Lillian Eichler Watson

Lillian Eichler Watson (1901/1902 – June 25, 1979) was an American advertising copywriter and author of bestselling books of etiquette. Her first Book of Etiquette, published in 1921 and for which she created the advertising campaign Again She Orders..."A Chicken Salad, Please", was an immediate bestseller and was followed by several updated volumes and numerous other books.

Lillian Eichler Watson
Born
Lillian Eichler

1901/1902
New York City, U.S.
DiedJune 25, 1979(1979-06-25) (aged 76–77)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)Author and advertising copywriter
Years active1919–1970
SpouseDr. Tobias Watson MD (m. 1928)
Children2

Many of Eichler's ad campaigns targeted social anxiety.

Early life

Lillian Eichler Watson was born in 1901 or 1902. She had an older sister and brother, Charlotte and Sidney, and two younger brothers, Alfred, seven years younger[1] and Julian. She attended Morris High School.[2]

She obtained a job interview with the Manhattan advertising agency Ruthrauff & Ryan in 1919.[3][4]

Career

Copywriter

Not having enough money to go to college, Eichler was hired by the "large and important" Manhattan advertising agency Ruthrauff & Ryan in 1919 while in her teens,[3][4][5] with help from a family connection. They at first told her that they didn't hire women or Jews, but they were impressed by her portfolio.

Among her first assignments was writing the advertising copy for Rinso laundry soap and creating the popular Rinso jingle ("Rinso white, Rinso white, happy little washday song").[6]: 81  Eichler wrote copy for Rinso for approximately ten years.[7]

One of the agency's new clients was the publishing company Nelson Doubleday, and Eichler, then 18, was assigned the job of trying to sell 1,000 remaining copies of the pre-1900 Everyman's Encyclopedia of Etiquette by Emily Holt.[3][2] Eichler created an ad showing a guest spilling coffee on the host's tablecloth with the caption, "Has this ever happened to you?"[3] and continued with text designed to appeal to innate insecurities about social embarrassment:[2]

If you were a guest at dinner and you overturned a cup of coffee, what would you do? Would you turn to the hostess and say, 'I beg your pardon'? Would you offer your apologies to the entire company? Would you ignore the incident completely? Which is the correct thing to do?

— Lillian Eichler

Her campaign was so successful that the inventory was sold quickly, but the books themselves contained archaic advice, illustrations, and language and most were quickly returned.[3][6][2]

Eichler continued to write advertising copy, including for Cocomalt, whose ads during the time she worked on the account pivoted the brand's approach to selling the stir-in vitamin supplement from focusing on "images of children spotlighted in sunshine" to ads in which mothers suffered social embarrassment because their malnourished children misbehaved in public.[8][9][1]

For Ruthrauff & Ryan she also did a series of ads for Lifebuoy soap that focussed on another source of anxiety, body odor.[2]

By 1935 at the age of 32 she was training her brother Alfred to take over her accounts to allow her to become Ruthrauff & Ryan's "idea man" for the agency's entire client list.[1]

Etiquette books
Advertisement headlined 'Again She Orders: "A Chicken Salad, Please"'
Eichler Watson's well-known 1921 ad, which she wrote for her own Book of Etiquette[3]

Doubleday realized that the success of the marketing campaign itself meant there was a market for an etiquette book and reasoned that if Eichler's ad copy could sell the book, then she might be good enough to rewrite the book herself.[3][4][2] She wrote it in two months after working hours.[4][2]

Eichler's 1921 revised version, The Book of Etiquette,[10] was more modern and appealed to young immigrants anxious to learn correct American behavior.[4] She also wrote the ad for it, headlined "Again She Orders..."A Chicken Salad, Please", which has been described as "sensationally successful"[11]: 173  and has been included in Julian Watkins's The 100 Greatest Advertisements in its dozens of editions from the first in 1949 through the most recent in 2013.[3][6]: 67  The advertisement portrayed the plight of a young woman who, on a date with a man she wants to impress, doesn't know how to order dinner in a fancy restaurant, which Victor Schwab said was effective because it "capsulized a common and embarrassing situation."[12] "The chicken-salad girl" became a national reference point.[3] Schwab in 1962 noted that the ad's headline was still being quoted and along with other headlines from the campaign had entered everyday language.[12][1] Examples include those from other ads created by Eichler such as: "What's Wrong in This Picture?" (a phrase Arthur M. Schlesinger credited her with coining),[5] "Why I Cried After the Ceremony", "May She Invite Him into the House?", "She Ordered Filet Mignon and She Thought it was Fish", and "Suppose This Happened on Your Wedding Day?"[3][12][1] Accompanying illustrations emphasized the embarrassment of those being portrayed.[4] The campaigns were "the direct inspiration" of the Everybody Tittered style of advertising that dominated the 1920s.[2]

The book became "the first really successful book on etiquette" in the United States, according to Ken magazine.[2] Eichler became the bestselling author in the United States.[2]

A young man (incorrectly) walks between two women on the street. A woman passerby stares back (also incorrectly) at his gaffe.

