How Sunlight was promoted in the early days

By D.C. Ranatunga

Many years ago, there were a few brand names which the consumers used as generic names. ‘Singer’ was used as a common name for sewing machines. ‘Raleigh’ was the name used for bicycles. The best example was possibly ‘Sunlight,’ which meant soap to many.  

A recent Unilever news item mentioned that Sunlight is to celebrate its 125th anniversary. This means Sunlight has been in existence from 1886.I was quickly reminded of a copy of a Unilever International – the company’s quarterly journal which carried an attractive cover picture of a Sunlight show-card that had been issued in the pioneering days.

The July 1967 issue was in my collection. I had got it when I was at Lever Brothers (as Unilever was then known) in 1969 as Promotions Manager in the Marketing Division.

The journal carried a feature titled ‘It pays to advertise’ on how soaps were made known to consumers. Among the pioneers in the field of advertising and promotions was Thomas J. Barrat who took charge of the soap-making firm, A&F Pears, the makers of the famous transparent soap, in 1875.

Among his many innovations were posters, railway and newspaper advertisements, gift offers, and publications (these included works of Charles Dickens printed and distributed by Pears, each copy carrying illustrations of Pears’ products). He turned street hoardings into the poor man’s art gallery.

The journal carries a fascinating story of how Sunlight was promoted in the early days.

It was 1891. The place: Port Elizabeth, South Africa. A person named Carrol had been sent to the Cape Colony by William Hasketh Lever, founder of Lever Brothers to spread news of Sunlight soap, the cornerstone of the factory he had set up at Port Sunlight.

Big ideas

Carrol’s brief was to advertise the new soap, appoint agents wherever possible and distribute samples and literature. He was not a conventional salesman but he had big ideas.

He had first gone to Cape Town and had astonished the City Fathers by seeking permission to have the words ‘Sunlight Soap’ written on the slopes of Table Mountain in letters so large that they would be seen by everyone in the city. His argument that “the sign will become as big a curiosity as the mountain itself” failed to impress the Cape Town Council, but earned Carrol a lot of useful publicity for Sunlight soap.

Travelling to Port Elizabeth, the resourceful Carrol conceived the idea of using the pavements of the city as his hoarding. Everyone walked the main street; everyone would see his message. He decided this time to act first and ask afterwards.

Within two days of his arrival, Port Elizabeth woke up to find the words ‘Sunlight Soap’ painted at intervals on the pavements on both sides of the city’s leading thoroughfare. Within a couple of hours the neatly stencilled brand name was the talk of the town.

A lesser man might have slipped away to avoid the storm. Not Carrol. Impeccably attired in the fashion of the time – tight trousers, shaped coat, high collar and grey topper – he confronted the angry mayor, saying “I cannot find that I have done anything against the town’s regulations. But if am wrong, I will pay the piper.”

The Mayor, a realist, was more concerned with removing the offending words than legal argument.  Carrol had the complete answer: “Mr. Mayor, buy a complete case of Sunlight Soap and set your men to work to scrub off the signs.”

The Mayor saw the humour of this new situation. The breach was healed. And the signs were removed – by the soap they advertised.

At railway stations

Metal plates at railway stations were another form of early advertising. Lever himself negotiated the deal in the mid 1880s. “I approached the London and North-Western and the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway companies in great fear and trembling, and made a contract for exhibiting plates at their stations – a £ 25 per annum contract with each. So I committed myself to £ 50 worth of advertising in addition to the cost of plates… I was quite an amateur in advertising,” he was quoted as saying.

Lever then helped to choose the positions for the metal plates and the advantages of the right-hand or the left-hand side of the booking office were matters that “received his personal and weighty consideration”.

The early advertisements directed to the housewife claimed that Sunlight soap, sold at 3d. per tablet ‘has the largest sale of any soap in the world’.

Spreading the message

Here is a classic wall advertisement portraying a consumer reading it. The slogan ‘Why does a woman look old sooner than a man?’ bought by Lever from a Philadelphia soap maker in 1888 is cleverly brought into the copy which read:

Why does a woman’s health so often break down at an early age? Put a man at a washing tub, let him get heated with the hot suds until every pore is open, then let him stand over the filthy steam that comes from scalding and boiling cloths and his health would certainly break down before long and yet this terrible ordeal is exactly what a woman has to go through on washing days, and, besides, while over-heated at the hot work, she has to risk her life by going out in the open air to hang up clothes.

These facts, which are known to every housekeeper, readily explain why so many women look old while yet young in years, and physicians and boards of health cannot draw attention to strong or to the injurious effects of the usual way of washing, with its necessary steam and scalding or boiling to get the clothes pure and sweet. Fortunately, this trouble can be avoided. Scalding, boiling and steam done away with, clothes made sweet and beautifully white, and much sooner than by the old way by using the Sunlight Soap – a soap so purifying and cleansing that the dirtiest clothing can be washed in lukewarm water with very little scrubbing and clothes, bedding and linen cleansed without either scalding or boiling while the work is so light that a girl of 12 or 13 can do a large wash without being tired , now that there is a remedy for the great “washing day” evil.

So economical in its use as to be within the reach of all there is not a woman or a man who is not directly interested in having introduced into their homes that wonderful way of washing clothes, which, when preferably that does away with the hard work, offensive smell and fearful steam on washing that makes the white pieces whiter, coloured pieces brighter and flannels softer that can be made at washing the old way and also leaves every article as clean and sweet and as pure as if never worn.