Daniel seifert
02/14/2021 17:20
Clarín.com
Politics
Updated 02/14/2021 5:42 PM
It was not a campaign slogan
.
Carlos Menem, who died this Sunday, had no chance of being re-elected in 1999 due to constitutional impediment.
However, the advertising piece of the catchy
"Menem did it" is considered one of the most effective political marketing phrases in
recent history and, true to the Menem style, it was not far from controversy.
The official advertising campaign flooded the television channels at the end of the second Menem mandate.
With Eduardo Duhalde confirmed as a pro-government candidate, from the Presidency of Carlos Menem they wanted to make a
propaganda that would list the supposed achievements of the administration
.
The randomness of the selection of self-praise
-some of dubious certainty-, added to a
very catchy chorus
and a
certain self-criticism
in the jingle's lyrics made advertising a piece that achieved the dream of any consultant: to
transcend political communication and become a catchphrase
of Popular and daily consumption, to such an extent, that not without irony, the deputy of the left Nicolás Del Caño, used it to refer to the death of the former president on his Twitter account.
Today it seems that there is no crack.
Menem did.
- Nicolas del Caño (@NicolasdelCano) February 14, 2021
However, the phrase
was not an election campaign slogan, nor was it original
.
The creation corresponded to
Duda Mendonça
, a Brazilian who was the Jaime Durán Barba of those years at the end of the millennium and who plagiarized himself.
Mendonça had worked with the former governor of Córdoba, José Manuel de la Sota, and that way he arrived in Menem.
The famous piece, however, was a resource that the star consultant of those political years had already used a year earlier in his native Brazil, for a candidate for governor of São Paulo, Paulo Maluf, who would not succeed in winning his election.
The famous "Menem did it" had already been done for someone else.
But in Argentina, the piece
was installed with success and controversy
.
While it was exquisite material for television comedians - in Marcelo Tinelli's old VideoMatch, countless parodies were made with the format - the spot could not avoid the controversy that led it to justice.
Today for several hours a video of the remembered Videomatch with a parody of the advertising "Menem did it" was a trend on YouTube.
Marvelous.
pic.twitter.com/vzG3ci5wjE
- Leo Arias (@LeoAriasPrensa) May 22, 2020
It's that the ad was more of a self-indulgent management summary than a typical government advertisement, in the standards allowed by law.
"He may not have done everything, but nobody can deny that he did a lot
,
"
said the chorus
of the song, almost as a direct cult of the presidential personality.
The piece did not meet the criteria of a "public good campaign" and was broadcast on radios and television channels
through the legal nook of -menemista emblem- a decree
that allowed the exchange of official advertising for fines in the media.
But a judge considered that the publicity "seems not to respond to a campaign aimed at the general interest" but rather to "demonstrate the achievements of an activity carried out by the Executive Power."
And then, it
prohibited the continuity of its diffusion.
Due to the campaign, there
were
also
legal complaints
.
The opposition -among them,
Nilda Garré
, former Defense Minister of the Cristina Fernández de Kirchner government- denounced Menem for embezzlement.
They estimated that the dissemination of the campaign had involved the expenditure of 8 million pesos, then convertible to dollars.
Not much else was known on the subject.
Requests to know the cachet of the consultant Mendonça, who in 2002,
with his advice,
would succeed
in bringing Lula Da Silva to the presidency of Brazil
also remained unanswered
.
The spot that installed the phrase "Menem did it."
Video capture.
The spot remained in judicial oblivion, but it remained in force in popular and collective consumption, as
a brand that - for better or worse -
synthesized
the mandates of Carlos Saúl Menem.
Just search for the phrase on Twitter to verify it.
DS
Look also
Carlos Menem died: the story of his imposing Ferrari and why he ended up inspiring a law
Carlos Menem died: Marcelo Tinelli fired the former president and said he felt "great sadness"