Nice 'n Easy
Encyclopedia
Nice ’n Easy is a shampoo-in permanent hair-coloring product for home use. It was introduced in 1965 with the advertising tagline, “The closer she gets, the better you look.”
Manufactured by Clairol
(now a division of Procter & Gamble
), Nice ’n Easy extended the company’s home hair color product lines, which debuted in 1956 with Miss Clairol Hair Color Bath and the famous “Does she... or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure” advertising campaign.
The idea to buck the trend of that era’s advertising style — which emphasized high glamour rather than girl-next-door vignettes — was the brainchild of lead copywriter Shirley Polykoff
, whose work on the Clairol hair color campaign was a career high point. In a memo to Clairol, Polykoff, who was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 1967, described the Clairol woman as “Cashmere-sweater-over-the-shoulder types. Like larger-than-life-portraits of the proverbial girl on the block who’s a little prettier than your wife and lives in a house slightly nicer than yours.”
Manufactured by Clairol
Clairol
Clairol is a personal care products division of Procter & Gamble. The Clairol company was started in 1931 by Lawrence M. Gelb and wife, Joan, who named their enterprise after a hair-coloring preparation they found while traveling in France....
(now a division of Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble
Procter & Gamble is a Fortune 500 American multinational corporation headquartered in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio and manufactures a wide range of consumer goods....
), Nice ’n Easy extended the company’s home hair color product lines, which debuted in 1956 with Miss Clairol Hair Color Bath and the famous “Does she... or doesn’t she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure” advertising campaign.
History
In the 1950s, just 7% of American women used hair color (or admitted to doing so). At that time, the common belief was that only chorus girls, actresses and other women of ill-repute altered their natural shade. To help change that attitude, Clairol eschewed celebrities in favor of the average woman for its Miss Clairol and Nice ’n Easy hair color campaigns.The idea to buck the trend of that era’s advertising style — which emphasized high glamour rather than girl-next-door vignettes — was the brainchild of lead copywriter Shirley Polykoff
Shirley Polykoff
Shirley Polykoff was an American advertising executive whose "Does She... Or Doesn't She?" tagline for Clairol dramatically increased sales and earned her a place in the Advertising Hall of Fame....
, whose work on the Clairol hair color campaign was a career high point. In a memo to Clairol, Polykoff, who was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 1967, described the Clairol woman as “Cashmere-sweater-over-the-shoulder types. Like larger-than-life-portraits of the proverbial girl on the block who’s a little prettier than your wife and lives in a house slightly nicer than yours.”
Nice ’n Easy Product Line
The entire Nice ’n Easy line includes nine products available in a total of 48 shades. The best-selling shade is 106A Natural Dark Neutral Blonde. The best-selling shade for Nice ‘n Easy Root Touch-Up is shade #5, Medium Brown. Nice ’n Easy products are:- Nice ’n Easy Perfect 10: Ten-minute coverage plus six weekly applications of the Clairol’s ColorSeal Intensive Conditioning Crème.
- Nice ’n Easy Permanent Color: A blend of three tones that use Clairol’s color-blend technology for highlights, lowlights and gray coverage.
- Nice ’n Easy Gray Solution: Designed for total gray coverage; includes pretreatment retexturizing solution.
- Nice ’n Easy Root Touch-Up: Covers root regrowth between colorings.
- Nice ’n Easy Frost & Tip: For allover highlighting.
- Nice ’n Easy Hairpainting: To highlight the top layer of hair.
- Nice ’n Easy Born Blonde: Uniform allover lightening for very light to very dark hair.
- Nice ’n Easy ColorSeal Conditioner: A conditioning treatment specifically for color-treated hair.
External links
- Nice 'n Easy Website
- Clairol Website
- Procter & Gamble Website
- Clairol’s free Color Source magazine
- "True Colors", article from The New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
by Malcolm GladwellMalcolm GladwellMalcolm Gladwell, CM is a Canadian journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. He is currently based in New York City and has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996...
on hair coloring advertising - Screengrabs from a WOM campaign run by Nice 'n Easy in the UK