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"Those new detergents may be all right for dishes," warns pure (9944/100%), mild Ivory Soap on The Road of Life, "but your hands aren't made of china." Voting Doctor Malone, on the other hand, plugs a liquid dishwashing detergent: "Joy's lotion-soft suds feel so good on your hands." Ma Perkins suggests "Brand new Oxydol [with a] new detergent formula," to get clothes "whiter than sun-white." But according to The Guiding Light, "Duz does a wash like no detergent can—it's the soap in Duz that does it!" On Life Can Be Beautiful, life can really be beautiful if Tide is used ("Gets clothes cleaner than any soap"); on Backstage Wife, Cheer's "blue magic" guarantees "the whitest, brightest and the cleanest wash possible."
Since each of these programs also plugs other cleansing products (Drene and Shasta shampoos, Ivory Snow and Flakes, Spic and Span), it is a wonder that the housewife can ever make up her mind which one to buy. But as long as she buys one, P. & G. will be happy. It makes them all. Now the nation's largest soapmaker, P. & G. manages to sell 119 bars, boxes, bottles and cans of its products every second of every day, every day of the year. Its share of the U.S. soap market has risen from 30% in 1925 to 40% in 1951. While Lever Bros., the No. 2 soapmaker, and Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co., No. 3, napped, P. & G. took 69% of the detergent market.
The Tide of Revolution. At a time when many a U.S. businessman fears a recession and the threat of much tougher competition, P. & G. is a prime example of i) how to sell goods despite recessions, and 2) how bitter competition both inside and outside a company can make it grow. Although P. & G.'s practice of letting Ivory Soap dispute the claims of detergent Tide makes little sense to many other businessmen, P. & G.'s McElroy thinks that it is the only way to keep his soap salesmen on their toes. He is never happier than when all of his products are busy fighting each other for sales.
The most notable example of P. & G.'s habit of competing with itself was its introduction of the synthetic detergent. It was. says McElroy, "the first big change in soapmaking in 2,000 years." The company, licensed to work with German patents, brought out its first detergent, Dreft, in 1933. But its use was too specialized (i.e., for fine fabrics and dishes), and not until 1945 was P. & G. able to begin marketing an all-purpose detergent, Tide.