William Lever, 1st Viscount Leverhulme

Before Sunlight Soap in 1884, grocers cut soap from long anonymous bars. Lever, a Bolton grocer by trade, sold his in wrapped, branded tablets of a fixed size, so customers knew exactly what they were getting wherever they bought it. That packaging idea, backed by relentless advertising, built Lever Brothers, which later merged into Unilever. His record is mixed: the Port Sunlight village housed workers well, while his palm oil concessions in the Belgian Congo relied on forced labour.