Fairy Liquid: Bonus Offer

1966
Silent
1m

A commercial for Fairy Liquid that promotes both a special offer and an alternative use for it.

In terms of visual treatment, this could hardly be more spartan: a woman informs us in impeccably enunciated RP that, presumably for a limited time, Fairy Liquid is coming with a free five ounces (about 25% extra, it would seem), and that purchasers should wash the usual amount of dishes, leaving the bonus detergent for experiments with washing delicate woollens. This is an unusually transparent attempt at increasing sales by suggesting a broader range of potential uses for a familiar product.

Although the product is now so ubiquitous that 'Fairy Liquid' is shorthand for 'detergent' in the same way that 'Hoover' has become a verb, Procter & Gamble only introduced it in 1960, just six years earlier. The aim was to wean consumers off powder-based detergents in favour of something more convenient, and its success was immediate and huge: jingles about 'mild green Fairy Liquid' quickly became common currency. Besides washing woollens, another spin-off benefit was that the empty squeeze bottles could be repurposed into everything from makeshift vases to children's space rockets.

What Women Want?

Caring mums, hard-working housewives or independent, fun-loving 'new women' - the female consumer has long been a target of screen advertising.

In the cause of selling anything from baked beans to washing powders to all manner of labour-saving devices, advertisers have promised to make women's lives easier and to help them build happy homes and successful relationships.

There's no getting past the fact that women have all-too often been patronised and objectified by a male-dominated advertising industry. But screen advertising also tells (and sells) a more positive story of social progress for women, with increasing social and economic independence. This collection tracks the ups and downs of female empowerment in the 20th century, with its false steps as revealing as its forward ones.