Political

Daisy Girl: the advert that changed political advertising

When people put together lists of the best political advertisements (such as my own from a few years back), the Daisy Girl advert almost always features.

This was a TV advertisement for Democrat President Lyndon B. Johnson‘s 1964 Presidential bid against Barry Goldwater and was aired only once, giving it an added mystique as one of the most famous and controversial political ads.

As with the Conservative Party’s famous ‘Labour isn’t working’ advert from the 1970s, it showed how with political adverts a little bit of controversy often makes the message go a long way. It had a huge impact – both because of its power at the time and because of the way others since copied the use of a short, emotional story in preference to a long, factual presentation.

It starts with a young girl innocently counting the petals on a flower, but then switches to an ominous voiceover counting down to zero. The screen is then filled with a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion.

The advert played on fears that Johnson’s opponent, Barry Goldwater, was willing to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam. The controversy resulted in the advertisement being pulled – it was aired only once. But the controversy also resulted in widespread media coverage which spread the advert’s message far and wide:

The context for the advert and its impact is expertly covered in Robert Mann’s book, Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the Ad That Changed American Politics (available from Amazon and Bookshop.org)*:

The contrast between Johnson’s spots in 1964 and John F. Kennedy’s in 1960 is remarkable. In style, the difference is more like a decade removed, not just four years. It was the creative executives at DDB in 1964 [working on the Daisy Girl advert and others] who helped show politicians how to use television not simply to inform but to persuade, and not so much to persuade viewers but to give them an experience.

The DDB spots were a hinge in presidential campaign history. The Daisy Girl spot’s skillful manipulation of the fears residing in American viewers showed a generation of political professionals that television advertising in campaigns was about far more than which candidate had the best facts; it was, instead, more about which candidate could give meaning to the facts—and fears—the voters already possessed. Daisy Girl and the other spots produced for Johnson qualify as the first television spots of the modern political era—an era in which presidential candidates increasingly and effectively used emotion, not reason, to win elections.

As the quote illustrates, the use of emotionally compelling short stories is not without its ethical traps.

Here is the advert for you to judge:

Five of the best political advertisements

The other adverts from my selection a few years back of five of the best political adverts were:

None of these political adverts of course should be confused with the strangest ads out there…

* Affiliate links.

One response to “Daisy Girl: the advert that changed political advertising”

  1. Good God, Mark, that's a horrific advert. Not without its ethical traps? That's putting it mildly when the subject is the juxtaposition of a small child and a nuclear explosion.
    Also, one of my absolute pet hates is the use of children in political campaigning. They can't vote; they are essentially objects or props. They should be left out of it.

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