Stephen Semple:

Well, see, for me, it’s not even an option because you have hair. I don’t. So…

Dave Young:

Well, I mean, you’ve got that white goatee. I’ve got a white goatee, and yeah, I agree. Honestly, I’ve always felt better grave and gone. And so I’m thankful for my flowing locks.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, there you go. Rub it in, rub it in. So anyway, it is now becoming more popular with men. But as I said, it wasn’t always, and a great example of this is in the 1950s, Betty Friedan wrote a book, The Feminine Mystique, and she said there’s three things women should not do, should not smoke in public. Now this had an impact in the cigarette business. Remember, we talked about Marlboro? Where originally started off as a woman’s cigarette, and women’s smoking declined, and they pivoted to it being a men’s cigarette. This book was influential enough, it had an impact on women smoking in public.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

The other thing women should not do is wear long pants unless under a coat and color her hair.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

These were the big three, don’t smoke in public, don’t wear long pants, don’t color your hair. Literally, the book goes on to say, you are better to pull out a gray hair than risk association with dyeing your hair. There was also resistance to cosmetics at the time, but this was the backdrop. And it’s important to understand this backdrop because enter the Gelbs, and Lawrence is a chemical broker and entrepreneur. He buys these rights to this French hair coloring product with this backdrop, right? Now, what made Clairol also very unique is, it didn’t coat the hair. It actually penetrated it and it created softer, more natural tones. It was also more like a shampoo, and it cleaned and conditioned the hair at the same time. Now, when it was introduced in World War II as a five-step process, that lasted quite a long period of time.

So first of all, started as this multi-step process. He took that process and was seven years of research. It became a single step that could be done in 20 minutes, and the results were more natural than anything you could get previously. But here’s the problem, it was so advanced, people didn’t believe it. Good Housekeeping Magazine would not accept their ads. It took three years for Good Housekeeping to accept their ads. And then, at that point, they gave them the Good Housekeeping seal of approval. Good Housekeeping was like, “Yeah, we’re not running this because we don’t believe it works.”

Dave Young:

How do you get around that? Wouldn’t you just show up at their headquarters with some hair coloring? And…

Stephen Semple:

They started doing demonstrations. To your point, they did live demonstrations of dyeing people’s hair at the International Beauty Show. And they literally would bring in these buckets, and they would show people that it’s just water. They did this very elaborate demonstration, two professionals at the International Beauty Show, and within six months of launch, salon visits to dye increased 500%. Like just-

Dave Young:

All right, so in these times, it was not a home product. It was something you went to a salon to-

Stephen Semple:

It originally was something you went to a salon. And even when they first started advertising it, it was two salons. And there’s an interesting thing I’m going to talk about when they pivoted to it being a home product. So I want you to hold onto that thought and hold onto the 20 minutes that it took in a salon.

Dave Young:

But what we’re talking about right now is a product that you made an appointment and went in and got your hair colored.

Stephen Semple:

Correct. But when they advertised this, they didn’t advertise it to the salons, they advertised it to the consumer. Now they had to get the salons to buy into it so that salons would offer it, and they had to get good housekeeping to buy into it so they would advertise it, right? But they created an advertising campaign to women because also, keep in mind, women were resistant to the ideas they had to make it. They had to make women open to it. So this campaign was created by Shirley Polykoff, and she’s a self-professed, unsophisticated, first-generation American in her 20s. And when she pitched this idea, she admits that she actually pitched, and this is really interesting. I think a lot of customers don’t realize agencies do this. She pitched three ideas, hoping two of them, Clairol would not take.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

It’s the classic. I’m going to pitch three and hope they take one. And in her book, Does She… Or Doesn’t She? She admits the first tour, what the industry calls knockdowns. Ideas that they don’t want the client to take. This is an industry-wide practice. So customers, when an agency comes to you with a bunch of ideas, why don’t you just say to them, “Look, just show me the one you really believe in, because the other two are probably knockdowns. We don’t do that, by the way. I hate it. The risk is what if the customer picks the one we don’t want?” But anyway…

Dave Young:

Exactly. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

But she wanted to do something bold, and what she realized was… an arresting question is really bold. Does she… or doesn’t she?

