Thanks to the inventiveness of the Scott brothers, it became possible to produce absorbent paper for use in the kitchen. In the United States of the Roaring ‘20s, product communication was extremely referential and presented the product, its characteristics with little more than a hint of creativity in the copy.
Half-way through the ‘30s, the messages became increasingly elaborate and presented not only the product in use, but also the satisfaction of those who used it. Note the marketing-oriented advertising featuring a coupon to buy the product at a discount.
Even more sophisticated were the messages of the 1950s, in the case of Charmin showing a housewife who clearly keeps an impeccable home. In this case, too, the visual was divided into two sections: the top part more suggestive, lower down, more illustrative. The woman, far from working outside the home, was the queen of the house: a happy, contented queen because she keeps her kingdom clean.
With the advent of the Sixties came a new player in the game of influencing market choices – the child – as illustrated by Northern Towels’ campaign of the time. Children, too, participated in the moment of purchase, helping parents make choices and in some cases determining their preferences. The message focused on the modernity of the product by connecting the paper with the consumer through an hypothetical connection of hands between the illustrated child and real mother, with the point of contact being the absorbent paper.