—“The Big Invisible Sell” by Martin Mayer, from the March 13, 1965, issue of The Saturday Evening Post
In 1957, Shirley Polykoff was an ad writer trying to make Miss Clairol hair color more appealing to women. At the time, only one woman in 15 colored her hair; the rest mostly held traditional beliefs that hair dye was only used by fast women in big cities. Miss Polykoff came up with a headline that told women they could dye their hair and keep it a secret: “Does she … or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure!”
The ad was sent over to Time Inc. [to be placed in Life magazine]. It promptly came back: This was a dirty ad, the message said, and Life wouldn’t touch it.
Miss Polykoff herself went over to argue with the gentlemen on Life’s executive committee. “I was brought up that a nice girl never lets on that she gets a double meaning,” Miss Polykoff told them. “Anyway, that’s not a girl’s line, it’s a man’s line. It isn’t the ad that’s dirty, it’s you. You take this proof to your secretaries, and if one of them tells you the ad is dirty, we’ll withdraw it.” More than 50 Life secretaries examined the ad; and when asked if it was about anything but hair coloring, they all said, “no.” The executive committee apologized, and the ad ran.
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Comments
Miss Polykoff came up with one of the most memorable ad taglines of all time, and I think she knew it from the get go. I’m not surprised the ad executives at LIFE tried to shut her down on it because (let’s be honest) she was a woman. If one of their ad guys had thought of it, they would have approved it.
Obviously it was only about hair coloring. Shirley should have submitted it to The Saturday Evening Post first instead. I wonder what they would have said. I clicked on the link here to read the ’65 feature and got ‘access denied’.