Nice 'n Easy

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.

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, 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...
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