Ivory () is an American flagship personal care brand created by the
Procter & Gamble
The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/con ...
Company (P&G), including varieties of white and mildly
scented bar
soap
Soap is a salt (chemistry), salt of a fatty acid (sometimes other carboxylic acids) used for cleaning and lubricating products as well as other applications. In a domestic setting, soaps, specifically "toilet soaps", are surfactants usually u ...
that became famous for its claim of purity and for floating on water. Over the years, the brand has been extended to other varieties and products.
History
In 1840, the J.B. Williams Company in
Glastonbury, Connecticut
Glastonbury ( ) is a town in the Capitol Planning Region, Connecticut, Capitol Planning Region, Connecticut, United States, formally founded in 1693 and first settled in 1636. It was named after Glastonbury in Somerset, England. Glastonbury is ...
, manufactured soap under the name Ivorine. Williams decided to focus on its shaving soap and sold Ivorine to Procter & Gamble, which later developed Ivory.
In 1879, James Norris Gamble, son of Procter & Gamble co-founder
James Gamble and a trained chemist, developed an inexpensive white soap. The name Ivory was created by Harley Procter, the other founder's son, who was inspired by the quote "
l thy garments smell of myrrh and aloes and cassia out of the ivory palaces", from
Psalm 45 of the
Bible
The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...
. In September 1879, Procter & Gamble trademarked "Ivory" as the name of its new soap product.
As Ivory is one of P&G's oldest products – it was first sold in 1879 – P&G is sometimes called "Ivory Towers", and its factory and research center in
St. Bernard, Ohio, is named "Ivorydale".
[
]
Ivory's first slogan, "It Floats!", was introduced in 1891. The product's other well-known slogan, "% Pure", which was in use by 1895, was based on the results of an analysis by an independent laboratory that Harley Procter hired to demonstrate that Ivory was purer than the castile soap available at the time.
The original Ivory bar soap was whipped with air in its production and floated in water, although P&G discontinued this version of the soap in 2023, and the new version no longer floats. According to an apocryphal story, later discounted by the company, a worker accidentally left the mixing machine on too long, and the company chose to sell the "ruined" batch because the added air did not change the basic ingredients of the soap. When appreciative letters about the new, floating soap inundated the company, P&G ordered the extended mix time as a standard procedure. However, company records indicate that the design of Ivory did not come about by accident. In 2004, over 100 years later, the P&G company archivist Ed Rider found documentation that revealed that James N. Gamble, who was a chemist, had discovered how to make the soap float and noted the result in his writings.[
In October 1992, Procter & Gamble market-tested a new Ivory formula, a "skin care bar" that would address customer complaints about dryness but would not float like the original.] In October 2001, P&G tested the sinking bar soap as part of an advertising campaign
An advertising campaign or marketing campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication (IMC). An IMC is a platform in which a group of people can group their ide ...
in the United States, in a six-month plan to release 1,051 soap bars that sink, among other bars that float, to see if people would notice the sinking bars, even if given a cash reward of up to $250,000. The D. L. Blair company, part of Draft Worldwide, a unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies, was assigned to administer the contest.
21st century
Ivory is currently a small brand by P&G standards. The Ivory brand includes the classic bar soap, clear liquid soap (discontinued before 2016), hair and body wash, dish liquid, and a mild laundry detergent (not a soap) product called Ivory Snow. Research in 2001 by Lehman Brothers
Lehman Brothers Inc. ( ) was an American global financial services firm founded in 1850. Before filing for bankruptcy in 2008, Lehman was the fourth-largest investment bank in the United States (behind Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Merril ...
revealed that the U.S. sales of all Ivory products, including the liquid soap and dish detergent, represented less than 1% of P&G's total worldwide sales in the 52 weeks ended September 9, 2001.
Ingredients
A classic Ivory soap bar contains sodium tallowate, sodium cocoate or sodium palm kernelate, water
Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...
, sodium chloride
Sodium chloride , commonly known as Salt#Edible salt, edible salt, is an ionic compound with the chemical formula NaCl, representing a 1:1 ratio of sodium and chloride ions. It is transparent or translucent, brittle, hygroscopic, and occurs a ...
, sodium silicate
Sodium silicate is a generic name for chemical compounds with the formula or ยท, such as sodium metasilicate (), sodium orthosilicate (), and sodium pyrosilicate (). The anions are often polymeric. These compounds are generally colorless tra ...
, magnesium sulfate
Magnesium sulfate or magnesium sulphate is a chemical compound, a salt with the formula , consisting of magnesium cations (20.19% by mass) and sulfate anions . It is a white crystalline solid, soluble in water but not in ethanol.
Magnesi ...
, and fragrance
An aroma compound, also known as an odorant, aroma, fragrance, flavoring or flavor, is a chemical compound that has a smell or odor. For an individual chemical or class of chemical compounds to impart a smell or fragrance, it must be sufficien ...
. The soap has a determined pH value of 9.5.
Ivory dishwashing liquid contains water, sodium lauryl sulfate
Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) or sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS), sometimes written sodium laurilsulfate, is an organic compound with the formula and structure . It is an anionic surfactant used in many cleaning and hygiene products. This compound ...
, sodium laureth sulfate, alkyl dimethyl amine oxide, sodium chloride, PPG-26, cyclohexanediamine, phenoxyethanol, methylisothiazolinone, and fragrance. It is sometimes considered a detergent
A detergent is a surfactant or a mixture of surfactants with Cleanliness, cleansing properties when in Concentration, dilute Solution (chemistry), solutions. There are a large variety of detergents. A common family is the alkylbenzene sulfonate ...
instead of a soap.
New varieties of Ivory soap contain new ingredients. Simply Ivory (French: ''simplement ivory'') contains sodium tallowate and/or sodium palmate, water, sodium cocoate or sodium palm kernelate, glycerin, sodium chloride, fragrance, and one or more of the following: coconut acid, palm kernel acid, tallow
Tallow is a rendered form of beef or mutton suet, primarily made up of triglycerides.
In industry, tallow is not strictly defined as beef or mutton suet. In this context, tallow is animal fat that conforms to certain technical criteria, inc ...
acid, palmitic acid
Palmitic acid (hexadecanoic acid in IUPAC nomenclature) is a fatty acid with a 16-carbon chain. It is the most common saturated fatty acid found in animals, plants and microorganisms.Gunstone, F. D., John L. Harwood, and Albert J. Dijkstra. The ...
, and tetrasodium EDTA. Adding glycerol and fatty acids typically reduces the soap's harshness, while tetrasodium EDTA is used primarily to reduce soap scum formation. Ivory soap packaging has omitted the words "soap" or "float", and is now produced with modified formulas; Ivory soap no longer floats.
See also
* Operation Ivory Soap
Operation Ivory Soap was a classified United States military project to provide forward theatre support for aircraft repair and maintenance during World War II in the Pacific War, Pacific Theatre of Operations. Six Liberty ships were converted int ...
, named after the product
* Sunlight
Sunlight is the portion of the electromagnetic radiation which is emitted by the Sun (i.e. solar radiation) and received by the Earth, in particular the visible spectrum, visible light perceptible to the human eye as well as invisible infrare ...
, cleaning product
References
External links
Ivory Products Home Page
{{Procter & Gamble
Soap brands
Procter & Gamble brands
1879 introductions