It occured to me that “dial” is a pretty meaningless word for a soap brand. What’s the origin of that?
At their website, there are some difficult-to-navigate History Tidbits, one of which is as follows: “Did you know it was 8 o’clock on the clock of the original Dial® soap packaging?”
Why no, I didn’t know that. Is that where the Dial comes from? The dial of a clock? And a clock presumably implies “wash yourself at X intervals throughout the day” - like the softdrink you were supposed to drink at 10:00, 2:00 and 4:00 (Dr. Pepper?)
I think so too, I found a site purporting to be the history of the company Armor-Dial, now just the Dial Corp, which said:
1948 - Meatpacker Armour prunes a list of 700 names and selects “Dial” to identify the world’s first antibacterial deodorant bath soap. During an August heat wave, Dial is advertised in the Chicago Tribune on perfumed, four-color pages promising users 24-hour protection from body odor.
I read in an old Reader’s Digest that the principles were argueing about wha to name it when the boss looked at his phone and decided to call it dial. It may have to be explained that back then, phones were ‘dialed’.