Clairol account in 1957 they assigned it to junior copywriter Shirley Polykoff.
Polykoff, their sole female writer, would call upon her first meeting with her
mother-in-law-to-be to generate two lines that would become part and parcel of
of advertising history and earn her a spot in the Advertising Hall of Fame.
Wondering if her future daughter-in-law's tresses were natural, Shirley's soon-
to-be-mother-in-law asked her son, "Does she color her hair, or doesn't she?"
At the time, a woman who colored her hair still ran the risk of being thought
a bit of a floozy, but Polykoff's use of wholesome women doting on children
with the same hair color paired with the tag lines— "Does she, or doesn't
she? Only her hairdresser knows for sure" — suddenly made it acceptable for
a woman to dye her hair. Within six years of the campaign's launch, 70 percent
of adult American women were coloring their hair and Clairol's sales had in-
creased four times over.
