Portraying a young girl picking flower petals, the controversial political advertisement known as "Daisy Girl" or "Peace, Little Girl" aired on television in September 1964 to advocate for President Lyndon Johnson's campaign. Even though the ad only aired once, it is known to have helped Johnson take victory over his Republican Presidential opponent, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.
In the ad produced by Tony Schwartz, a girl, Monique Corzilius Luiz, strips petals from a daisy one at a time while counting them out of order. Her voice is blurred by the voice of a person counting down for a nuclear test.
The video then shows a nuclear cloud erupt. The girl is presumably destroyed by it and the implication is that a nuclear war would be Goldwater's fault. Only two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, many people started fearing a nuclear age.
"Daisy Girl" has made a lasting impact on political ads. It is known to have been the first serious attack-ad campaign, starting the negative political advertising in the United States. Its legacy even went on to President Trump's campaign, when he made old fashioned black and white attack ads against Hilary Clinton. In return, Hilary Clinton created an ad starring Monique Corzilius Luiz to warn that President Trump could wage a nuclear war.
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1964/peace-little-girl-daisy
https://www.loc.gov/item/mbrs01185386/
https://blogs.loc.gov/now-see-hear/2016/09/daisy-the-most-effective-political-commercial-ever/
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/1031/Clinton-campaign-enlists-girl-from-anti-Goldwater-Daisy-ad
This is super interesting as to how you connect this to modern day presidential ad campaigns. Something that I find rather funny is that because of how popular this ad became and how widely recognized it was, an actress Birgitte Olson falsely claimed to be the original Daisy girl when she wasn't. Her lie became so extensive that she was interviewed on television about her experience being Daisy Girl. And even after news sources asked what her response was to these revelations, Olsen was very wish-washy and claimed that the agent told her she was the Daisy Girl. There is no evidence of Olsen as Daisy Girl. There is substantial evidence that Monique Corzilius was the real Daisy Girl.
ReplyDeleteSource: http://conelrad.blogspot.com/2010/09/picking-wrong-daisy-conelrad-correction.html
I found your post to be concise yet very informative. This political ad looks quite extreme, yet evidently it was effective. Starting the video off with a child doing something innocent, such as counting daisy petals, then having a startling transition to nuclear weapons, is bound to grab the audience's attention. I think it only strengthen the case when including how the girl, or her parents knew what the ad was about. I found it interesting how you tied the Daisy Ad to today's politics, like how Trump and Clinton ad campaigns referencing this video.
ReplyDeleteSource:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/09/07/daisy-girl-political-ad-still-haunting-50-years-later/15246667/
I find it very interesting that you chose to talk about the Daisy and how it started negative political advertising. The Daisy ad revolutionized political ads through its breaking of the established rules. Daisy was made by Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), an eclectic group of ad men with a stellar reputation for groundbreaking campaigns for Volkswagen and Avis. Previously political ads had been dominated by stodgy 30-minute speeches, but DDB aimed for their ads to be shorter and express creativity and emotion. Bernbach, the firm’s principal founder, believed that “advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art." This inspired a multitude of creative ads mocking Goldwater during Johnson's campaign. DDB mocked Goldwater’s vote against the nuclear test ban treaty with a spot showing nothing but a girl licking an ice cream cone as a female announcer spoke ominously about the fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing and how it might enter the food supply.
ReplyDeleteAfter Goldwater had bragged that the nation might be “better off if we could just saw off the Eastern Seaboard and let it float out to sea", the DBB served up a humorous 60-second spot of a saw slicing the East Coast from a Styrofoam model of the United States. Additionally, DDB mocked Goldwater's statement about privatizing Social Security by showing a pair of hands ripping up a Social Security card. In terms of nukes, DDB mocked Goldwater’s vote against the nuclear test ban treaty with a spot showing a girl licking an ice cream cone as a female announcer spoke ominously about the fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing and how it might enter the food supply.
As Joe McGinnis observed, voting is the “psychological purchase” of a candidate. DDB understood that arguing with voters would be a losing proposition. Thus persuade someone, especially in the political realm, a campaign must target emotions.