Exploring the History of Subliminal Racism in Ivory Soap Commercials

Abstract

I got the idea for the paper after exploring the archives for a previous research paper and finding a children’s magazine from 1926. I discovered that P&G would buy a page every month in the magazine to create an ongoing storyline for young children to follow and to advertise Ivory Soap. The story was called “The Ivory Heroes” which featured a group of mythical creatures and young white children who traveled around the world cleaning places with Ivory soap. The issue I discovered featured the Ivory Heroes going to Africa and cleaning an African village.

After doing a in-depth study of the ad’s explicit racism and how the company got to that point, I became curious about how the company continued their history of explicit and subliminal racism in their advertisements. I wanted to write this paper because after my semester of research into the history of soap advertising while I was hearing about racism scandals happening at Dove, I felt that more attention needed to be drawn to the advertising world and how it continues to affect us daily.