o.b. ads
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What does o.b. mean? Part
2 (Part 1)
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In part 1 (here) I brilliantly concluded - actually I read it in the ad recently after having guessed what it meant years ago - that o.b. meant "ohne [B]inde," German for "without a pad." A German company invented and owned the tampon before the American company Johnson & Johnson bought the brand in the 1970s, which accounts for the "foreign" language connection to the letters.But the Dutchman who kindly sent me these ads (and the earlier o.b. ad here, and several other items on this site) mentioned that when he was growing up in the Netherlands o.b. didn't mean "ohne [B]inde" (I bracket the B because German nouns are capitalized except when marketing people get a hold of them). It meant "Onmerkbare Bescherming" - "unnoticeable protection." (Note that in the two ads, below, they are capitalized to draw your attention to the "translation." Dutch nouns are not normally capitalized.) Just as more than one American has told me that o.b. stands for "obstetrician," so the Dutch were led to believe it meant something in their own language - and by the company's ads!And incredibly - the ad world was on a roll - French ad people changed the letters o.b. in a later ad (here) to mean not words but numbers.I can't think of another instance in which a company actually changes the meaning of its product name to fit another country in which it appears. Clever marketing! And wise companies, I think, to allow that creativity.A Dutchman generously sent the scans of these ads along with his story, above. |
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The ad copy is
similar to that of many tampons,
including Tampax.
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My translation:
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End What does o.b. mean? Part 1
o.b. ads: German (early 1950s) - German (1970s) - German nude (1970s) - French (1989)