Eichler wrote a followup, Etiquette Problems in Pictures, which followed a young and socially inept couple as they attempted to impress neighbors, employers, and others but inevitably embarrassed themselves due to their lack of knowledge of social norms.[4] The book appealed to "those who aspired to the middle class after World War I" and in particular new immigrants.[4] The original Book of Etiquette was published as a gold-edged double volume set and sold more than two million copies at $1.98 each.[3] Eichler produced a revised edition in 1925; although advertising was discontinued approximately in 1939, by 1949 a $1 edition was still generating 2,000 sales per month.[3] By 1959 the newest edition was according to Watkins, "still selling nearly as briskly in bookstores as it once sold by mail."[7]

In the mid-twenties, Eichler was doing a weekly 10-minute radio show on WGBS.[4]

One reviewer of a revised version in 1949 warned those who might be "clinging to an old-fashioned rule or two that might mark you as a fussbudget, vintage 1931" that they might update their manners by reading Eichler's newly updated The Standard Book of Etiquette.[13]

Eichler's books competed with those by Emily Post and the two alternated for books with top sales positions.[4] Whereas Post's 1921 book, Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics, and at Home, seemed formal and detached, Eichler's book, as described by literary critic Edmund Wilson, was "friendly and accessible".[4][14] It frequently out-sold Post, which according to her biographer Laura Claridge made Post quite furious that "a teenage daughter of Jewish immigrants would dare write a book about etiquette".[4] Post's publisher in their ads emphasized the relative authority Post had to "share precious knowledge" to which she had unique access because of her position in society.[4] By 1923 ads for Post's book were making pointed comparisons about the appeal-to-fear nature of the advertising for Eichler's book: "Friendly Example – Not Ridicule".[4]

Eichler-Watson continued to update her etiquette books with several new editions over the next thirty years.[6]

Other writing

Eichler also wrote other nonfiction and fiction.[1] Her The Customs of Mankind, an 800-page work, became a bestseller in England.[1] Other nonfiction included Well-Bred English (1926) and The Art of Conversation.[1] Works of fiction included Still Born.[1]

Impact

Claridge called Eichler "without a doubt the great forgotten figure in American manners."[4] The 1941 How to Get a Job and Win Success in Advertising (co-edited by Eichler) said 'Again She Orders..."A Chicken Salad Please"' had "paved the way for Emily Post, and helped raise the general level of culture in this country."[15] New Outlook in 1935 said she had "made the country etiquette-conscious".[1]

The campaigns she wrote for her first etiquette book were "the direct inspiration" of the Everybody Tittered style of advertising that dominated the 1920s.[2]

Her first etiquette book became "the first really successful book on etiquette" in the United States, according to Ken magazine.[2] Eichler became the bestselling author in the United States at the time.[2]

Bibliography
  • The Book of Etiquette (1921),[10] later reprinted as The Standard Book of Etiquette[16]
  • Etiquette Problems in Pictures[14][17]
  • Well Bred English (1926)[4][18]
  • The Book of Conversation [1]
  • Charles Dickens[19][20]
  • The Customs of Mankind[1][21]
  • Wee Moderns[22]
  • Still Born[22]
  • The Standard Book of Letter Writing (1948)[23][24]
  • Light From Many Lamps (1951)[25][26]

Personal life

Eichler married Tobias F. Watson in 1928 and had two children.[3] In 1941, she and Watson built a 20-room Tudor-styled house in Jackson Heights, Queens,[27] which was declared a landmark, but was finally demolished by New York City in 2011 after unsuccessful efforts to save it.[28]

