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Clairol is a personal care products division of Procter & Gamble. The Clairol company was started in 1931 by an entrepreneurial chemist and his fashionable wife who named their enterprise after a hair-coloring preparation they found while traveling in Europe. In the 1950s, after two decades of selling the company’s hair tint to beauty salons, Clairol became a household name when it launched the first one-step home hair color formula, Miss Clairol Hair Color Bath, which debuted with the now-famous catchphrase, “Does she…or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure.” Within six years of Miss Clairol’s launch, 70% of women were coloring their hair.
With a shampoo-in hair color and a memorable catchphrase, Clairol captured the feminist sensibilities of the day, wrote Malcom Gladwell, author of social-psychology bestsellers The Tipping Point and Blink, in “True Colors,” a 1999 New Yorker article about the hidden history of hair dye. He posited: “In writing the history of women in the postwar era, did we forget something important? Did we leave out hair?”
Today Clairol makes hair coloring, hair spray, shampoo, hair conditioner and styling consumables and publishes a free beauty magazine called Color Source. Among its brands are Balsam Color, Herbal Essences, Hydrience, Loving Care, Natural Instincts, Nice ’n Easy and Ultress. (See the “Clairol Products” section below for a complete list.)
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Clairol’s Industry Makeover
In 1959 the single-step Miss Clairol Hair Color Bath was introduced to the U.S. beauty industry. When Clairol sales representatives gave a live demonstration of Miss Clairol at the International Beauty Show in New York City, thousands of hairdressers and beauticians gathered to watch. Bruce Gelb, son of Lawrence and Joan and a former Clairol executive, described the scene in a 1999 New Yorker article: “They were astonished. This was to the world of hair color what computers were to the world of adding machines. The sales guys had to bring buckets of water and do the rinsing off in front of everyone, because the hairdressers in the crowd were convinced we were doing something to the models behind the scenes.”
In 1956 Clairol launched an at-home version of Miss Clairol hair color, promoted by one of the most effective advertising campaigns of the time, "Does she…or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure."
In 1957 the Gelbs sold their company to Bristol-Myers Squibb. Sons Bruce and Richard L. Gelb filled executive positions at that pharmaceutical company; Richard was chief executive officer from 1972 to 1993. In 2001 Procter & Gamble purchased the Clairol division from Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Clairol’s Colorful Advertising History
Clairol’s one-step home hair color was a breakthrough for the beauty industry, and just as novel was the advertising campaign that introduced Clairol to consumers.
Clairol hired the advertising firm Foote, Cone & Belding, which assigned the account to a junior copywriter, Shirley Polykoff, who was also the sole female copywriter at the firm. It was her future mother-in-law who inspired the now-famous “Does she…or doesn’t she?” catchphrase. After meeting Polykoff for the first time, she took her son aside and grilled him about the true hue of his girlfriend’s tresses. “Does she color her hair? Or doesn’t she?” the humiliated Polykoff could imagine her mother-in-law-to-be asking.
In fact, Polykoff did, though the practice was not something to which women openly admitted during the Depression, when her future mother-in-law first posed the question. Even by 1956, when Polykoff was assigned the Clairol campaign, hair dye was still considered something only tawdry women used.
To counter the stigma of hair color and create a wholesome image for Clairol, early print ads — some of which were shot by fashion photographers Richard Avedon and Irving Penn — featured girl-next-door-ish models accompanied by children sporting locks of the same shade. The idea was to skew toward the sentimental, not the tawdry.
“Does she…or doesn’t she?” became one of the most effective campaigns of the time: Within six years, 70% of all adult women were coloring their hair, and Clairol’s sales increased 413%. In 1967 Polykoff was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame.
More Iconic Catchphrases
Clairol continued to market its hair color products with clever catchphrases. In the 1960s ads for Lady Clairol boldly asked, “Is it true blondes have more fun?” and those for Loving Care, “What would your husband do if suddenly you looked ten years younger?”
When the company introduced Nice ’n Easy, the first at-home shampoo-in hair color, women were told, “The closer he gets, the better you look.”
Other Clairol catchphrases include “Some lucky girls are born red. Others catch up.” (Radiantly Red), and “If I’ve only one life to live, let me live it as a blonde.”
Clairol’s “Does she…or doesn’t she?” legacy continues today: Recently it was one of the big brand campaigns featured in 2008 at “The Real Men and Women of Madison Avenue and Their Impact on American Culture” exhibit at the New York Public Library’s Science, Industry and Business Library.
Corporate History
- 1931: Lawrence M. Gelb and wife, Joan, discover Clairol, a hair-coloring preparation, while traveling in France. They co-found the Clairol company and import the product to U.S. salons.
- 1950: Miss Clairol Hair Color Bath launched. This is the first one-step hair color product for professional (salon) use.
- 1956: Miss Clairol Hair Color Bath — the first at-home permanent hair color — debuts.
- 1959: Pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb purchases Clairol from the Gelbs. Sons Richard L. Gelb and Bruce Gelb fill executive positions at the company.
- 1965: Clairol launches Nice 'n Easy — the first shampoo-in hair color — with the catchphrase, “The closer he gets, the better you look.”
- 1967: Richard Gelb becomes president of Bristol-Myers Squibb.
- 1972–1993: Richard Gelb serves as CEO of Bristol-Myers Squibb.
- 2001: Procter & Gamble purchases Clairol division from Bristol-Myers Squibb.
- 2003: Procter & Gamble acquires Wella for its P&G Professional Care division continuing its expansion into the professional sector of the hair care products business.
- 2007: P&G Beauty announces it will close its Stamford, Conn. site. Plant operations, in Stamford’s Cove neighborhood, will be split between locations in Massachusetts and Mexico by 2010, with administration in Cincinnati.
Clairol Products
The Clairol hair-coloring line includes permanent hair color, semi-permanent hair color, demi-permanent hair color, highlighting and blonding products. Brands under the Clairol label are:
- Balsam
- Herbal Essences
- Hydrience
- Natural Instincts
- Nice ’n Easy
- Shine Happy
- Textures & Tones
External links
- Clairol web site
- [1] article from The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell on hair coloring advertising
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- This page was last modified on 6 October 2008, at 13:48.
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