Choose a Category   All P&G Products Air Fresheners Antiperspirants   & Deodorants Baby & Child Care Batteries Body Wash & Soap Colognes Cosmetics Dish Washing Feminine Care Hair Care Hair Color Health Care Household Cleaners Laundry & Fabric Care Oral Care P&G Professional P&G ProLine Paper Products Pet Nutrition Prescription Drugs Prestige Fragrances Shaving Skin Care Small Appliances Snacks   Choose by Brand   All P&G Products A Touch of Sun Activair EasyTab Actonel Align Always Anna Sui Asacol Aussie Baldessarini Balsam Color Boss Boss Skin Bounce Bounty Braun Camay Cascade Charmin Cheer Children's Pepto Christina Aguilera Clairol Clearblue Easy Cover Girl Crest Crest Glide Crest Whitestrips Dantrium Dantrium IV Dawn Didronel Downy Dreft Dunhill Duracell Enablex Era Escada Eukanuba Febreze Air Fresheners Febreze Refreshers Fekkai Fibersure Fixodent Gain Gillette Complete   Skincare Gillette Fusion Gillette Fusion Power Gillette M3POWER Gillette M3POWER Nitro Gillette MACH3 Gillette MACH3 Turbo Gillette SatinCare Gillette Venus Gleem Head & Shoulders Herbal Essences Hugo Hydrience Iams Infusium 23 Ivory Jean Patou Joy Lacoste Loving Care Luvs Macrobid Macrodantin Max Factor Men's Choice Metamucil Mexx Mr. Clean Mr. Clean Autodry Carwash Natural Instincts Nice 'n Easy Noxzema Olay Old Spice Oral-B Pampers Pampers Kandoo Pantene Pepto-Bismol Physique Prilosec OTC Pringles Puffs Puma PUR Replay Safeguard SatinCare Scope Secret SK-II Swiffer Tampax Tide Tom Tailor Ultress Vicks Valentino Zest Zooth Company Help Business Customers: Make Selection Commercial Products P&G Chemicals P&G Health Sciences P&G Pharmaceuticals P&G Products Europe P&G Suppliers Retail/Wholesale Supplier Diversity Professional Services: Make Selection Actonel Healthcare Asacol Professional Commercial Products dentalcare.com Eukanuba Breeders Iams Breeders Iams Vets Corner Iams Vet Students Metamucil Health Safety Data Sheets Salon Professionals Technology Licensing Transora Tremor Download a Report: Make Selection Animal Alternatives Annual Report Company Fact Sheet Business Conduct Manual Connections Map S.Africa HIV/AIDS Report Supplier Guidelines Sustainability &  Philanthropy Report Sustainability &  Philanthropy Exec Summary Values and Policies		The Beginning Tampax Incorporated was formally chartered under the laws of the State of Delaware on Saturday, March 7, 1936. The first executive recruit was Thomas F. Casey, the choice for vice president and treasurer. Casey had spent 10 years in the accounting department at Ellery Mann's previous employer, Zonite. Mann's other executive recruit was Earle A. Griswold, Zonite's production manager, whom he hired as vice president in charge of manufacturing. These three, Mann, Casey and Griswold, would guide Tampax for the next two decades. Mann had the good sense to select men with the expertise and temperament to complement his own special talents and personality. He gave them authority and then left them alone. A new product had to be efficiently manufactured, of course, and strict accounting procedures put into place. Most of all, however, it had to be marketed, advertised, sold and distributed, and this was Mann's pivotal role. Mann's marketing plans took aim at three different audiences: physicians, the drug trade and consumers. Personal contact, the gift of gab, and careful planning — all were essential to the Tampax sales effort. Mann knew from the beginning, however, that without sufficient advertising the effort was doomed to failure. This insight is commonplace today, of course, but Mann was one of the handful of executives during the 1930s who fully grasped advertising's potential. In trade magazines such as his old "Drug Store Retailing" he emphasized the opportunities for profit inherent in stocking and promoting his new product. By contrast, the ads in the "AMA Journal" and various nursing magazines typically featured anatomical drawings and a technical description of the tampon; they sought to educate the professionals who were in a position to advise women about the product. The first ad in the "AMA Journal" asserted that "over 3,000 physicians have written to us inquiring about Tampax" and offered to send interested physicians a free package of tampons and a folder detailing their use. The most important ads of all were those directed at the consumer. A few such ads appeared in New York City newspapers during the first spring. But the central thrust would be national magazines, and Mann began working on ideas for his magazine campaign almost immediately after incorporation. Advertising such a sensitive topic to a national audience would require just the right touch, a combination of aggressive selling and delicate good taste. The first ad appeared on Sunday, July 26, 1936 in the "American Weekly". A Sunday supplement that was inserted in many major newspapers, it claimed the greatest circulation in the world — some 11 million buyers. These visual themes proudly announced that Tampax tampons were available in 100 countries. Tampax literature, he added, was printed in 20 different languages. Education During many trade and professional conventions, Tampax sponsored a booth featuring promotional displays. The Tampax booth featured a so-called demonstrator — a woman hired and trained to talk about the company's tampons. The demonstrator idea evidently originated in 1937, when women were hired to serve as Tampax consultants in department stores in Chicago, Cincinnati and other cities. The demonstrator explained the benefits of tampons to customers and answered their questions. She might also give a series of lectures on sanitary protection to the store's female employees. Out of the demonstrator idea grew the notion of hiring educational consultants — women with a professional medical background who could command respect at conventions of physicians or nurses. Tampax's first full-time educational consultant was Mabel Mathews. In March 1941, Mathews established the company's first formal educational department. She began hiring and training consultants, "Tampax ladies," as they were known, to visit colleges and schools, as well as trade shows and conventions. Their aim was to dispel myths and misconceptions about menstruation and sanitary protection. It was not always an easy task. To illustrate the difficulties, Mathews later liked to recall the time she gave a talk to a