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

That was the bold question. Now that headline is kind of naughty, but the picture is very nice. If you remember those Clairol pictures, it is a picture of a mature woman with her daughter. So it’d be a mature woman with her daughter with this headline. Does she… or doesn’t she? Right. So it’s that juxtaposition that made it powerful. It’s the fit, but it doesn’t fit, that made it really powerful. And at first, LIFE magazine would not run the ad because the men thought it was too sexual. But here’s the thing is to women, it wasn’t. And so they did a survey, and what they found was that yes, men saw it as sexual, but women didn’t. For women, they had a very different meaning because of how they saw the picture. The men saw the headline, didn’t see the picture, the women saw the picture of this mature woman with her daughter, and it became intriguing.

It was not expressing desire, but an expression of satisfaction with the result is how women saw it. So based on that, they were then able to get the ad run in LIFE magazine because Ms. Clairol is a mother, not a love interest. Now, here’s the other interesting place where they had pushback because the whole idea in the ’50s, the whole idea in the ’50s of being an unwed mother would be really bad. So people want them to change it to Mrs. Clairol, but they liked the sound of Ms. Clairol. So they stuck with Ms. Clairol. Ms. Clairol is a mother, not a love interest. They used then a wedding ring in the ad to diffuse that pushback. So they made the wedding ring very prominent in the pictures.

Dave Young:

Got you.

Stephen Semple:

So they did all of these things that fit but don’t fit. That created all of this intrigue that you and I know as advertisers, really get people involved in it because the brain is doing all of these flips, trying to figure it out. But here’s also how they became very strategic. Originally, she wanted to do the idea. Does she… or doesn’t she? Only here, mother knows for sure, but what they realized is, because they’re doing this through salons, it was, Does she… Or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Right. So that then tied in the copy into professional and also implies professional endorsement.

Dave Young:

I actually did a Google image search for Does she… or doesn’t she? And I would suggest the listener does that. It shows you all these magazine, these old magazine images from the days of this campaign. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. But it was very carefully crafted copy. Because the other thing, the early copy referred to it as automatic coloring. Now remember, in the ’50s, things being automatic was new and innovative, and desired. Automatic cars were coming out. So it was originally referred to as automatic coloring. Now again, later, they removed that terminology automatic. But when you look at the photos, the headline, the crafting of the copy, it was all very carefully done. In the first six years, sales rose 413%, and this campaign is considered one of the most popular advertisements of all time. Then along comes the 1970s, and they had another breakthrough. They created a home version. Here’s where things get interesting.

Dave Young:

Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.

[Empire Builders Ad]

Dave Young:

Book your starter session on this podcast website. Just visit theempirebuilderspodcast.com and click on “Get Started.” Let’s pick up our story where we left off. And trust me, you haven’t missed a thing.

Stephen Semple:

Going into the salon it took 20 minutes, and women got used to, it’s a 20-minute process, right? In the home instructions, guess how long the instructions were for leaving the product in the hair? Well,

Dave Young:

You hope it’s about 20 minutes.

Stephen Semple:

It was 20 minutes. They kept it at 20 minutes, even though it could be done in two minutes. But you see, they had experienced the problem that happens if somebody doesn’t believe your product will work. Remember, good housekeeping wouldn’t run ads because they didn’t believe the product worked, right? Not that it was a bad product. So their concern was, if we said to people, you could do this in two minutes, they wouldn’t believe it. So they kept it to the 20 minutes. The home product, they said, leave it in for 20 minutes.

Dave Young:

Is that still true today?

Stephen Semple:

That’s a great question. I didn’t look up whether today it’s still a 20-minute process or whether it’s a two-minute process. I don’t know. This was the 1970s, so we’re talking 50 years ago. The chemical composition may have changed, and it may be something that now requires 20 minutes because, if you’re creating something, 20 minutes is not a barrier. So who knows? But what I do know is, when they launched it in 1970, it required two minutes, but they decided to keep the instructions at 20, because of the comfort of this being a 20-minute process leaning into what’s comfortable.

Dave Young:

It’s a lot like the Betty Crocker thing about you let the consumer add the egg in the oil.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

Then they feel like they’re baking a cake, as opposed to just dumping the box in and mixing it with water.

