I was assigned the year 1952, so all of the ads I watched were quite old and were focused on the Eisenhower vs Stevenson election. Nearly all of the ads were under a minute, and many were under 25 seconds. My favorite ad was the Eisenhower “I Like Ike” video (http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1952/ike-for-president). There are not really any political statements at all in the video, but the musical jingle was just so catchy. Additionally, I really like the old-style animation cartoon clips, so the whole thing was very fun to watch. This ad was the first on my watch list and I thought it created a high standard for the others I saw. The slogan and song were just too good. I found that cartoon clips were very common in the ads that I watched. If the ads were not cartoon style, just about every other was done in the style of a debate, with a citizen asking a question which would then be answered by the candidate. These ones were usually around 20 seconds.
What surprised me the most was how little substance each ad had in terms of making political statements. Sometimes there would be very general references to things, but it seemed like neither candidate truly wanted to take a stand. This was especially apparent in one of the ads where it was a cartoon person (who represented someone from the GOP) with two heads, each contradicting itself when asked a question by a citizen. One head would say that they should be out all troops and the other would say they should send in more troops. What I found odd was that the person responding to the two-head candidate didn’t take a stance. They only said that they can’t do both of those things. Nowadays I think of ads as being extremely divided between stances amongst the Republican and Democratic parties. I would be interested in seeing the progression of divisive stances in political ads over time. One thing that has remained the same since the ’50s is that the ads still like to attack the other party and speak very little or not at all about their own.
I find it really crazy that political ads were used with cartoons back then because it seems so childish and unprofessional. Meanwhile, it is a huge decision and probably the most professional thing in the US. It makes sense why we stopped using cartoons.
I find it super interesting that as citizens, we have been (and continue to) allow for these political ads to have zero legislative substance. More and more I feel like the public is growing complacent towards the lack of genuine information we receive from politicians. Instead of holding our candidates accountable (Which I will say I feel is happening more in our generation) we accept the trash they bring in advertisements as a given.
I vividly remember one of my middle school teachers showing us the “I Like Ike” ad in class while learning about previous elections. As you said the ad contains very little substance but it is so catchy that it is hard to forget and therefore clearly very effective. All these years later I still know the song and went to watch that ad specifically even though it was not part of my required ads to watch.