"Darling, I'm having the most extraordinary experience."
An excerpt about this ad from the book, The King of Madison Avenue: "This product is unique, the client told him. It is not soap. It is a detergent. It is the...View More
first “beauty bar” that is neutral—neither acid nor alkaline; that is big news. That is how I want you to advertise it. That evening Ogilvy had some housewives interviewed and exposed the “neutral” promise to them. It left them cold, as he had expected. He informed the client of the results and asked to see the product’s formula. One of the chemists began a long dissertation on the properties of the ingredients, which included stearic acid, the chief ingredient in cold cream. So was born Ogilvy’s biggest sales idea:
DOVE IS ONE-QUARTER CLEANSING CREAM—IT CREAMS YOUR SKIN WHILE YOU WASH.
The first magazine ad was hardly sophisticated—a woman in a bathtub talking on the telephone, using an embarrassing pun to deliver her message: “Darling, I’m having the most extraordinary experience. . . . I’m head over heels in Dove.” But the basic idea of one-quarter cleansing cream resulting in softer, less dry skin than washing with soap was insightful and effective beyond anyone’s imagination. Side-by-side face tests demonstrated the difference in magazines. On television, cleansing cream was poured into a plastic Dove-shaped mold. Over the years, the campaign helped grow Dove into the number-one cleansing brand in the world.
When Lever bought time on the most popular TV show of the day, Have Gun, Will Travel and the program was recommended (appropriately) for Dove, Ogilvy rejected it out of hand. “You can’t sell Dove on horseback.”
A final note: in the book, Ogilvy on Advertising, Ogilvy mentions why he used the word "Darling" - “A psychologist flashed hundreds of words on a screen and used an electric gadget to measure emotional reactions. High marks went to darling. So I used it in a headline for Dove."
