Character Analysis: Helen Lansdowne Resor PDF

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Character Analysis essay examining important PR figure in history....

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9/14/2020 Character Analysis

Ad Legend: Helen Lansdowne Resor In a time when females were disregarded by many as potential leaders in the business world, Helen Lansdowne Resor challenged these standards and became one of the most influential copywriters of the century. Hired in 1908 at J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, Ms. Resor worked as their first female copywriter. In her forty years at the company, she developed many creative campaign solutions for brands like Woodbury’s facial soap and Pond’s cold cream. Her powerful creative force in advertising along with her passion for women’s rights make Helen Lansdowne Resor an advertising legend within the industry. Ms. Lansdowne was born on February 20, 1886 in Grayson, Kentucky. At age four, her mother divorced her father, relocating Lansdowne and along with her eight siblings to Covington, Kentucky (McDonough). The single mother struggled to make ends meet for her family. She worked tirelessly as a librarian and sold insurance and real estate on the side for extra income. Lansdowne, being the second eldest child, felt pressure to raise her younger siblings and support the family as well. Despite this, she worked hard in school and graduated as the valedictorian of her class in 1903. Helen often reflected that her mother was the one that instilled feminist ideals of strength, hard work, and self-sufficiency. Her mother’s influence shines through in her successes at J. Walter Thompson, along with her support of women’s rights. Her mother’s ideals also display themselves in Lansdowne’s copywriting, which heavily focused on self-improvement and aspiring upwards in society. After high school, she followed her mother’s footsteps and immediately entered the workforce. She was hired by the World Manufacturing Company, a local business that sold toilet preparations by mail.

Succeeding this job, she became a bill auditor for Procter & Collier, hired by her future husband, Stanley Resor. Procter & Collier was a prominent Cincinnati advertising agency that handled the Proctor & Gamble account. She only stayed in the position for a year, before moving onto writing advertisements in the Commercial Tribune Newspaper and copywriting for the Street Railways Advertising Company. In 1907, she was offered a job back at Protect & Collier, but this time as a copywriter. While at the agency, she created copy for Brenlin window shades and Higgin metal screens (Applegate). Stanley Resor left Proctor & Collier in 1908 to open a new Cincinnati office for J. Walter Thompson and hired Ms. Lansdowne. She was the agency’s first female copywriter. Her potential was soon realized by leadership and in January 1911, she was offered a higher position at the New York branch office. During this time, she focused most of her efforts on Crisco vegetable shortening owned by P&G. Helen Lansdowne was in constant communication with P&G and became the first women to attend their board of directors’ meetings to explain the advertisements (Applegate). Five years later, an organization led by Stanley Resor bought J. Walter Thompson and appointed him as president. Soon after, Ms. Lansdowne and Mr. Resor’s relationship grew from a work connection into marriage. The married couple began shrinking the client list down from three hundred to less than eighty, allowing the agency to focus on larger national clients. In their daily work at the agency, Stanley Resor focused on administrative leadership, while she handled the creative side preparing advertisements. Despite her roles, she never became a vice president and avoided her own publicity. Helen Lansdowne Resor’s importance to JWT and the advertising industry as a whole can be seen simply glancing at her impressive campaign work. She brought an entirely new

approach to advertising. Instead of simply describing the product’s attributes without embellishment, she took a psychological approach. She was able to connect the products to ideas of romance, status and beauty. Further, she disregarded the current Victorian views of femininity centered around being a housewife. In her work with Pond’s cold cream, the advertisements depicted an active woman that had many other interests than simply being a house wife (4A Foundation). The ads showed women golfing, riding bikes, playing tennis, and attending parties. Ms. Resor also employed endorsements to appeal to women. She used high socialites and European royalty. Figures such as Alva Belmont, Duchess de Richelieu, and Reginald Vanderbilt appeared in Pond’s advertisements. These endorsements were needed for the company who was struggling to compete with high end brands like Elizabeth Arden. By using high class socialites, viewers created the connection that the product was high-end quality. This association worked. In the ads printed in the Ladies’ Home Journal, they each pulled in between ten to twenty thousand coupon replies (Applegate). Yet, even with these innovations, Ms. Resor was forced to uphold the beauty standards of the time. There was little diversity in her representation of women. Ms. Resor most well-known work was with Woodbury soap owned by the Andrew Jergens Company in 1910. The soap was falling behind the leading facial soaps and consistently struggled with sales. Owners realized the brand needed a dramatic change. Before Ms. Resor stepped in, the brand marketed the medicinal credibility that came with the inventor of the soap, Dermatologist John Woodbury. His face was pictured on the soap’s wrapper and nearly all of its advertisements. The medicine claimed to rid the skin of blemishes and disease. Helen Resor took time to analyze the brand for six months before developing a new direction for the brand (Thompson). Helen took the focus away from these unpleasant