Stephen Semple:

Absolutely. And I really, really commend Clairol for seeing that and recognizing that, and understanding that from their history. There’s a reason why this campaign’s one of the most popular, most successful campaigns of all time is because how carefully it’s crafted. And I think a lot of people don’t realize great campaigns, they aren’t banged out in a minute. There was a lot of thought, headline, photo supporting the headline, the ring on the finger supporting this, keeping to Ms. Clairol because it’s a little bit strange in things like automatic coloring. There was just a lot of very careful and deep thought put into every word of this campaign.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Which is why it was so successful, why it was so deeply, deeply successful. So there was a couple of lessons that came out of this, and one is, be that thoughtful in your advertising. It’s amazing how often it’s like, “Oh, I got this thing coming up. Somebody calls from your… whoever advertiser. Okay, we got to change the ad this week. What do we want to do? And it’s banged out in 10 minutes.” This was not banged out in 10 minutes. The work that we do is not banged out in 10 minutes. It’s amazing how much of a difference that makes. That’s one lesson. But the other one is, it would be easy for them to go, especially in the early days before there was the home coloring thing to go, salons are our customers. So that’s who we need to market to.

How often do we see that target the customer? How often is it target the customer? Well, if you were targeting the customer on this, you would’ve targeted salons. But what they knew is, the target’s not salons. The target is the woman. If she walks into the salon wanting it, guess what the salon’s going to do?

Dave Young:

They’re going to order it.

Stephen Semple:

They’re going to fricking order it.

Dave Young:

This is the same thing Wrigley did, if you go back to… what was that episode one?

Stephen Semple:

It was single digits. Yeah.

Dave Young:

Right.

Stephen Semple:

It was an early one.

Dave Young:

Like you sampling and those kinds of things. But you directly target the consumers even though you can’t buy the product directly from the company. So you trigger the consumer to walk into a store to ask for it.

Stephen Semple:

Yes. Yes. And we’ve seen this over and over again. We’ve seen this over and over again where it’s market to the consumer. And it’s funny, there’s a buzzword today in business, and they seem to think it’s so new. Well, we’re a direct-to-consumer marketing that makes us so unique. It’s like, “Shut the hell up and sit down. It ain’t new.”

Dave Young:

Yeah. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

But at the same time, recognize, targeting is not always what you should be doing. Sometimes the issue is not to target your customer but to target your customer’s influencer.

Dave Young:

Exactly. Indirect targeting.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

I like to call it targeting with message as opposed to targeting with demographics and media. You target by what you say.

Stephen Semple:

Absolutely. And so, to me, it really jumped out. And also, what was also interesting was the backdrop that they were… The other reason why I think this is seen as one of the most popular advertisements of all time is, how often have we seen an ad that has actually been able to adjust the sensibilities of the public? That was a big uphill battle. When you consider that backdrop, that’s really interesting. And then leaning into it with a question like, “Does she… Or doesn’t she?” Right. I mean, it was bold. It was bold. Hats off to them. Actually, it’s funny, I always knew it was a good campaign after researching this. It’s like a fricking great campaign.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Great campaign.

Dave Young:

Yeah. It worked so well and still, right? It established this… I don’t know, tradition, but acceptability of dyeing your hair, right?

Stephen Semple:

Yes, it did.

Dave Young:

Coloring your hair, and maybe I should go get some hair color.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, you’d be great as a redhead there, Dave.

Dave Young:

I was actually thinking of, if I did, it’d probably be some unnatural color. It’d be blue. Like granny blue.

Stephen Semple:

Right. There you go.

Dave Young:

Well, thanks for bringing Ms. Clairol to the podcast, Stephen.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. I knew you would like the story just because the more you look into it, the more you realize just how powerful the messaging was.

Dave Young:

And I think we’re okay just leaving my sisters right where they are.

Stephen Semple:

Conversation to be continued. All right, thanks, David.

Dave Young: Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us. Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and leave us a big, fat, juicy five-star rating and review. And if you have any questions about this or any other podcast episode, email to questions@theempirebuilderspodcast.com.