Hail to the Chiefs
President’s Day is a holiday that often goes unnoticed. It’s one of those bank holidays where most of us still have to work, there’s no mail, and the parking meters are free. It’s also a big day for retail marketing. Every year our media is flooded with advertising for President’s Day sales. It’s not as big as Black Friday or the more recent Cyber Monday, but it’s a constant in the industry.
President’s Day is also the day where we honor our chief executives past and present. In this election year it will soon be hard not to see the tie between Presidential politics and advertising. Let’s look at a couple examples of Presidential marketing from the past to see how far we may have come.
This first example is from one hundred years ago in 1912. Take note of the art direction. There is a large Taft mustache on the base of the fan. Is this an early example of alt media?
Later, in 1924 there was this copywriting gem for Calvin Coolidge. The full slogan was Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge. They used his name as a pun. Not really ground breaking stuff, but it was effective. What is interesting is the word cool didn’t exactly mean what it means today. When Topps did a Presidential poster series in the 1960’s they changed it to Stay Cool with Coolidge. To sell to a new generation they altered it to speak to the modern youth culture. You’ll also notice the For President part looks more like the font of a 1960’s rock poster than a political campaign of the 1920’s.
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The I like Ike campaign of the 1950’s was also simple and memorable. It had no inherent meaning. It was just a way to grab people’s attention and show your support. Today campaign slogans aren’t simple anymore. They always aspire to be loftier. They speak of building bridges, compassion, hope and change. But there is something kind of fun about the simplicity of the old ways. Maybe it’s time to go back to using simpler slogans. Maybe we should see slogans like Barack Rocks, Kittens for Mittens, or Give a hoot, vote for Newt. Or maybe not. Either way, have fun on President’s Day.