Shirley Polykoff and Ilon Specht: Advertising Executives

Shirley Polykoff (Jan. 18, 1908 – June 4, 1998) and Ilon Specht (b. 1948) were advertising copywriters who broke through the glass ceiling of the male-dominated ad industry. Polykoff and Specht produced two of the beauty industry’s most iconic ads and memorable taglines for Clairol and L’Oreal. Their work went beyond advertising to energize the women’s empowerment movement.

In 1956, when Shirley Polykoff wrote, “does she or doesn’t she?” in ads for Miss Clairol hair color, the campaign encouraged women to rethink the stigma that only “trashy girls” colored their hair. The iconic and ground-breaking spots paired Polykoff’s words with photos of wholesome looking blondes, sending a message that a woman who chose to color her hair was not only respectable but could also be a mother or even your neighbor next door. Miss Clairol, the ad boasted, produced results that were so natural “only her hairdresser knows for sure.”

Print ads and commercials in the1950’s and 60’s depicted a prim and proper picture of American family life. Some publications initially rejected the Clairol ads, saying the tone was too suggestive. Life magazine, a hugely popular magazine read by millions, balked at first. But after an informal poll of their female employees found nothing risqué about the script, the magazine accepted a 10-page spread signaling its respectability.

Before hair color became mainstream, there were hair dyes -- chemical products that were permanent, hard to use and considered unsafe. In 1949, Clairol revolutionized the industry by developing hair color, a gentler one-step color “bath” that wasn’t permanent, less toxic and easy for professionals to use.

Seven years later, the company went one step further and introduced a color bath for home use. Now, women who were still too shy to change their hair color at their local beauty parlor could experiment in the privacy of their home.

Shirley Polykoff was 48 years old in 1956 and the only female copywriter at Foote Cone and Belding, now called FCB, in New York City. She was assigned to come up with a creative concept for Miss Clairol.

The agency heads had no idea how perfect Polykoff was for the job. It wasn’t just because she had been coloring her hair since was a teenager, although most people probably weren’t aware she did. Polykoff knew what it felt like to be stigmatized for changing her natural hair color. She was a brunette, but in her heart she believed she was a glamorous blonde.

“She was flamboyant and brilliant and vain in an irresistible way and it was her conviction that none of those qualities went with brown hair,” wrote Malcolm Gladwell in a 1999 article about her in The New Yorker.

The personal story behind Polykoff’s creation of the “does she or doesn’t she” line goes back to when she was in her early twenties and dating her future husband, George Halprin. Things were getting serious and one evening, after having been invited to dinner with his family, she was anxious to know what his parents thought of her. Halprin admitted that his mother, “thinks you paint your hair.” Then, Halpin asked her, “well, do you?” Even he didn’t know.

Polykoff never forgot that moment and how ashamed and mortified she felt. Years later that memory was distilled and inserted into a tagline that would come to mean much more than selling a product.

Shirley Polykoff was born on Jan. 18, 1908, and grew up in Brooklyn New York, the second of three daughters of Hyman and Rose Polykoff, immigrants from Ukraine and Russia. When she was born, her mother had expected a boy and planned to name him “Leo.” Her daughter became Shirley but she often dressed in boys’ clothes and at age eleven, she got her first job selling coats in a department store. Believing she could do anything boys could freed Shirley to be bold and independent as she matured.

At twelve, she got her first taste of the advertising business, when she entered – but didn’t win – a competition to write an ad for Campbell’s Soup. The notion that you could make a living writing ads that would sell things people used and wanted intrigued her. No surprise then that at 21, she landed her first job doing just that for a fashion store in Brooklyn.

The pay was $19 a week or $341 in today’s dollars. She went on to pen: “Rhinestones, a girl’s next best friend,” and “Look like you’re going to the races but you’re only going to the grocery store.” Later in her career, she was credited with the famous slogan “Chock Full of Nuts, the heavenly coffee.”

She went on to create advertising campaigns for top retail department stores in New Jersey. Even after marrying George Halprin in 1933 and becoming a mother to two girls, she continued her career with his support. Foote Cone and Belding was her break into the big-time advertising world and she scored a homerun with her work on Clairol.

Before Miss Clairol, only seven percent of American women were coloring their hair. Ten years later, the number rose to 40% and revenues soared, from $25 million to $200 million a year.

Polykoff continued making magic for Clairol for the next twenty years. For Nice ‘n Easy’s shampoo-in color products, she wrote, “the closer he gets, the better you look.” For Lady Clairol, she wrote: “is it true blondes have more fun?” and “If I have only one life to live, let me live it as a blonde.”

