Procter & Gamble

Proctor & Gamble was founded on October 31, 1837 by brothers in law candlemaker William Procter and soapmaker James Gamble in Cincinnati. It was Alexander Norris, their father-in-law, who persuaded his sons-in-law to become business partners. 

By the end of the 1850s, sales had reached $1 million per annum. By that point, about 80 employees worked for Procter & Gamble.

During the American Civil War, the family firm won contracts to supply the Union Army with soap and candles. In addition to the increased profits experienced during the war, the military contracts introduced soldiers from all over the country to Procter & Gamble's products.

Introduced in 1879, Ivory Soap became Proctor & Gamble's most famous product with the advertising slogans, "It floats" and "99 44/100 per cent pure." It was William Proctor's son Harley Procter, who is credited with devising the marketing campaigns that would make Ivory Soap the leader in its field.

1898 advertising poster

Ivory Soap was originally named P&G White Soap. In 1879, Harley Proctor found the new name during a reading in church of the 45th Psalm of the Bible: "All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad."

In 1890 the firm Procter & Gamble was incorporated with William C Proctor, another son of William Proctor. as general manager and the company boomed.

As radio became more popular in the 1920s and 1930s, Proctor and Gamble sponsored a number of radio programs. In 1932, they began to produce and sponsor the first radio serial dramas. As the company was known for detergents, the serials became commonly known as "soap operas."

After 20 years of research, Procter & Gamble introduced in 1946 Tide, a detergent with a complex chemical compound that actually pulled oil and grease out of clothes and dissolved dirt into the wash water. The company soon became the biggest advertiser and the biggest detergent producer in America.

With the rise of television in the 1950s and 1960s, most of the new serials were sponsored and produced by Proctor & Gamble. They included the first successful daytime drama on television, Search for Tomorrow, which debuted in 1951 and The Guiding Light, which had begun in 1937 as a radio serial, and made the jump to television in 1952.

In 1969 Proctor and Gamble decided to take the technology for producing soap and apply it to potato chips. The result was Pringles potato chips.

Proctor & Gamble exited the food and drink business in 2012 when it sold its Pringles brand to Kellogg's for $2.75 billion. The company had previously sold Jif peanut butter, Crisco shortening and oils, and Folgers coffee in separate transactions to Smucker's.

Europress Family Encyclopedia 1999