Maybelline ad hits the stands as stock market crashes.

This is a very rare Maybelline Ad! Look at the date this ad appeared in popular magazines. Oct 1929, was the month the stock market crashed!! The October 1929 crash came during a period of declining real estate values in the United States (which peaked in 1925) near the beginning of a chain of events that led to the Great Depression.

Sound familiar? We are going through it again and Maybelline is still the number one eye cosmetic company in the world. Even while other companies fail Maybelline
now – Maybelline New York – continues to profit.

As you can see Maybelline was selling for 75 cents in 1929, but by 1933 Tom Lyle dropped the price to 10 cents for a smaller size box and placed Maybelline in dime stores rather than mail order – thus making it available to all women.

Click here to watch a very short video about the Great Depression and imagine what Tom Lyle was thinking – how to keep Maybelline a float.

read more about Tom Lyle’s marketing strategy and the beautiful ads he used to target every corner of the female market in The Maybelline Story.


He was truly The King of Advertising!