Spotless Town" - Sapolio (Collier's Weekly, May 12 1900)
The pattern
This still is filed under Iconic figure claim.
Define
A single figure, drawn, silhouetted, or posed, is the whole claim. You can read it across a street.
Mechanism
Compression into a body. The figure is not decoration. It is the sentence. Distance-legibility is the test.
Verdict
Poster scale, outdoor, packaging at a glance
Why it works
The product name is never argued for, it is rhymed into place. Every stanza ends on SAPOLIO as the rhyme word, so the reader's own ear completes the sale, and the tint change makes the brand the only thing the eye can track down the column. Building one fictional town and populating it with six familiar civic types turns a commodity soap into a serial the audience returns to, which is why the campaign was recited and parodied rather than merely seen. The doctor stanza is the sharpest move: the benefit is proved by the absence of a customer for someone else, which is a demonstration disguised as a joke.
Steal this when
Use this when your product is a cheap commodity with no rational point of difference and your real problem is being remembered at the shelf. Build one owned world with recurring characters and make the brand name the rhyme or the punchline every time, then run it long enough that people finish the line for you.