Perspective: The Big Kiss-Off

Scope's prudish days are over

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Conventional wisdom holds that once a brand finds a message that resonates, it sticks with it. This is why Raid’s been telling us it “kills bugs dead” since 1966 and why Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes has been “GR-R-REAT!” since the ‘50s. For the better part of a generation, Scope mouthwash traveled a familiar road, too. (We’ll get to that in a moment.) But as these ads show, conventional wisdom doesn’t hold forever. Sometimes the smartest thing a brand can do is take its familiar marketing message and toss it out—or, in Scope’s case, kiss it goodbye.

Before the year 1966, mouthwash meant Listerine, Lambert Pharmaceutical’s wonder antiseptic whose paranoia-inducing advertising about halitosis prompted millions of Americans to gargle with it every day.

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