9 TO DYE FOR
(This story is adapted from Dave Trott’s blog)

Shirley Polykoff was a copywriter in the era now made famous by the TV series Mad Men.

One of her early accounts was Clairol, a brand that at the time faced a number of challenges. Perhaps its biggest issue was that, having your hair dyed blonde in the 1950s marked you out as a good-time girl. It suggested that you slept around.

This made Shirley Polykoff angry. She felt a woman should be entitled to do whatever she wanted with her body.

Out of that anger arose the now famous Clairol ad campaign. Shirley’s aim was to turn around the image of blondes. She proposed using Doris Day, “girl-next-door” blondes in the advertising, alongside the headline, “Does she, or doesn’t she?”. The sub-head would read: “Colour so natural only her hairdresser knows for sure”.

As Dave Trott, no mean (m)adman himself, said: “The brilliance was using that headline against those models – with a picture of a fresh, wholesome blonde, the answer wasn’t so obvious.” The girls looked too innocent to be sleeping around.

It was a very difficult campaign to sell and even harder for the client to buy. Many at the agency tried to kill it, and the clients weren’t sure it was the right image for Clairol.

So while everyone finally agreed to run the campaign, they were equally ready to pull it at the first sign of trouble. All of that changed when letters started coming into Clairol.

One particular letter stood out. It said:

“Thank you for changing my life. My boyfriend Harold and I were keeping company for five years but he never wanted to set a date. This made me very nervous. I am 28 and my mother kept saying soon it would be too late for me. Then, I saw a Clairol ad in the subway. I decided to take a chance and dyed my hair blonde, and that is how I am in Bermuda now on my honeymoon with Harold.”

Everyone loved that letter. It was circulated around the entire company and used as the theme for a national sales meeting. The doubts about the campaign disappeared.

Over the next decade, the percentage of women colouring their hair rose from 7% to 40% and the image of blondes moved from being brassy to being fresh, confident and fun. The market grew from $25 million a year to $200 million, and Clairol took half of it.

But what made Shirley Polykoff a real genius in Dave Trott’s eyes wasn’t having the idea for the campaign but something that came to light many years later. At the leaving party for her retirement in 1973, a number of speeches talked about how her campaign had helped pave the way for women’s equality and feminism. Shirley Polykoff stood up, thanked everyone and asked if they remembered the particular letter that had given everyone the courage to get behind the campaign. Of course everyone smiled and nodded.

Shirley Polykoff said: “Actually, I wrote that letter.”

And the moral is that sometimes, creating a truly powerful brand or campaign means changing the way people think. Should your brand challenge a convention?