skin ailments, and identified the product with beauty and desire. In her first ads, she aimed to educate women how to properly wash. The copy within these ads stated that unsightly nose pores could be reduced with regular use of Woodbury soap. While still not the most appealing, women appreciated the focus on their needs rather than the attributes of the product. The biggest breakthrough for Woodbury’s Facial Soap occurred with the slogan, “A Skin You Love to Touch.” The headline was placed on a romantic painting done by Alonzo Kimball. It depicted a beautiful young woman embraced by a man while she coyly looks away. Below it was a copy explaining the product, and an offer for a reproduction of the painting with a week’s supply of soap (Burns). The ad also cleverly suggested readers tear out a bar of soap located in the corner of the ad to remind themselves to purchase it the next time they were at the store. After witnessing the initial success, the ads became a series with similar romantic illustrations. Sales began to skyrocket over the next eight years with Helen’s work. While perhaps not the first use of sex appeal, it was one of the first sexual appeals directed toward women (Burns). To a modern viewer, this ad doesn’t appear overly sexy. Advertisements today frequently use sexual appeals, causing us to be highly desensitized to it. However, when the ad was first run, it was regarded as scandalous. It was extremely bold to insinuate that a man touching a woman's skin to be desirable for her. The ad encouraged the woman to desire and want to be desired by men. Ms. Resor wasn’t limited to household brands in her work. She also made important contributions in both World Wars. In WWI, she created advertisements for YMCA and the Red Cross. In World War II, she was able to play an even more critical role. During this war, the United States wanted to change the traditional view of women as mothers and housewives.

Factories were struggling to find enough employees for war production with so many men serving in the military. The War Manpower Commission, a government agency, reached out to JWT in hopes of a campaign that could encourage three million women enter into factory jobs and other related positions by the end of 1943 (Sayre). She, alongside her creative department, worked to create a campaign that would boost morale and inspire women to join the workforce. It was released in April 1943 with the headline, “Women must work to win this war.” They released various posters, newspapers, speeches, and radio spots with this message. The ads featured images of beautiful, young women happily doing factory work, often accompanied with patriotic colors (Sayre). Helen Lansdowne Resor was also able to recognize the importance of women in her own workplace. J. Walter Thompson was known for encouraging women leadership, with Ms. Resor paving the way for them. This was rather progressive, considering women typically upheld clerical and secretary roles in offices. To encourage women to share their ideas more freely, she started a women’s editorial department that was “separate but equal” to the men’s (McDonough). She publicly supported President Wilson’s backing of women’s suffrage in 1916 by organizing a group of female employees to march in a suffragette parade. In fact, many of the women she hired at JWT were suffragettes or advocates for women’s reform. She also had a heart for women outside the company, supporting Planned Parenthood and Travelers Aid Society, a women’s homeless shelter (McDonough). Her legacy of female empowerment lives on with a scholarship created in her honor at JWT. Each year, five females with outstanding creative talent receive a stipend, mentor, and internship opportunity within the company (4A Foundation).

Helen Lansdowne Resor remained an integral part of the agency until September 1958, when she suffered a head injury at the office. After her injury, she continued to work on a parttime basis until her husband, Stanley Resor’s retirement in 1961. Three years later, she passed away at the age of 77. The Advertising Hall of Fame posthumously inducted her alongside her husband in 1967. This honor was well deserved. She opened up endless opportunities for women in the advertising world, especially in JWT. In her forty years at the agency, she made vital contributions on important clients like Woodbury, Pond’s, and War Manpower Commission. She brought innovation to the field with sexual appeals, endorsements, editoriallike copy, and high-quality visuals. Contributions made by ad legend, Helen Lansdowne Resor, were no small feat and will be studied and revered for many years to come.

Works Consulted: Applegate, Edd. “The Rise of Advertising in the United States: A History of Innovation to 1960.” Google Books, Scarecrow Press, 17 Aug. 2012, books.google.com/books? id=l6of8Ise6dwC.

Burn, David. “Helen Lansdowne Resor, Ad Legend.” Adpulp, 9 July 2020, www.adpulp.com/helen-lansdowne-resor-ad-legend/.

“Helen Lansdowne Resor Scholarship.” 4A's Foundation, 2019, foundation.aaaa.org/helenlansdowne-resor-scholarship.html.

“Helen Lansdowne Resor.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 3 June 2020, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Lansdowne_Resor.

McDonough, John. “The Advertising Age Encyclopedia of Advertising.” Google Books, Routledge, 18 June 2015, books.google.com/books?id=HZLtCQAAQBAJ.

Sayre, Becca. “Women Must Work to Win This War.” United We Will Win, The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula, 2011, www.fortmissoulamuseum.org/WWII/detail.php?id=14.

Thompson, Lorraine. “Legendary Women Copywriters.” MarketCopywriter Blog, 2012, marketcopywriterblog.com/legendary-women-copywriters-what-you-can-learn-fromhelen-lansdowne-resor/....