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Showing posts from July, 2019

Goo Goo Eyes: Advertising and the Suffragettes

In The Road to Representation: Essays on the Women’s Suffrage Campaign , I wrote a piece about how businesses made money from the suffrage campaign ( Making Money From the Suffragettes ). In it I mentioned how for some companies, the campaign was a fruitful marketing opportunity. I also referred to an advert produced by The Keeloma Dairy Company. So I was amused when I recently bought a copy of an advertisement by another dairy company which also used women’s suffrage in its marketing campaign. The company was Aplin & Barrett and the advertisement was for their St Ivel brand. Such was their faith in their product, they claimed it could even win women the vote.  In this adventure, the knight St Ivel meets a group of suffragettes, who ask him for his support. "Beshrew me!" he replies, "Ye have the goo-goo eye which likes me well. Right gladly would I wield my trusty blade on behalf of damsels so buxom. But I wot not what ye want." The women expla