Coppertone (sunscreen)

The name Coppertone originated from its marketing of suntan lotion.

The company became famous in 1953 when it introduced the Coppertone girl, an advertisement showing a young blonde girl in pigtails staring in surprise as a Cocker Spaniel puppy sneaks up behind her and pulls down her blue swimsuit bottom, revealing her bottom to have a lighter tone than the rest of her body.

The logo has been redrawn many times to meet varying branding objectives. Early versions show the girl wearing only petite swimsuit bottoms and flowers in her pigtails. At the turn of the 21st century, Coppertone revised drawings of the Coppertone Girl so that they would be less revealing and show no tan lines. Some recent versions show only the girl's lower back, as opposed to her bottom, or wearing a T-shirt, a hat, and holding a bottle of Coppertone while the puppy is shown pulling on her shorts.

The original Coppertone logo was the profile of an Indian chief. In 1953 Tally Embry Advertising in Florida was hired, and their ad men created the concept of the little girl and the pup. An artist named Joyce Ballantyne Brand re-drew the little girl in 1959 when the original artwork was destroyed in a fire. She was then working for Grant Advertising in New York.[5]

A series of mechanical billboards were constructed across the United States, whereon the motorized dog and swimsuit bottoms rocked up and down perpetually. Though most of them are long since gone or have stopped moving, one such billboard of the then Coppertone Girl still stands in Miami Beach — dog, pigtails, swimsuit, bottom, and all.

When Joyce Ballantyne Brand redrew the logo in 1959, she purportedly used her daughter, Cheri, as her model, and her drawing closely resembled the original artwork.[5]

In 1993, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Coppertone girl, a contest was held at Disney's Polynesian Hotel in Orlando Florida to find "The Coppertone Girl", since Cheri Brand had grown up by then. The contest was hosted by Regis Philbin along with Cheri as one of the judges. The winner was picked based on the contestant's maturity, congeniality, eloquence, confidence, and how well she resembled the cartoon. The winner was four-year-old Alexis Durgee. She was chosen out of over 100,000 models and twenty remaining finalists. Afterwards she appeared on Sally Jessy Raphael Show with Cheri Brand and Dalton Orband, the winning Coppertone Boy. Alexis went on to model for Coppertone and Water Babies advertisements through the following year and was shot in several Coppertone commercials.

Many Coppertone products share a distinctive fragrance. Chandler Burr described it as "arguably the single greatest work of scent branding ever."[6] A researcher on human memory used it as an example of an odor that evokes memories.[7] Besides for the classic fragrance, the Coppertone product line has expanded to include other scents.[4]

Accompanying early Coppertone girl ads was the impish slogan, "Don't be a paleface!"

Advertising campaign for Coppertone in France (1973)

Another tagline was "Tan, don't burn".[4] This slogan was adapted to the French market in the 1973 advertising campaign "Bronzez vite et sans danger" featuring a close-up of the top of a bathing suit worn, this time, by a grown-up woman (Moors & Warot advertising agency).