Nuclear Negative Ads - Lyndon Johnson's A-Bomb That Obliterated Senator Barry Goldwater

First, let me state that I don't like attack ads.  I hate them.  However, if we can understand how attack ads work and how they have an impact on people, we just might be able to develop some strategies to minimize them or to turn them to our advantage.  

In a previous post, we talked about "word association" or what George Lakoff calls "framing".  When we look at words in a sentence like " ....the cow jumped over the moon.  ...", we don't see the words "the .......cow ........jumped ........ over ..... the .....moon".  We mentally visualize a moon on the dark horizon with a cow halfway over the moon. 

We also talked about how trying to negate the frame only serves to reinforce that frame.  And we used the example of Richard Nixon who was being accused of being a thief.  The media began to repeat this accusation to the extent that the frame of "Nixon's a thief" was being reinforced.  So what did Nixon do to try and get rid of that frame of "thief"?  He went on US national television and and said that he wasn't a thief.  The impact?  Nixon's denial only served to reinforce the frame of "Nixon is a thief".  The framing went like this ....  "If Nixon went on television to deny that he was a thief ...........  then he MUST be a thief. .....  otherwise why would he have gone on television and deny that he was a thief?, eh!?" 

Don't believe me!?  Read on.  

The Mother Of All Attack Ads - Without Attacking!
Tomorrow (September 7th, 2014) marks the 50th anniversary of what is considered the birth of today's political attack ad.  This one was unlike any other one since.  In one blow, it blew Senator Barry Goldwater, President Lyndon Johnson's opponent, out of the presidential election race.  

Goldwater's name wasn't even mentioned once.  The ad only ran once.  On only one television network.  The direct message, the "call to action", was very simple - "Vote For President Johnson On November 3".  And yet it was the topic of discussion for weeks to come on every television and radio station, in major newspaper editorials, and by every political commentator.  Back then, this reinforcement of an ad by other media was called "earned media".  Today, we would call it "going viral" ...... and then some.   

It was the "indirect message", however, that was all powerful - nuclear powerful!  Words alone couldn't describe that message.  It branded Goldwater with a brand that took him more than a decade to shake off his persona.  It may have been dirty.  But it worked.  And Goldwater couldn't do a thing about it.  Johnson won by a landslide. 

Barry Goldwater's "Self-Framing" As a Nuclear Hawk
To give you some background, in a May 1964 speech (4 months before the airing of the "Daisy" ad) Goldwater put nuclear weapons in the same category as conventional weapons by suggesting that they should have been used at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 to defeat the North Vietnamese.  To recall, French forces had been defeated at Dien Bien Phu by North Vietnamese forces.  This led to the establishment of North Vietnam and the "demilitarized zone" that separated South Vietnam from North Vietnam.  This defeat was being reinforced in the minds of the American people at a time when the American war in Vietnam was starting to escalate in early 1964.  It also didn't help that Goldwater was making snide remarks about the use of nuclear weapons as if they were in the same category as hand grenades or that field commanders should have the authority to use "small" nuclear weapons on the battlefield.  

This attitude would come back to haunt him in ways that he couldn't have imagined.  

At the expense of being accused of plagiarism, I'm going to take some political licence here and copy Drew Babb's article in the September 5th 2014 issue of the Washington Post on the anniversary of that event.  Simply because I couldn't have said it better.  
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This image made from video made available by the Democratic National Committee via the LBJ Library shows a mushroom cloud from a nuclear explosion in a 1964 presidential campaign television commercial titled "Peace, Little Girl" and known as the "Daisy Spot" made by the DNC for Lyndon B. Johnson in his race against former Sen. Barry Goldwater. (AP Photo/Democratic National Committee) (AP/AP)

LBJ’s 1964 attack ad ‘Daisy’ leaves a legacy for modern campaigns

By Drew Babb September 5 at 5:57 PM

Drew Babb teaches political advertising at American University and is president of the firm Drew Babb & Associates.

Fifty years ago, on Sept. 7, 1964, a political ad called “Daisy” aired on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson. The commercial opened with a little girl in a meadow, then a horrific nuclear blast filled the screen.  We’ve been feeling the fallout ever since.  

It was only a minute long.  The paid ad ran on national television only once, and only on one network, NBC. 

But that’s all it took.