women's college in Virginia, where Ellery Mann's older daughter was a student. After the talk, one of the young women announced to Mathews, "Marian Mann goes to school here and her father makes Tampax and she told me she wouldn't be caught dead with them." A key function of the educational department was documenting the safety and efficacy of Tampax tampons. Mann and his colleagues always had felt certain that their new product was medically safe as well as effective, and said so. No evidence to the contrary had surfaced during the previous marketing of Dr. Haas' invention by Gertrude Tenderich and her Tampax Sales Corporation. Nonetheless, scientific research into tampons was virtually nonexistent.Then, in 1939, results from studies by physicians and other researchers began to appear in the medical journals. One of the first such studies, which was published in the August 1939 issue of "Clinical Medicine and Surgery", was conducted by a Brooklyn physician, Harry S. Sackren. In his research, Sackren echoed questions that women as well as doctors were asking about tampons: "Are they irritating? Do they block the flow? Do they cause any changes in the vaginal or cervical tissues?" To find some answers, Sackren observed 20 women using Tampax tampons over a duration of three to five months. He concluded that these tampons: offered complete protection to 90 percent of the women observed and in 94 per cent of the menstrual periods studied; showed no tendency to block the flow; produced no observable changes in the vaginal or cervical tissues (no irritation); caused no infections; were easy and comfortable to use and eliminated odor (because, unlike external pads, the flow is not exposed to the air, which causes decomposition); and were favorably regarded by the patient. In 1941, Madeline J. Thornton, M.D., of the University of Wisconsin Medical School, completed a study of 110 subjects over periods of time ranging from one to two years. Her results generally confirmed those of Sackren. An even more intensive study of the effects of using Tampax tampons was reported in 1943 by Karl J. Karnaky, M.D., a research gynecologist at the Jefferson Davis Hospital in Houston. Over a five-year period he, observed in close detail 42 subjects who were normal in assembly lines were laid out and the maple floors were so saturated with the lubricating oil used in the looms that formerly occupied the weave shed that it took 25 years to get the oil out. McLaughlin set up a machine shop to repair old compressors and build new ones from scratch. Though the plant was situated in the village of Three Rivers, it came to be known as Palmer, after the town of which the village was a part. The Palmer plant had to cope with shortages of raw materials and machine parts created by the war. In order to obtain cotton for tampons and paper for the applicator tubes, the company had to establish that the tampon constituted an essential health product. Mann and Griswold traveled to Washington numerous times to make this case. Their strategy, as Griswold worked it out, was based on the diminutive size of the tampon compared to an external pad. Manufacturing tampons required far less cotton than did pads, and shipping the finished product required far fewer freight cars. Thus, Griswold pointed out, the manufacture of tampons actually freed up raw materials and transportation for other aspects of the war effort. The company received the lowest level of priority, but a priority nonetheless. The plant at Palmer was hard-pressed to keep pace with explosive growth in sales brought on by the war. One reason for this growth was the unprecedented wartime prosperity; after a decade of simply trying to make ends meet, more people had more money to spend. But sales also soared because the lives of women changed radically. Tens of thousands of young women were catapulted out of the kitchen and into military uniform. Millions of other women went into factories, where they took over such traditional male pursuits as welding, operating cranes and running machines. Still others served in volunteer jobs as nurse's aides for the Red Cross or as ambulance drivers for Civilian Defense. The common ingredient in almost all of the changes in women's lives was physical activity. Here now were millions of active women of the kind Tampax long had targeted in its advertising campaigns. But instead of swimming or dancing as in the magazine ads, they were welding, marching or, like the mythical Rosie riveting. The posters in the Tampax drugstore display now portrayed, instead of a swimmer, a woman in the uniform of the Women's Army Corps, along with the slogan, "No time for time-out." Tampons were much easier to take care of for women who were working than the pads. Women found they could put them in their purse and take them along. Sales soared beyond Ellery Mann's most optimistic dreams. Now tampons were actually selling faster than Tampax could make them. Mann had vowed to make Tampax "a household word," and for many years, in its advertising and packaging, the company used the word synonymously with tampon. Griswold, in a series of memoranda to headquarters, pointed out the danger that a competitor might appropriate Tampax on the grounds that it had entered the language as a generic term. Partly as a result of his alertness, the company eventually adopted a policy of always referring to its principal product as Tampax tampons. In March 1946, the company marked its 10th anniversary. In his report to stockholders, Mann wrote, "We feel that we can point with pardonable pride to the fact that Tampax has in that period become one of the best known names in the field of intimate feminine hygiene." In 1984, the company changed its name to Tambrands Inc. Tambrands has manufactured Tampax tampons for almost 60 years, and today is the worldwide market leader. Tampax tampons are sold in more than 150 countries and are used with confidence by more than 100 million women. History of Crest History of Head & Shoulders History of Ivory History of Max Factor History of Noxell History of Old Spice History of Tampax Past Soap Products
©2008 Procter & Gamble. All claims valid only in the U.S.  Terms and Conditions  Privacy Statement  P&G Links  Site Help  Site Map  Contact Us P&G Everyday Solutions:  Register  Modify Profile  Unsubscribe  P&G Global Operations We self-certify compliance with: