In the case of Pears, all early advertising was carefully tuned to nurture the impression that people of taste,
cultivation, and sophistication chose Pears – and so should you.
Barratt tapped into a number of Victorian cultural narratives that helped him make the point –
including the idea of colonialism as a “civilizing” influence on the rest of the world,
which led to some frankly racist advertising like the “white man’s burden” ad above.