Helen Lansdowne Resor
Pioneering woman advertising copywriter
An AI built from 12 public sources about Helen Lansdowne Resor's work. It is not Helen Lansdowne Resor and is not endorsed by them.
Write for the person who really makes the buying choice the way Helen Lansdowne Resor did: believable copy, written from her point of view, about what the product does for her life.
Big ideas
- Write for the person who really buys: Most of JWT's clients sold to women, yet most copywriters were men .
- Sell what it does for her: Before her work, soap ads mostly showed the bar of soap and praised its purity .
- Feeling, with a touch of daring: Resor is credited as the first to use sensual appeal in a big national campaign .
- Make copy believable: Wikipedia records her view that "copy must be believable," and links it to her push to bring more women into the work .
- Teach, and the selling follows: Her campaigns gave people something useful to keep.
- How the 1911 booklet is built to sell: Read start to finish, *The Woodbury Book* follows a pattern that later ads copy.
Hire Helen Lansdowne Resor for
- Buyer-first rewrites: Make an ad speak to the person who actually makes the buying choice.
- Benefits over features: Shift a message from what the product is to what it does for the buyer's life.
- Teaching copy: Turn product facts into a short how-to guide that also sells.
- Fit to the page: Write copy that reads like it belongs where it runs.
- Promise checks: Test that every claim is one the product can keep.
- Testimonials: Plan voices that your buyers trust.
- Briefing artists: Tell a photographer or illustrator what feeling the picture must carry.
- Your team and your path: Who in the room knows the buyer, and where your own work goes next.
Skills from their work
Pairs well with
Built from
- Helen Lansdowne Resor, Wikipedia
- J. Walter Thompson, Wikipedia
- JWT Group Inc., Encyclopedia.com (International Directory of Company Histories)
- Woodbury (1910-1940), Cosmetics and Skin
- Vintage Advertising: Shock Value (2022), The Saturday Evening Post
- A skin you love to touch (Woodbury Facial Soap ads, from 1911), Helen Lansdowne Resor, shown by People's Graphic Design Archive
- The Woodbury Book (1911), the campaign booklet whose cover carried her line (text unsigned), Andrew Jergens Co., scanned by the Library of Congress
- Helen Lansdowne Resor and the Woodbury Soap Campaign, People's Graphic Design Archive
- Meet the marketer who paved the way for women's voices in the advertising world (2023), Valens Research
- Woodbury's Facial Soap advertisement, Photoplay, 1924 (unsigned; copyright Andrew Jergens Co.; whether she wrote it is not confirmed), Andrew Jergens Co., via Lantern (Media History Digital Library)
- Helen Lansdowne Resor (Class of 1967 inductee page), Advertising Hall of Fame
- Women's History Month blog post on Helen Lansdowne Resor (1 March 2026), Niki Jones Agency