It is known as the
"Daisy spot"
and is perhaps the most remembered television advertisement in history.
The ad was part of the US Presidential campaign and aired on the night of
November 3, 1964
.
They wanted it to be shocking and they succeeded.
The notice lasted just a minute (Video Capture).
The announcement lasted
barely a minute
, and it managed to ensure that the candidate Lyndon Johnson, who was going to a certain defeat at the polls, ended up winning them with an unexpected
61.1% of the votes.
Why did that ad change the intention to vote among Americans?
To understand it, you have to place yourself in that 1964.
the kennedy assassination
Just a few months earlier, on November 22, 1963, the country's president, John F. Kennedy,
had been assassinated
.
His vice president, Lyndon Johnson, had to take his place in the succession for a year, until the new elections arrived.
Lyndon Johnson in full campaign.
The Democratic party noted that people believed that Johnson did not have the capacity to be president,
had no charisma
and was light years away from the image of Kennedy.
For this reason, all the polls gave the Republican candidate and senator from Arizona,
Barry Goldwater, a clear winner.
But Johnson's advisers played the last card by targeting the fear that prevailed in American society over a
possible nuclear war.
The candidate who wanted war
Barry Goldwater
was the Trump of those days
.
He wanted to start a war against any enemy of the country and better if the rival was the
Soviet Union
.
To make matters worse, the Goldwater woman said that her husband had had
panic attacks
thirty years earlier when he faced a stressful event.
The table was set for the team of Democratic advisers.
They hired the publishing firm
Doyle, Dane & Bernbach (DDB)
and gave them only one direction:
destroy Goldwater.
Barry Goldwater was a sure winner.
Until they issued the notice.
At 9:50 p.m. on September 7, 1964, almost every American family was watching "David and Bathsheba,"
a movie
on NBC.
And in a cut the mythical notice appeared.
It featured a 4-year-old girl, blonde and freckled,
plucking the leaves of a daisy
and counting (in her own way) from one to ten.
At number nine, the voice of a grown man would quickly begin the count again, from ten to one, as if to indicate an explosion.
What's going on.
Those sixty seconds of advertising were seen by 50 million viewers.
The screen fills with
an atomic explosion
with the mushroom cloud.
It fades to black and a few words from candidate Johnson are heard: "This is the challenge. Make a world in which God's children can live, or enter the darkness. We must love each other, or we must die."
Pure peace and love
as anticipating the hippie arrival.
The announcement closed with the voice of an announcer: "Vote for Johnson for President this November 3. The challenge is too important for you to stay at home."
The ad that changed people
Those sixty seconds of advertising were seen at that moment by
50 million viewers.
People were afraid of a nuclear war.
Instantly the channel was filled with phone calls with thousands of complaints.
The people were horrified at what they had just seen.
The NBC
telephone exchanges collapsed.
A poll taken a week after the ad aired said that
53% of women and 45% of men
believed that Goldwater would lead the United States into war.
Johnson swept Goldwater at the polls.
From then until the elections, everyone only talked about that notice.
And fear was transformed into votes at the polls.
Thanks to the "Daisy spot," which
cost just $30,000
and was issued only
once,
Lyndon Johnson swept the polls.
All because of a one minute notice of pure panic.
For
children, adults and the elderly...
look too
The terrible end of the Tollund man, the most beautiful mummy in the world
look too
The mysterious lake where UFOs are seen and ships and planes disappear
look too
The legend of the bridge that they say was built by the devil
GML
