See more Kotex items: First ad
(1921; scroll to bottom of page) - ad, 1928 (Sears
and Roebuck catalog) - Lee Miller ads (first
real person in a menstrual hygiene ad, 1928) - Marjorie
May's Twelfth Birthday (booklet for girls, 1928, Australian edition;
there are many links here to Kotex items) - Preparing
for Womanhood (1920s, booklet for girls; Australian edition) - 1920s
booklet in Spanish showing disposal method
- box from about 1969 -
"Are you in the know?" ads
(Kotex) (1949)(1953)(1964)(booklet, 1956) -
See more ads on the Ads for Teenagers main page
 
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Advice to Merchants about Selling
Kotex (page for a trade
publication, 1920s, U.S.A.)
Early on, in 1921, women
were reluctant to buy the new product Kotex because it meant asking a clerk
for a box (even though the company supposedly
invented the word "Kotex" so women wouldn't have to say "sanitary
napkin"). Adman Albert Lasker, who worked on the Kotex campaign in
the early 1920s, wrote in Advertising Age (15 December 1952), "Just a few of us talked to our wives and asked them if
they used Kotex, and we found they didn't, and in almost every case it was
because they didn't like to ask the druggist for it."
The page below (from the State Historical Society
of Wisconsin), made by the Kotex producers for a trade magazine, told stores
how to sell the embarrassing product: stack
the boxes on the counter rather than making the lady ask for one. Apparently Albert Lasker, the "Father of American Advertising," of the
Lord & Thomas agency, added the idea of placing a coin
box next to the stack of boxes, completely
eliminating the need for a woman to speak to anyone. People seemed to be
more trustworthy then. I wonder when that stopped?
(Isn't that a neat hat and cape the woman at left
is wearing? Women dressed up to go shopping at least through the 1950s in
Washington, D.C.)
Wallace Meyer, in a statement dated
21 September 1960 in his papers at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin,
disputes Lasker's claim in an Advertising
Age article, dated 15 December 1952, to have invented
the idea of stacking the boxes on the counter. He writes,
In making this claim for Lord & Thomas [Lasker's advertising agency]
someone made a mistake[,] for the original agency, The Charles F. W. Nichols
Company [Meter's company], discovered and and promoted the the wrapped
package idea before Mr. Lasker became interested [in Kotex]. The idea was
first reported by a copywriter, O. T. Frash, while in Watertown, Wisconsin,
on a field trip. He saw it in an Apothecary Shop
owned by a German-American druggist who found that women would buy many
more packages if they were wrapped in plain white paper and tied with blue
string, then piled on the counter in a pyramid surmounted by a small neat
card reading, "Kotex - Take a box - 65 cents."
By the way, some early Modess ads had coupons women could cut out and
hand to clerks ("Silent Purchase" coupons)
so they wouldn't have to ask for the pads; apparently stores were not piling
them on the counter.
And in Germany, stores selling Camelia,
the second German disposable pad, invented in 1926, put a note in each box
of the pads; a woman gave the note back to the clerk when she needed more
pads. The notes asked the clerk for another box of Camelia. And signs in
the stores told women to ask a female clerk
when buying Camelia.
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From the State Historical Society of Wisconsin
See more Kotex items: First ad (1921;
scroll to bottom of page) - ad, 1928 (Sears and
Roebuck catalog) -
Lee Miller ads (first real person in a menstrual
hygiene ad, 1928)
© 1999 Harry Finley. It is illegal to reproduce
or distribute work on this Web site in any manner or
medium without written permission of the author. Please report suspected
violations to hfinley@mum.org
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