Olay brand | brandchannel.com

Olay

Olay
forever young
by Robin D. Rusch
February 19, 2001

Olay has enjoyed quite a charmed life.

But the brand hasn’t been bathing in goat’s milk the entire time. Olay started out in South Africa during World War II as a re-hydrating treatment for burn cases among the British Royal Air Force pilots. Invented by Durban chemist Graham Gordon Wulff, the end of the war might have been the end of a brand had it not been for Wulff’s persistent marketing efforts.

Wulff’s first move was to revisit the formula of the treatment and refine it for a less volatile market: civilians. Then he gave it the name Oil of Ulay Beauty Fluid and started selling it locally door-to-door.

The Beauty Fluid proved to be a winner and the next decade saw a rollout of the brand through mail order to Australia, the US, the UK, Canada, and Mexico. In 1967, Ulay caught the

attention of the Adams Group (later Richardson-Vicks) who bought it to round out its entry into women’s products and held it for nearly forty years before it rolled into the Procter & Gamble family through an acquisition of Richardson-Vicks.

Over the years the brand was called by many different names depending on region (Oil of Olay, Olez, Ulay, Ulag and Ulaz), causing confusion and increasing production costs on packaging and print. Two years ago when the copyrights ran out on the different marks, P&G was able to standardize the name to Oil of Olay and create global consistency. Last year, P&G went a step further and removed the Oil in favor of the single word, Olay, to avoid any association with greasiness.

Rid of oil and the battlefield, Olay still stays close to its roots. The Olay website proudly informs viewers of its original beginnings and ad campaigns use the great South African singer Miriam Makeba to sing its praises. Olay may be over 60 years old but its continual makeovers keep it young, vibrant and wrinkle-free.

Robin D. Rusch lives and works in New York City.


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