The ad that transformed a company

Colmer Whalebone to See Through

In the fifties, as television became universally available, the corsetry industry began to realise the power of mass marketing, and to put it to good use. Two events from this period demonstrated the power of mass advertising. The first was the phenomenally successful 'Little X' campaign, launched in 1955, and the other was the National Corset Week, introduced in 1952.

 

Silhouette's Little X

Michael Colmer, in Whalebone to See-Through, wrote:
“The value of advertising also became apparent to British companies. In England Mrs Anne-Marie Lobbenberg, widow of one of Silhouette's founders, designed a corset with elastic which crossed the front of the garment in the shape of an ‘X’. In 1955, with a modest turnover of £400,000 the company decided to gamble everything on this new product and emulate American techniques of promotion. By winning extended credit from its suppliers and a considerable bank overdraft, Silhouette took a deep breath, laced its corporate stays and allocated a massive £22,000 to advertising.


A less successful followup

September 1956 saw the biggest advertising and promotional campaign in the history of British corsetry centred upon a leaping girl in a black leotard wearing the new ‘Little X’. The company put 120,000 garments into the stores and for an agonising four weeks waited for retailer’s reports. Then it started. Repeat orders came pouring in, customers cabled, telephoned and wrote for more stocks and the factory was overwhelmed in production nightmares, but the gamble had worked. Within two months suppliers had been paid, the bank loan redeemed and, by the end of the year, turnover notched up by a half. The following year demand at home and abroad had grown to such an extent that licenses to manufacture ‘Little X’ had been granted in 32 countries including the United States. By 1959 Silhouette became a public company and such was the impact of its advertising campaign that the 450,000 ordinary shares on offer to the public were oversubscribed 28 times.”

The company tried to capitalise on this alphabetical success with another ad, based on a pun on the letter U, as the second illustration shows. The punchline is nice, but I never heard of this bra at the time, so I guess this campaign was less successful.

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