One of the firms, the Compton Advertising Agency, hired Dichter to work on its Ivory Soap account. After conducting a hundred “non-directive interviews” in which he asked subjects to talk about their bathing habits and experiences, Dichter concluded that soap was not about hygiene but rather about erotic self-indulgence. “One of the few occasions when the puritanical American was allowed to caress himself or herself,” lingering in the bathtub gratified the basic impulse of primary narcissism. Thus, Ivory needed to understand that it wasn’t selling soap—it was selling sexual allure, voluptuous
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