Bon Ami

Bon Ami (French for 'Good Friend') is a brand of scouring powder sold by the Bon Ami Company of Kansas City, Missouri. Since its inception in the late 19th century, the brand's advertising campaigns have gained particular notice.

Advertisement featuring the "hasn't scratched yet" slogan, 1907.

History
Advertisement in American Cookery, 1919.

19th century

The original Bon Ami formula was developed in 1886 by the J. T. Robertson Soap Company as a gentler alternative to quartz-based scouring powders available on store shelves.[1][2] In those days, scouring powder was made from tallow and finely ground quartz. When quartz was mined, it was entwined with a mineral called feldspar, and the two had to be separated by hand.[3] The feldspar was discarded until Robertson discovered that this soft mineral could be combined with soap to create a less-abrasive product that would clean without scratching, resulting in the Bon Ami product.[4]

Bon Ami was originally manufactured in a factory in Glastonbury, Connecticut, which later moved to Manchester in the 1880s.[5]

As of 1896, Bon Ami was a common product in northeastern United States households.[4] The chick and slogan "hasn't scratched yet!" are textbook examples of an early American trademark.[6][7][8] Consumers in the late 1800s understood that a newborn chick doesn't scratch the ground for three days; thus the correlation to the non-scratching benefits of Bon Ami.[4]

20th century

In the early 1900s, Alfred William Erickson, founder of McCann Erickson Advertising, revived the brand with full-color pages in leading women's magazines. He took on Bon Ami as a client around 1908.[9] Artist Ben Austrian painted the prints,[2][3] and Ben's wife served as the model for the ads. The campaign eventually blossomed into literature with the release of The Chick That Never Grew Up, a work of children's literature featuring Princess Bon Ami.[2]

In 1963, Lestoil purchased an approximately 60 percent stake in Bon Ami.[10] Bon Ami merged into Lestoil in 1964, after protracted negotiations.[11]

In 1971, Bon Ami was purchased by the Faultless Starch Company,[12] which later changed the corporation name to Faultless Starch/Bon Ami Company to help reintroduce Bon Ami to the market.

In 1980, the company again revived its brand with a magazine campaign featuring the headline "never underestimate the cleaning power of a 94-year-old chick with a French name".[8] During the first 6 months of the campaign, Bon Ami sales rose 12 percent.[13] Nevertheless, its business was still flagging by 1983, when it remained in third place behind products from Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive.[12]

21st century

In 2011 the Bon Ami company celebrated its 125th anniversary by re-releasing the original cleaning cake for purchase. Limited supplies were offered both with and without a commemorative tin, celebrating the original formula's popularity.[14]

Advertising

The product's slogan "hasn't scratched yet!" refers to its ability to avoid scratching porcelain plumbing fixtures. The Bon Ami mascot, a chick emerging from an egg, is a play on that slogan.

Ingredients

The product called "original" contains only feldspar.[15] For other products, the Bon Ami website lists the following as main ingredients: feldspar, limestone, water, baking soda, citric acid, corn alcohol, epsom salts, essential oils, and xanthan gum.[16]

Outside the United States

In Canada, the brand is owned and distributed by S.C. Johnson & Son as a glass cleaner.

Bon Ami advertisement, 1890.

In the film comedy The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, whenever people are discussing a particularly gory murder at an old mansion, Bon Ami's cleaning effectiveness is given quite the testimonial. The murder was so gory that blood was found everywhere—even on the organ keys. Despite the efforts to clean the keys, the blood remained to this very day—"and they used Bon Ami!"[17]

In the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel Tender Is the Night, first published in 1934, Fitzgerald notes the routine of the character Dick Diver in cleaning up his workroom at his home outside Cannes: "He swept up, for no servants were allowed in there, treated his washroom sketchily with Bon Ami, repaired a screen and sent off an order to a publishing house in Zurich".[18]

In the first volume of his autobiography, Isaac Asimov recalls a box his family kept in the bathroom when he was a child, and how in his childish naïveté he was impressed that the company was so conscientious that if they ever found that the power had scratched, they would change the slogan to "Only Scratched Once!"[19]

Jane Vandenburgh's novel Failure to Zigzag makes reference to Bon Ami's slogan "hasn't scratched yet".[20]

See also

References
  1. Hubbard, Robert (2012). Glastonbury. Arcadia Publishing. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-7385-7679-4. Archived from the original on September 23, 2020. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  2. Cross, Mary (2002). "Bon Ami Scouring Powder". A Century of American Icons: 100 Products and Slogans from the 20th-Century Consumer Culture. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 3–4. ISBN 978-0313314810. OCLC 1029270577. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
  3. Dorman 1994, p. 66.
  4. Woodward 2003, p. 143.
  5. Rhinelander, David (August 27, 1999). "Scratching the Surface of Bon Ami's Beginnings". Hartford Courant. p. B1. ISSN 1047-4153. ProQuest 256268856.
  6. Barach, Arnold B. (1971). "Bon Ami Chicks". Famous American Trademarks. Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press. pp. 23–24. OCLC 1034671046.
  7. Nesbit, Wilbur Dick (1922). First Principles of Advertising. Gregg Publishing Company. pp. 104–105.
  8. Percy, Pam (2002). The Complete Chicken. Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press. p. 118. ISBN 9780785827542. OCLC 1148597385.
  9. Hirschhorn, Bernard (1997). Democracy Reformed: Richard Spencer Childs and His Fight for Better Government. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-313-30144-5. Archived from the original on September 23, 2020. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
  10. "Lestoil Buys Contol of Bon Ami for Cash". The Wall Street Journal. August 27, 1963. p. 6. ISSN 0099-9660. ProQuest 132807938.
  11. "Lestoil and Bon Ami Reach Accord With Merger Foes". The New York Times. June 27, 1964. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
  12. "Bon Ami Now Scratches for Soap Market Share". The New York Times. March 21, 1983. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on May 24, 2015. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
  13. Ferrell, O. C; Pride, William M. (1982). Fundamentals of Marketing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 340. OCLC 1035151757.
  14. "Bon Ami 125th Anniversary Cleaning Cake Kit". Archived from the original on December 8, 2011. Retrieved November 7, 2011.
  15. "Bon Ami® 1886 Original Formula SDS Number: 04030" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on December 23, 2016. Retrieved December 22, 2016.
  16. "The Bon Ami Story". Bon Ami. Archived from the original on June 15, 2020. Retrieved September 4, 2020.
  17. Knotts, Don; Metz, Robert (1999). Barney Fife, and Other Characters I Have Known. New York: Berkley Boulevard Books. pp. 180–182. ISBN 9780783888224. OCLC 1028652483.
  18. Fitzgerald, F. Scott (1997) [1934]. Tender Is the Night. Penguin Popular Classics. London: Penguin. p. 207. ISBN 978-0-14062-359-8.
  19. Asimov, Isaac (1979). In Memory Yet Green: The Autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954. Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-13679-2. Archived from the original on September 23, 2020. Retrieved September 3, 2020.
  20. Vandenburgh, Jane (May 3, 2000). Failure to Zigzag. Counterpoint. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-58243-895-5. Archived from the original on September 23, 2020. Retrieved September 19, 2020.

Sources
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