References
  1. Berchtold, William E. (January 1935). "The Men Who Sell You". New Outlook. Archived from the original on February 24, 2022. Retrieved February 24, 2022.
  2. Caroll, Sydney (March 9, 1939). "Inside New York". Ken: 82–84.
  3. Watkins, Julian Lewis (1949). The 100 greatest advertisements, who wrote them and what they did. New York: Moore Pub. Co. pp. 66–67. OCLC 891222. Archived from the original on February 12, 2022. Retrieved February 12, 2022.
  4. Claridge, Laura P. (2008). Emily Post: Daughter of the Gilded Age, Mistress of American Manners (1st ed.). New York: Random House. pp. 246, 262–265, 279. ISBN 978-0-375-50921-6. OCLC 191922875.
  5. Schlesinger, Arthur M (1975). Learning how to behave: a historical study of American etiquette books. New York: Cooper Square Publishers. OCLC 911880466. Archived from the original on February 25, 2022. Retrieved February 24, 2022.
  6. Watkins, Julian Lewis (2013). The 100 Greatest Advertisements: Who Wrote Them and What They Did (2nd ed.). New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-20540-3. OCLC 13868567.
  7. Watkins, Julian Lewis (1959). The 100 greatest advertisements: who wrote them and what they did. New York; London: Dover : Constable. pp. 67, 81. ISBN 978-0-486-20540-3. OCLC 1023884709.
  8. Berchtold, William E. (January 1935). "The Men Who Sell You". New Outlook. Archived from the original on February 24, 2022. Retrieved February 24, 2022.
  9. Marchand, Roland (September 16, 1985). Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity, 1920-1940. University of California Press. pp. 308–309+. ISBN 978-0-520-05885-9.
  10. Sivulka, Juliann (2012). Ad Women: How They Impact What We Need, Want, and Buy. Prometheus Books. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-61592-068-6. Archived from the original on February 12, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  11. Worstell, Robert C.; Schwab, Victor O. (May 30, 2014). How to Write a Good Ad – Masters of Marketing Secrets: A Short Course In Copywriting. Lulu.com. ISBN 978-1-312-10023-7. Archived from the original on February 12, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2022.
  12. Schwab, Victor O (1962). How to write a good advertisement: a short course in copywriting. No. Hollywood, Calif.: Wilshire Book Co. pp. 75, 162. OCLC 36034794.
  13. "Etiquette: In 1949, it rejects customs that are out of date, bases behavior on a foundation of common sense". The Akron Beacon Journal. March 13, 1949. p. 92. Archived from the original on February 3, 2022. Retrieved February 3, 2022.
  14. Bramen, Carrie Tirado (2017). American Niceness: A Cultural History. Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN 978-0-674-97649-8. OCLC 972736391. Archived from the original on March 20, 2022. Retrieved December 27, 2021.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  15. Burtt, Harold E.; Lowen, Walter A.; Watson, Lillian Eichler (1941). "How to Get a Job and Win Success in Advertising". Journal of Marketing. 6 (3): 328. doi:10.2307/1245893. ISSN 0022-2429. JSTOR 1245893.
  16. "New Volume on Etiquette". Lexington Herald-Leader. November 7, 1948. Archived from the original on February 3, 2022. Retrieved February 3, 2022.
  17. Eichler, Lillian (December 27, 1924). Etiquette Problems in Pictures. N. Doubleday, inc. Archived from the original on December 27, 2021. Retrieved December 27, 2021 – via HathiTrust.
  18. Watson, Lillian Eichler (December 27, 1926). "Well-bred English / by Lillian Eichler". Doubleday, Page & Company – via Internet Archive.
  19. "Charles Dickens : An appreciation of his books and a guide to their reading". 1926.
  20. "Lillian Eichler Watson". Open Library. Archived from the original on December 26, 2021. Retrieved December 26, 2021.
  21. Eichler, Lillian (December 27, 1924). "Customs Of Mankind" – via Internet Archive.
  22. "Lillian Eichler Watson". Archived from the original on February 20, 2022. Retrieved February 20, 2022.
  23. Rockwell, Sandra (September 1, 1968). "Thank you notes". Fort Lauderdale News. p. 69. Archived from the original on February 3, 2022. Retrieved February 3, 2022.
  24. Eichler, Lillian (December 27, 1966). Lillian Eichler Watson's Standard Book of Letter Writing and Correct Social Forms. Prentice-Hall. OCLC 1546409. Archived from the original on December 26, 2021. Retrieved December 26, 2021 – via Open WorldCat.
  25. Watson, Lillian (January 15, 1988). Light from Many Lamps. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 9780671652500. Archived from the original on December 26, 2021. Retrieved December 26, 2021.
  26. Williams, Emma Inman (September 30, 1951). "Treasury of Stories and Poems Helps People Help Themselves". The Jackson Sun. p. 24. ISBN 9780671652500. Archived from the original on February 3, 2022. Retrieved February 3, 2022.
  27. Hirshon, Nicholas (June 14, 2011). "Proposal to Demolish Queens Mansion to Make Way for New Middle School Angers Preservationists". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on December 26, 2021. Retrieved December 26, 2021.
  28. Hirshon, Nocholas (August 26, 2011). "Memories of a Mansion: Meet to Lament Loss of Home in Jackson Heights". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on December 26, 2021. Retrieved December 26, 2021.
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