Confidence, cleanliness, freshness and care

Martin Topel on the unmistakable design of the NIVEA tin for 100 years

In 1911, Dr Isaac Lifschütz invented the emulsifier Eucerit. This made it possible to combine oils and water into a creamy substance. The NIVEA brand has been around ever since. What does the name mean?

Martin Topel: The name comes from the super-white colour of this cream. We have succeeded in making it pure white in colour. NIVEA is derived from the Latin word "niveus" or "nivea", which means "snow-white" and expresses the claim to the product.

The NIVEA cream jar has had its unmistakable blue colour since 1925. Why blue in particular?

Martin Topel: It's this purity, it's nature, it's clarity and with this white curved lettering it's also a wonderful quotation of a blue summer sky with white clouds. The concept of this campaign goes back to Juan Gregorio Clausen, who was advertising manager at Beiersdorf from 1920. The colour blue stands for trust, reliability, cleanliness, freshness and care. If you look at other products from this period, the NIVEA design was incredibly modern. No frills, no embellishments, a clarity that still completely inspires us today.

NIVEA Creme is the oldest and most successful skin care cream in the world. Inspired by its success, Beiersdorf AG soon also produced powder, soap, hair milk and shaving soap. How did you advertise the product back then?

Martin Topel: In the early years of NIVEA advertising, especially from the 1920s onwards, Beiersdorf AG relied on innovative and, until then, unusually modern advertising strategies. You have to imagine that the Bauhaus also emerged in the 1920s, there was a radical change, away from Art Nouveau and towards this clarity. The communication strategy was good because it emphasised the natural. This simplicity and also the fragrance, which has remained the same to this day, has a freshness. This was incorporated very appropriately and harmoniously into the advertising concept. They started testing advertising posters in the Hamburg area. The healthy, well-groomed family was portrayed in its naturalness. Advertising was increasingly aimed at broad sections of the population and was very progressive for its time. At the time, advertising used illustrations and strikingly designed posters featuring elegant women, cheerful children or sporty men. Stylised depictions were often used, idealised images of beauty that radiated closeness, confidence and purity. This period also saw the introduction of the famous 'NIVEA child', a blonde, healthy, laughing child, symbolising innocence, naturalness and care. This motif characterised the brand identity for decades. So with sport, health and family, the advertising emphasised physical fitness, healthy skin care and a sense of family, making NIVEA a product for the whole family. Targeted advertising in newspapers, magazines and on advertising pillars positioned NIVEA as a reliable everyday companion for care and hygiene. The cream symbolised something modern and even then was presented as something scientifically tested. NIVEA was not a luxury item, but a product for everyone.

Beiersdorf AG is also up to date in terms of advertising. With the "NIVEA boys", three brothers, and the "advertising girls", three sisters, they also reached the very young target group in 1924 and 1925. That was clever marketing, wasn't it?

Martin Topel: Yes, it's that youthfulness. The fantastic skin that young people have was once again used as a surface to show the effect of the cream and to promise that, even if I am older and always apply Nivea cream, I will retain this youthfulness. That's why we look after our skin, to preserve and protect it. Clausen came up with a campaign with the "NIVEA boys". This was advertised throughout Germany from February 1924. What was new about the campaign was the lightness and joy in the portrayal of the three young Berlin brothers. Nothing here seemed artificial or stylistically overloaded. The advertising campaign thus matched the new and fresh design of the cream jar. The NIVEA brand developed a fresh image through the standardised language of the product and advertising. With these groundbreaking decisions, Clausen became one of the most important personalities in Beiersdorf's history, proving how early advertising that adapted to social conditions could lead to phenomenal success.

At the end of the 1920s, Beiersdorf also produced advertising films for the cinema and had its finger on the pulse of the times with a new image of women. What did that look like?

Martin Topel: It was the self-confident, free woman who no longer stood in the shadow of her husband, who acted independently, who was radiant, who appeared with a natural beauty and thus captured the spirit of the times. Clausen recognised that profound social changes had taken place. 'Youth' and 'leisure' became the buzzwords of the time, and outdoor tanned skin stood for naturalness and health and no longer for hard labour on the land. Tanned skin was the new ideal of beauty in the Weimar Republic.

In the 1950s, holiday trips increased, especially to Italy, and NIVEA was already involved in research into sun protection. Today, almost 500 employees work in research and development. The inflatable NIVEA ball was added to the range as a merchandising product. Another great success, right?

Martin Topel: That's right, the NIVEA ball, I can remember as a child, I first saw it on other children and then got it myself. This incredibly shiny deep blue colour with this white lettering has many aspects. When you think of it, you immediately have advertising images in your head of how it stands out against the blue sky and happy, tanned people in a holiday mood on the beach - that's one of the associations. As a product, it cost almost nothing and was cheap to produce and ship. They started with 50,000 units in 1971 and they were sold out immediately. Then, in 1977, this number was increased to half a million and, from 1999, the peak was reached with 2.2 million units as an advertising medium. Since 2006, around 1.5 million NIVEA balls have been produced every year. And for me as a product designer, one thing is particularly exciting: when you look at the ball and see it in a picture, it basically represents this three-dimensional object of the tin with the lettering. It is a blue circle with the NIVEA lettering in the centre. This is congenial, as if the product were being made to be played with.

The new NIVA Milk and a range of baby products followed in the 1960s. However, the blue colour is always a priority. Makers of successful products say: "Simple, clear designs can help to keep customers interested." Is that true?

Martin Topel: Well, if you're talking about the 1960s, the brand is already 40 years old. Continuity is of course incredibly valuable for brand recognition. Seth Godin (American author and entrepreneur, editor's note) once said: 'A brand is a set of expectations, memories, stories and relationships. When I smell NIVEA cream today, I am immediately transported back to my childhood, when my mother rubbed it on me for the first time, that feeling of maternal care, that cosiness and security, these are all things that pop up when I am confronted with NIVEA today as an older person. That is why this continuity in the presentation, in the formulation and even in the fragrance is so important, so that this trust is not disappointed.

Today, NIVEA is available in over 200 countries. Do you also use the cream as an adult?

Martin Topel: Yes of course, I also use NIVEA shaving cream and in fact, without even thinking about it, I assume that this other product also has the same quality aspects that I have known about the cream since I was a child. So I am an excellent victim of this marketing strategy.

Uwe Blass

Professor Martin Topel is an industrial designer and has been a professor at the University of Wuppertal's Industrial Design programme since 1999. His department specialises in the product development of capital goods and product systems.