So Clean

William Hesketh Lever was the founder of the Lever Brother's Sunlight Soap empire, and changed advertising forever with his never before seen ads, which used art as well as copy to sell his products.
His early ads used paintings often depicting women and children, which fitted with the context of the period as children signified joy, blessings, purity and life due to the high infant mortality rate. In Bolton, where Lever was born, more than a fifth of the population died before their first birthday, and over a third of the population were died before they were five. Women were a common theme in the Sunlight Soap ads, which fitted with the social context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century with the late Victorian and Edwardian gender roles, where traditionally women did the cleaning. The depiction of women changed with the times as the roles of women in society changed; the ads began to feature more commanding and controlling women who offered images of feminine power, as well as more sensual women.
Imperialism and Britishness were also common themes in the soap ads for domestic and imperial markets, as with the British Empire  spreading across the globe the soap ads showed 'washing and clothing the savage', associating soap with civilised people. The Britishness was emphasised during the first world war, playing upon the social morale at the time.
With the mass production of soap, social and economic conditions changed as the lower classes were clean so there was less distinction between the upper and lower classes. This changed the tactics of the soap ads, which then influenced social rules, making it socially unacceptable to smell, creating a new market for the product.