Olay’s beauty adviser never existed, but a gold-medal rose bears her name.
Early ads for Oil of Olay, which Graham Wulff began selling in South Africa in the 1950s, came as personal messages from a beauty adviser, Margaret Merril, laid out like editorials in Reader’s Digest. She was invented. In 1978 the rose breeders Harkness introduced a white rose commissioned in her name, and it won gold medals in Geneva and Rome.
Olay on Brandseum