From today’s perspective, none of Polykoff’s scripts are feminist declarations. But they were liberating for their time, allowing women the freedom to decide how they wanted to define their beauty and not be afraid to experiment outside the rules of conformity.

In 1971,15 years and almost one generation later, L’Oreal, the French cosmetics and beauty company was introducing its new line of hair color called Preference. L’Oreal was determined to compete in the market ruled by Clairol. They needed a fresh and powerful ad campaign that would justify spending ten cents more than Clairol’s products. The ads also had to have a wide appeal to women at a time of tumultuous change when the women’s liberation movement was upending ideas about beauty, women’s roles and stereotypes.

One thought was to go toe to toe or in this case, strand to strand with Clairol using research that showed L’Oreal’s Preference was a better product than Clairol’s Nice n’ Easy. Preference was superior because it produced more natural looking shades, which ironically was the claim Miss Clairol had made when it first debuted. But that idea was scrapped when the ad team was told there were no tests with results to support that claim. With no other strategy, four weeks before the launch of Preference, the ad team at McCann-Erickson, one of the top ad agencies on Madison Avenue in New York City, was in a tailspin.

Luckily for McCann, as it’s called today, they had Ilon Specht on the L’Oreal account. Twenty-three-year-old Specht was a college dropout from California but no rookie in the advertising world. In 1966 as a newbie copywriter for Young and Rubicam, she had already made a mini splash by penning an iconic twenty-second public service announcement for the fledging Peace Corps.

In the spot, a young couple is enjoying the sun on a beach while their portable radio broadcasts grim news about suffering around the world. The voiceover, written by Specht starts, “It’s a great, wide, wonderful world you live in. But the world you don’t live in is filled with poverty and ignorance and disease. Please write the Peace Corps,” the voice over continues. “We’ll tell you what YOU can do about it.”

When she arrived at McCann, Specht had not lost any of her edge. Colleagues recalled her as brilliant and fiercely creative, a one-of-a-kind talent who could distill the emotional vibe of a product or service in a few words and images.

She was “rebellious, unconventional and independent” according to the New Yorker article about her and Shirley Polykoff. Despite her feistiness, she had to endure the sexism of the era in her job, such as, if she wrote “woman” in her ad copy, it was often crossed out and replaced with “girl.”

For Preference, she came up with the tagline “Because I’m worth it” -- as the closing phrase in the 30 second commercial. Those four words upended the advertising world. Until then, advertising was mostly written by men from a man’s perspective. In television ads, including Clairol’s “does she or doesn’t she” ad, the voiceover was male even when the products were for women. Specht cleverly devised the script so that a woman would speak direct to camera, a daring concept.

In the spot, the actress tells the audience she uses “the most expensive hair color in the world, Preference,” not because she’s frivolous with money, but because of how good it makes her and her hair feel. “I don’t mind spending more for L’Oreal. Because I’m worth it,” she says patting her hand on her chest for emphasis.

Just like Polykoff a generation earlier, Specht was the only woman in the room when the account team was brainstorming ideas for the ads – ideas that were the stuff of male fantasy.

“They wanted to do something with a woman sitting by a window,” she recalled years later, “…one of those fake places with big, glamorous curtains. The woman was a complete object. I don’t even think she spoke.”

What Specht heard annoyed and then angered her. “I could see they had this traditional view of women and my feeling was that I’m not writing an ad about looking good for men,” she said. “I just thought, F*** you. I sat down and did it. It was very personal. I can recite to you the whole commercial because I was so angry when I wrote it.”

“Because I’m worth it” was the hook in the script and L’Oreal gambled that the idea would resonate with women. It did. By the 1980’s, Preference was outselling Nice n ’Easy, realizing L’Oreal’s goal of overtaking Clairol in the hair color wars.

In 1997, L’Oreal officially made the words the company slogan. Over five decades, the phrase has transformed from “I’m worth it,” to “you’re worth it.” The phrase has become advertising legend as well as a symbol of the feminism movement. For L’Oreal taking a chance on four bold words was clearly worth it.

Later in her career, Shirley Polykoff became executive vice president and creative director of Foote, Cone and Belding. She later opened her own ad agency. In 1967, she was named National Advertising Woman of the Year. She died in 1998 after a long career and many awards.

Ilon Specht left McCann and became creative director of Jordan McGrath Case & Taylor. After retiring from advertising, she opened an art and home decorating business in California.

These two remarkable women were pioneers in promoting the hair products industry which is estimated to generate $86 billion year.