J. Walter Thompson’s International Advertisements

Abstract

What are those basic qualities of femininity and the universal desire for beauty of which Peniche speaks? To answer that question, one just has to look at and read the many successful ad campaigns created by Helen Lansdowne and her team of copywriters. Whether women accept those qualities of femininity or not, women do know what those qualities are. “Feminine qualities” are, after all, just another way to describe ideal beauty, the “common denominator” in “advertising and sales.” The advertising strategies developed by Lansdowne and her team, such as the “modern” testimonial ad, and its appeal to class mobility, fashion, and taste, were also used to reach international markets. These strategies were based on a “universal appeal to beauty” that had already saturated U.S. media. The universal appeal in the United States perpetuated a denial of differences among consumers and a focus on middle-class, white women. J. Walter Thompson’s (JWT) approach was that all women are fundamentally the same in their desire for beauty, and this concept spread to their international advertising campaigns.

The problems of advertising Pond’s products overseas are multifold and must always be considered on an individual market basis. There are variations in climate, differences in women’s makeup habits, varied preferences for color and fragrances, uniqueness in skin problems, and oftimes [sic] a greater resistance to change. However, there still remains the universal appeal to beauty, those qualities of femininity which provide the basic common denominator for our advertising and sales.

—William M. Peniche, “Beauty From Bangor to Bangkok: A Brief Review of Chesebrough-Pond’s World-Wide Advertising,” a presentation before an International Seminar, April 18, 1961, Sam Meek Papers, JWT Archives