Ilon Specht, who rebelled against her patriarchal male colleagues at an advertising agency by writing a hit television commercial for L’Oréal’s Preference hair color that included a message of feminist empowerment that has endured for decades, died on the 20th. April at his son’s home in Barrington, Rhode Island, near Providence. She was 81 years old.
Her son, Brady Case, said the cause was complications from endometrial cancer.
It was 1973. Ms. Specht was a copywriter at the McCann-Erickson (now McCann) agency in Manhattan. L’Oréal was using Preference, a relatively new product, to challenge the market dominance of Clairol’s Nice ‘n Easy. The agency team had a month to create a campaign to replace one that had been cancelled.
“We were sitting in this big office and everyone was discussing what the ad should be,” Specht told Malcolm Gladwell of The New Yorker in 1999. “They wanted to do something with a woman sitting by a window and the wind blowing through her. . curtains. You know, one of those fake places with big glamorous curtains. The woman was a complete object. I don’t even think she spoke. “They just didn’t understand it.”
“They” were the men who wanted a traditional advertisement, whose expectations she disregarded. Cursing herself in anger, she wrote the commercial in about five minutes.
“I use the most expensive hair dye in the world,” the ad began. “Preference for L’Oréal. It’s not that I care about money. It’s just that I care about my hair. It’s not just the color. I expect a great color. What matters most to me is how my hair feels. Soft and silky but with body. It feels good against my neck. I actually don’t mind spending more on L’Oréal.”
Ms. Specht recited those words from memory when interviewed by The New Yorker. She then she came to the slogan.
“’Because’—and here Specht took his fist and beat his chest—’I’m worth it,’” Gladwell wrote.
But while the campaign was being approved, two versions were filmed: the one for which Specht became known, and a second, promoted by her male colleagues, in which her words were rewritten and spoken by a man while walking in a meadow with a woman who looks at him with adoration. She remains silent except for a giggle.
“She actually doesn’t mind spending more on L’Oréal,” he says, “because she’s worth it.”
That version (which was never published) was completely wrong, Specht said in a short upcoming documentary, “The Final Copy of Ilon Specht,” directed by Ben Proudfoot.
“This was not for men,” he said, “but for women and other human beings.”
“I’m worth it” has been used and modified (as in “You’re worth it” and “We’re worth it”) for decades in L’Oréal advertising and branding. The first person to speak these words in an advertisement was Joanne Dusseau, model and actress, then, among others, Cybill Shepherd, Meredith Baxter, Kate Winslet, Andie MacDowell, Gwen Stefani and Beyoncé.
“’I’m worth it,’” Winslet said in a promotional video for L’Oréal in 2022. “It feels really good to say it. ‘I’m worth it.’ “That phrase is magical.”
In a full-page ad that ran May 5 in the Style section of the New York Times, L’Oréal Paris and McCann Worldgroup paid tribute to Ms. Specht.
“Her powerful words challenged beauty industry standards from within,” it read, in part, “and inspired women to recognize their inherent value.”
Illene Joy Specht was born on April 19, 1943 in Brooklyn. Her father, Sanford, owned a furniture store. Her mother, Annette (Jacobs) Specht, worked with him. Illene started college at age 16 at Syracuse University and then transferred to UCLA when her family moved to Los Angeles. She was kicked out, along with her roommate, after her roommate’s boyfriend was found in her dorm room.
She was still a teenager when she began working in advertising, first as a secretary and then as an editor. By then, she had changed her name to Ilon, a sort of rebranding, her son said. She worked at agencies such as Young & Rubicam and Jack Tinker & Partners and was eventually hired at McCann-Erickson, where she spent a short time before starting to work on the L’Oréal advertisement.
“He had a lot of personal integrity,” Michael Sennott, a McCann-Erickson account executive who worked with Specht on the L’Oréal campaign, said in a telephone interview. He added: “Either you have writers who can imitate the current trend or the current trend is who they are. “She really represented what was going on in society, particularly among women.”
He left around 1974 to Jordan McGrath Case & Partners.
As the agency’s creative director, she oversaw campaigns for clients such as Life cereal (one ad, which featured several children, included the phrase “Unless they’re weird, your kids will eat it”) and Underalls, the pantyhose brand. , which promised Women Had No Panty Line and had a slogan that read, “They make me look like I’m not wearing anything.”
She rose to executive vice president and executive creative director, but left in 2000 after Havas Advertising acquired the agency.
“She was not part of the group that engineered the sale and saw it as a betrayal,” Case said in a telephone interview.
He opened an antique store in Ojai, California, but kept his apartment at The Dakota in Manhattan, which he had purchased in 1976.
In addition to her son, Ms. Specht is survived by a stepdaughter, Alison Case; two stepsons, Timothy and Christopher Case; two grandchildren; and a sister, Meredith Schiller. Her marriages to Burton Blum and Eugene Case, founder of Jordan McGrath Case, ended in divorce.
In “The Final Copy of Ilon Specht,” which tells the double story of the L’Oréal advertisement and Ms. Specht’s love affair with her stepdaughter, Ms. Specht is shown in bed, weakened by her illness, while talking about the message of his commercial.
“It’s about humans, not advertising,” he said. “It’s about taking care of people. Because we are all worth it or no one is worth it.”