A skin you love to touch

These are samples from Woodbury Soap Company “A skin you love to touch” advertising campaign. These ads were designed by Helen Lansdowne Resor. Resor was originally a copywriter which is a skill set lends itself well to the extremely text heavy style of advertisements that were popular at the time. She was an innovator in the advertising space in the early 1900s as she is credited as the first to employ sex appeal and sensuality into advertising. This of course was controversial but marked a shift in advertising language to focus more on what the product would do for the consumer and less on the credibility of the manufacturer. Both this messaging style and the use of sexuality to sell a product became commonplace by the 1920s when first wave feminism was finding its peak.