LUX soap was the first brand in the world to use celebrities as endorsers. This 1920s Chinese trade card from our collection though shows, that before capitalizing on the grandeur and allure of Hollywood it relied of more classical motifs, but which were no less juicy... 

LUX soap was created by the firm Lever Brothers, now known as Unilever, in 1899. Marketed as a laundry product for over 20 years, only in the 1920s, the company conducted a contest that led them to a very interesting realization: women were using LUX specifically as a soap for their face, then labelled a “toilet soap”. The company immediately changed the product and messaging and LUX soon became the world's first mass market toilet soap.

The brand concentrated on building its association with the increasingly popular world of film, highlighting Hollywood movie stars and their use of the product. In 1929, advertising featured 26 of the biggest American female stars of the day. With the slogan “9 out of 10 stars use LUX” the company reportedly single-handedly pioneered the trend of celebrity product endorsements.

LUX was introduced to China in as early as 1921 and just like in the rest of the world, was initially marketed as laundry soap, as the earliest print advertisements from that time show. In 1923 Lever Brothers established the China Soap Co factory on the bank of the Huangpu River in Shanghai to begin local production of their various soap brands. After the Thompson advertising agency in the USA found the winning formula of marketing LUX as toilet soap and associating it with Hollywood stars in 1928, the company soon started to roll-out similar endorsement campaigns with Chinas most famous actresses such as Butterfly Wu, Ruan Lingyu, Li Lili and Wang Renmei.

The early 1920s trade card from our collection, though predates the glitz and glamour of modern film stars and instead still relies on a scene from classic Chinese literature. It depicts the main characters from the classical mid-18th century Chinese novel “Dream of the Red Chamber”, Jia Baoyu (贾宝玉), together with his cousins and lovers (!) Lin Daiyu (林黛玉) and Xue Baochai (薛宝钗). A love triangle story that even Hollywood could not have written better…