How Bond and Sea Island Cotton helped in the ground-breaking Advertising Campaign: with an eye patch

It just takes one (eye patch?) to make genius. Shirt-making company, CF Hathaway, based in Maine at the time hired David Ogilvy, copywriter and businessman to put their shirts on the map–although they didn’t know they’d need to buy a bigger globe. We’ve done the digging for you: What made the eye patch into one of the best advertising campaigns ever run, and why Bond? Why Sea Island Cotton?

• The 1951 Hathaway Ad

• An Unconventional Campaign

• A Character that Made it Stick

• Dos Equis Revival

The 1951 Hathaway Ad

The advertisement in question: “Hathaway imports Sea Island cotton shirting”. Briefly outlining the unique and desirable qualities of sea island cotton, then advertising just one company’s control over the sea island cotton market: C.F. Hathaway, based in Waterville Maine.

What does a small town in the U.S. state that is the furthest from the Caribbean know about Sea Island Cotton? The C.F. Hathaway Company was founded by Charles Foster Hathaway, creating high quality mens shirts. Shifting operations from Massachusetts to a partnership with his brother, George, the Hathaway shirt factory moved around in the beginning. It settled down on June 1, 1853, quickly setting up operations for shirt making. By October, the factory was running 60 hours per week, six days per week humming with activity. Hathaway shirts made tons of starchy white, men’s shirts, gaining even more notoriety for making the uniform shirts for the Union soldiers during the American Civil War.

An Unconventional Campaign

In 1951, the C.F. Hathaway company’s current CEO, Ellerton Jette, hired a man named David Oglivy, of Oglivy & Mather to create an advertisement for the shirts. CF Hathaway had never tried to get its name out in the world before. They had put together the funds for a massive $30,000 advertising campaign to toss their name into the big leagues.

On his way to the photo shoot for the advertisement, Oglivy supposedly stepped into a drug store to purchase 50 cent eyepatches for his model. Inspired by a gentleman who lost his eye during a fishing accident, David Oglivy began creating an ad for the “Hathaway man”, an experienced, yet refined man with sophisticated taste–perfect to wear a Hathaway shirt.

David Oglivy had recruited a Russian aristocrat named Baron George Wrangell to serve as the foundation for the ad, and have him appear in all of the advertisements.

Testing out the eyepatch for fun, something stuck. Photographs with the eye-patch caught Oglivy’s attention. There was something about the allure of a man with a missing eye. How had he lost it? Certainly people were not thinking of a fishing accident.

Off the bat, the Bond Man advertisement soared to the top of the charts. According to Campaign, the first placement in The New Yorker cost $3,176, and within a week had completely paid off. Every Hathaway shirt in New York had been sold. The genius of the advertisement took off, becoming #22 of the greatest advertising campaigns of the 20th century.

A Character that Made it Stick

In 1953, British Novelist Ian Fleming had just introduced Bond in his thrilling novel, Casino Royale. By 1954, there would be a television adaptation starring Barry Nelson as James Bond. Not only did the popularity of this television show warrant longer movies and renditions for the following stories, but the appeal made advertising to the modern man desirable.

James Bond and the aura of super-capable, suave, gentlemen-spies grew extremely popular. Men wanted to be him, and women wanted to be near him. While the original advertisement looked to be routine, ordinary, and aristocratic, these ideals played directly into the hands of Ian Fleming, who had created Bond to be just that: an ordinary man. The following character was produced from the love of the audiences that flocked to him.

Dos Equis Revival.

Look a little different? The advertisement survived. In 1968, the ad looked a little bit different, shown in Tiffany stripes, but the Mysterious Man in the Cotton shirt lived on.

In 2006, Dos Equis beer ran an advertising campaign, featuring an older gentleman, dressed in a classic, black and white suit drinking the beer. He was named The Most Interesting Man in the World. Unfortunately, we don’t learn very much about him through the stories of the campaigns, except that he’s impeccably dressed, traveled, talented, appealing and only drinks Dos Equis. The character was played by American actor Jonathan Goldsmith, who was an older face for the alcoholic drink.

This advertisement made the world go crazy. The campaign ran for more than six years, increasing the Dos Equis sales by over 15%, despite the tanking global economy due to the recession in 2008, according to St. Edwards University. The campaign won a lifetime achievement award twice, but it played back to a much older signature: That of the original Hathaway shirt and Oglivy’s iconic placement.

The ad works: It’s a timeless rendition of something that we continue to love. Oglivy and Hathaway struck gold when first finding an eye patch at the store. Who sells those anyway?

Eyepatches or not, the Hathaway advertisement created by Oglivy was one of the most iconic advertisements in history. David Oglivy became the Father of Advertising because of his ingenuity. Do you think that the Bond ad for sea island cotton would still work today?

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