Vintage Advertisement of the Week – September 5, 2024
Seventeen Magazine – June 1948
Where to begin? This ad has so many highlights, but just as many low.
Can we start with the blatant message of peer pressure to conform and belong? I am sure this message resonated with each of us at some point in our lives. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not suggesting we all abandon good hygiene, and walk around stinking, just to be a nonconformist, but this ad hits a girl straight in the eye. Use Mum and you could be like the smart, fresh girl being escorted into the fun house with not one, but two, clean cut young men. Forgo using Mum or use an inferior product and you will be stuck with a pathetic, partially eaten candied apple on a stick as your partner.
Yet, this illustration is cracker! It’s cute, catchy and carnival. Everyone looks so nicely dressed. Neat as a pin. The girl smiling up at the collegiate something in the tweed sports coat, looking carefree and gay, while the other young gentlemen looks back in his plaid jacket at the girl abandoned at the ticket counter with an amused look on his face. Smiling, all three entering the fun house are nothing but smiles. Could that smile on the plaid jacketed young man be an inviting smile? Use Mum and you could be part of our gang? Or, is it a pitiful joking smile that says, “Girl, get with it – straighten up and fly right. You smell, ya’ dope!” Everyone is so clean, clean, clean! Except for the worrisome looking girl in the hat with the candied apple, of course. Either way, Mum wins.
The tag line at the bottom is too funny. “Be a safety first girl with Mum.” Listen to Mum, she knows what’s good for you. Yes, use Mum so you too can be taken into the dark fun house with two college aged boys, who just want to laugh at the fun house mirrors and do pretend jump scares at the creepy clowns. Sure.
The tone in the ad is all about “clicking” with your peers. You can’t click if you don’t use Mum. A play on the word “clique”, but enough so it gives you pause. I want to be part of the click or clique, whatever they’re talking about, I want in. My inner teenager agrees, my adult self scoffs and says I am just fine with my tried and true Secret anti-perspirant/deodorant, thank you very much.
Nevertheless, I have seen many ads in old magazines for Mum. This particular sales ad says it earned the Guarantee of Good Housekeeping, a warranty seal that still exists today. Not satisfied with a product with the Good Housekeeping seal of approval? No worries, you can get a replacement.1
You can even get extra special advice on how to earn others’ respect and see you in a better light, if you write away to the address in the lower right hand corner of the advertisement. I found an old copy of an advertising pamphlet called, “As Others See You”, put out by Bristol Myers, Co. I’m guessing it’s the precursor to their “Click with the Crowd”. American ad agencies regularly regurgitated material. I will offer up tidbits of their advice throughout the year. Coming soon to a blog near you.
A short history of Mum:
- 1888 – Touted as the first deodorant.
- 1888 – Brand name taken from the nurse who invented it, whose nickname was “Mum”. Competing stories cite it was also named Mum after the saying “Mum’s the word.”2 The truth probably falls under both camps.
- 1888 – Main ingredient was the anti-bacterial powerhouse zinc-oxide.3
- 1942-1957 – Deodorants and anti-perspirants become big business. The market explodes as companies capitalize on America’s body odor obsession. Options flood the shelves. Antiperspirants and deodorants see a 600 time increase in sales to a whopping $70 million dollar market.4 That’s $70 billion dollars in 2024 conversion.
- 1952 – The deodorant wars continue as Mum and Ban both claim to have invented the roll-on deodorant applicator.5 Both are correct, as both Mum and Band were subsidiaries of Bristol Myers, Co.
- 2004 – Doetsch Gerther AG takes over Mum.6
Love this ad from the 1960s. Source unknown.
Just sampling of the products Mum carried over the years:
- Deodorant Creams in Milk Glass Jars
- Powder Talcs
- Roll-ons
- Sprays
- Perfumed Stick Deodorants
- Sheer Mum
- Rollette Deodorant
Mum really is the word.
- “How the GH Limited Warranty Seal Protects You.” Good Housekeeping, 8 Sept. 2022, http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/institute/about-the-institute/a22148/about-good-housekeeping-seal/. ↩︎
- Hill. “What Did We Do before Deodorant?” Truefitt & Hill US, 2021, http://www.truefittandhill.com/blogs/journal/what-did-we-do-before-deodorant#:~:text=The%20first%20commercial%20deodorant%20was. Accessed 4 Sept. 2024.
↩︎ - lumedeodorant.com/blog/brief-history-deodorants.
↩︎ - “Petroleum Product of the Week: Deodorant.” Petroleum Service Company, 2024, petroleumservicecompany.com/blog/petroleum-product-of-the-week-deodorant/?srsltid=AfmBOopriyXC6yIzMnQEzgdZD73ZdPqCmg0oQYMyCpmOhXi7MCItg6Wc. Accessed 4 Sept. 2024.
↩︎ - “Story.” Fit GmbH, 2017, http://www.mum-deo.ch/en/story/. Accessed 4 Sept. 2024.
↩︎ - “Story.” Fit GmbH, 2017, http://www.mum-deo.ch/en/story/. Accessed 4 Sept. 2024. ↩︎
Tidbits and Timemachines 