New documentary looks at advertising pioneer who created iconic slogan 'Because I'm worth it'

HOLLYWOOD -- Ilon Specht is the brains behind what started as an ad campaign for a hair dye from L'Oreal Paris...

but went on to become the company's iconic slogan, used now for more than 50 years.: "Because I'm worth it." Ben Proudfoot, the Oscar-winning director of the documentary short films, "The Queen of Basketball," and "The Last Repair Shop" is the force behind this film, too.



"Ilon Specht has been, you know, largely forgotten from history but it remains probably one of the most successful and long-standing advertising slogans of all time," said Proudfoot. Back in 1972, Specht was a junior copywriter for the advertising agency that had the L'Oreal account. "She really never had the opportunity to tell her version of events, you know? She had kind of appeared in corporate videos where she talked about, you know, the meaning of the slogan and things like that but this was, you know, what I was proposing was a raw, unfiltered telling of Ilon's version and events and I think that was really appealing to her," said Proudfoot.

In the film, Specht's stepdaughter sums up the slogan this way: "It's a four-word feminist manifesto." Before that..

.advertising seemed to be a whole different world. "If she had written that tag line today, she would have had a much more, you know, career.

But because it was 50 years ago, I don't think she was given the respect that she could have been because she was a woman," said Proudfoot. "And she probably had 20 more tag lines in her and campaigns that were just as, if not more, compelling than that but she just didn't have the same opportunities." Specht died last year of cancer at the age of 81.

The short, "The Final Copy of Ilon Specht," is available for free on the Ted YouTube Channel. Or you can find it on AMC+ or Prime Video..