Kilmer House

When people think of LISTERINE® Antiseptic, probably the last thing they think about is electric guitars.  But they should, because LISTERINE®  and the electric guitar go back more than half a century together.  What was the connection?  It was through Les Paul (1915-2009), one of the inventors of the solid body electric guitar, who passed away this summer at age 94.  The LISTERINE®  Brand sponsored his groundbreaking television show in the 1950s. This on-screen sponsorship ID appeared at the beginning of every episode of Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home Start

What Johnson & Johnson ad was so popular that people were inspired to make their own versions of it?  Hint:  the ad ran for an incredible 30 years and, when the Company tried to update it, consumers protested.  Here’s another hint:  the ad contained one of our most memorable advertising slogans, and it advertised a product that most people today have never heard of. The Ad that Launched a Thousand Tributes The ad was for RED CROSS® Kidney Plasters, and the tagline was “Feels Good on the Back.”  RED CROSS® Kidney Plasters were one of the Company’s most popular medi

Some of the most beautiful and appealing ads in the history of the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies are the historical ads for JOHNSON’S® Baby Powder.  One of the most popular of those ads – and still a favorite today -- is the Wonderful Mother ad from 1922.  But did you know that the ad was inspired by Abraham Lincoln?  Read on to find out why. The Wonderful Mother ad appeared in the leading magazines of its day, such as Women’s Home Companion.  The centerpiece of the ad is a beautiful illustration of a mother looking down at her sleeping baby.  Her arm is protectively around her ot

It’s January, 1910: exactly 100 years ago.  It’s the start of a new year and a new decade, and Johnson & Johnson is marking that beginning by launching a major new advertising campaign for one of its consumer products:  JOHNSON’S® Shaving Cream Soap.  The product had been introduced in the early 1900s, and was developed out of the Company’s medicated soaps that were manufactured for use by doctors, surgeons and patients.   It was it considered to be an excellent product by the consumers who used it, and it came in innovative packaging – a collapsible tube! – but i

One of the affiliate companies in the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies is known for its tradition of using famous actresses in its advertising.  As it turns out, actresses like Jennifer Garner in the U.S. and Deepika Padukone in India are not the first celebrities to endorse our products.  Some very well-known actresses (and some actors and athletes) were also singing the praises of one of our products almost 100 years ago, in the Nineteen Teens…  The product was Synol Soap, an antiseptic soap, and famous Broadway and vaudeville actresses o

From the earliest days of Johnson & Johnson, the Johnson brothers recognized the importance of advertising, and Robert Wood Johnson the first was often personally very involved in the development of ads for the Company’s products…sometimes too involved, the people at the advertising agency felt.  Johnson had excellent instincts about what would and wouldn’t work, and he kept J. Walter Thompson and his advertising agency busy with his many suggestions and changes. Thompson and Johnson were friends, and Thompson handled the Johnson & Johnson account personally.  (Robert Wood Johnson: The

RED CROSS® Kidney Plaster Ad in Slavonic from 1912  In recognition of the diversity of the world we live in, companies have been doing more and more multicultural advertising in recent years.  It's a necessity for any company that wants to reach its customers, especially customers who for a variety of reasons are not being reached through traditional mainstream advertising.  And certainly what is true now also was true almost 100 years ago.    Ad for Belladonna Plasters in Italian from 1912 The early part of the 1900s saw huge waves of immigration to the United States

Like every new company just starting out, Johnson & Johnson advertised, and the earliest Johnson & Johnson ad in our archives happens to be from 1886 – the year we started.  The 1886 ad is for our first consumer product, Zonweiss, which was a tooth cream -- the late Victorian version of a toothpaste.  Zonweiss, which meant “white teeth” in German, was applied to the toothbrush with a tiny spoon that was included in the package.  In a few years, when we became one of the first companies to package toothpaste – Zonweiss, of course – in that new innovation, a collapsible tube, the spoon w

In the late 1940s, a very well-known American artist had a connection to Johnson & Johnson first aid products.  (And no, it wasn’t because the artist was accident-prone.)  This artist had paintings in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and her works were widely exhibited in other places.  The artist was Gladys Rockmore Davis, and she was a noted painter of children and other subjects.  In 1948, Johnson & Johnson commissioned Davis to do a series of original paintings of children for an advertising campaign for the Company’s fir

Throughout its history, Johnson & Johnson has published a wide variety of information designed to educate doctors and surgeons, the public, and parents.  We also published information for retail pharmacists for several decades, in the form of a trade publication called the RED CROSS® Messenger.  It educated pharmacists about the Company, its products, and about how to increase their business.  And according to that publication, one of the most important things a retail pharmacist could do was to decorate the pharmacy window. An issue of The RED CROSS® Messenger The RED CROSS® Messenger was