The Message

Here’s what you would have heard that early fall evening during “Monday Night at the Movies”:

LITTLE GIRL (plucking daisy petals): One, two, three, four, five, seven, six, six, eight, nine . . .

“MISSION CONTROL”: Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero . . .

SOUND EFFECTS: Huge atomic bomb blast.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON: These are the stakes: to make a world in which all of God’s children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other. Or we must die.

ANNOUNCER: Vote for President Johnson on Nov. 3. The stakes are too high for you to stay home.

The takeaway? Johnson’s Republican opponent, Barry Goldwater, was a crazed, trigger-happy cowboy. If his finger were ever on the nuclear button, the world would blow up. We’d all die.

The Fallout

You can love “Daisy” for its power or hate it for its excess — I both love it and hate it — but it changed political advertising forever. Here’s how:

It gave politicians a license to kill. Earlier political commercials were overwhelmingly upbeat. In 1960, Frank Sinatra sang a rewrite of “High Hopes” for John F. Kennedy, with this jolly lyric: “Everyone is voting for Jack, ’cause he’s got what all the rest lack.”

But “Daisy” was a full-throated, gloves-off, take-no-prisoners negative message. Arguably, and for better or worse, it’s the Mother of All Attack Ads.  

To execute the spot, the creative types didn’t just run still photos with a crawl of type. They used every weapon in their arsenal. They grabbed for viewers’ hearts with an adorable little girl (commercial actress Monique Corzilius).  They tapped into viewers’ greatest nightmare with footage of a huge mushroom-shaped cloud.  (Remember, this was less than two years after the Cuban missile crisis.)  They reinforced the visuals with intrusive sound effects (provided by the genius sound engineer Tony Schwartz).  They had Johnson read a snippet of spiritual poetry (by W.H. Auden).  And they hired a voice-of-God baritone (sports announcer Chris Schenkel) to wrap things up. 

By all means, trash the tropes.  Nowhere in “Daisy” does an image appear of either candidate.  Barry Goldwater is not mentioned.  There are no American flags, bunting, stirring music or other cliches of the genre.  Johnson’s ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, deployed every bit of the imagery and verbal power typically used with nonpolitical clients such as Volkswagen, Avis Car Rental and Levy’s Rye Bread.  DDB wasn’t going to pussyfoot around for the LBJ brand just because this was politics.  The agency had its share of gentlemen and ladies, but when it came to gaining market share for its clients, they were New York street brawlers.

Overreacting can boomerang.  Before there was something called “earned media,”  “Daisy” did just that.  The Republican campaign erupted in outrage.  The Johnson campaign, which anticipated the heat, quietly and quickly pulled the ad, and it never ran again.  But the networks (only three of ’em, remember?) duly registered the GOP ire and — to show people what all the fuss was about — ran “Daisy” ad nauseam.  Result: The one-time-only spot was shown over and over.  And under the aegis of newscasts, it undoubtedly picked up credibility along the way

The Credits

So who crafted and produced this message?  Who’s responsible for it?

Tony Schwartz is often given sole credit. But commercials are like little movies.  They’re collaborative.  The collaborators include Bill Bernbach, DDB’s creative director; Sid Myers and Stanley Lee, art director and copywriter, respectively; and producer Aaron Ehrlich.  On the account management side, Jim Graham was the point person.  

But a creative agency always needs a creative client, so you have to give a nod to the White House, too.  Steve Smith was the “matchmaker” who had recommended the upstart agency to his brother-in-law John F. Kennedy.  Bill Moyers, Jack Valenti and Richard Goodwin seem to have been on the receiving end of the pitch.  Lyndon Johnson, ultimately, approved the ad.

The Reverberations

We’re on the cusp of another expensive, nasty election.  Gird up your loins, everyone.

Many of 2014’s candidates and their brilliant operatives weren’t alive when “Daisy” aired.  But what they do and what they’ll produce will be influenced by those 60 seconds that ran 50 years ago.

Happy birthday, “Daisy.”
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To really see the impact of the ad, you HAVE to watch it.  
  - 

Kapow!!!

You may not like attack ads, but they're a reality of election campaigns.  The issue is how can you develop a strategy to deal with them - either to minimize their impact, or ...... to use a stratagem in the martial arts ......  to use the other person's momentum to your advantage.  

Up Next:  The "Framing" of Democrats & Liberals, Republicans & Conservatives

See you on the next post.