The Bold Marketing History Behind the Bikini

Leaders shouldn’t be afraid of making waves.

A key reason many companies fail to get noticed is they want it both ways: get lots of attention, but avoid any controversy.

However, history shows that marketing success favors the bold.

For instance, in 1946, there were two fashion designers trying to get attention for their new bathing suits.

Two-Piece History

The first to market was French couturier Jacques Heim, who advertised his “Atome” design as “the smallest swimsuit in the world.” (Although it was still high-waisted and modest by today’s standards.)

The other designer was Louis Réard, who named his product after a coral atoll in the Pacific Ocean where the U.S. recently conducted a nuclear test – Bikini.

Réard supposedly chose the name because he thought it would inspire the same shock and awe of the bomb, and he was right. It was the first popular style to expose the navel – a major cultural faux pas at the time – and was banned in Italy, Portugal, Spain and many U.S. states.

But Réard courted the controversy. At the announcement press conference, an exotic dancer modeled a bikini made with fabric resembling newsprint, a nod to the news coverage he expected.

In ads, Réard quipped that a suit wasn’t a bikini “unless it could be pulled through a wedding ring.” He even custom-built a car to resemble a yacht and drove it in parades with a crew of bikini-clad models.

All that being said, Heim’s design was initially more successful. It took 20 years for the bikini to really catch on. But because of Réard’s shrewd marketing, two-piece suits are now generally known as bikinis, not Atomes.