My ‘favorite’ ad of the 1964 presidential run is the daisy girl. In this ad, a small girl stands in a field, picking the petals off of a daisy, counting as she goes. She counts haphazardly, eventually getting to nine. At this point, the announcer starts counting down from ten, and the camera freezes then zooms into her face and her eye. When the announcer reaches zero, it cuts to footage of a nuclear bomb explosion, a quote from Johnson that concludes with “We must either love each other, or we must die,” then the catchphrase “Vote Johnson on November 3rd. The stakes are too high to stay home.” I find the child herself actually very annoying, but the ad is startlingly effective. It is only one minute long, and manages to communicate the stakes involved in this election, and why you should care. It requires some outside knowledge that Johnson is against nuclear bombs and Goldwater supports their use, but this is implied. It uses the value of family very effectively, and tells viewers that this is what will happen if they don’t vote Johnson: Their children will get blown up. It speaks to big issues that are widely relevant, and a cause that no one will dispute: the need to protect our children. I particularly like the catchphrase, and Johnson ends all of his videos with it. Compared to Goldwater’s catchprase: “In your heart, you know he’s right,” “The stakes are too high for you to stay home” compels a sense of urgency and agency that are lacking in Goldwater. This is designed to target those who are on the fence in addition to Johnson’s supporters.\u00a0If you don’t like the picture the ad presents, you can do a concrete action to prevent it! – That action being electing Johnson. Offering this call to action I think is a great way to bring in the general public and make them feel like their vote matters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My ‘favorite’ ad of the 1964 presidential run is the daisy girl. In this ad, a small girl stands in a field, picking the petals off of a daisy, counting as she goes. She counts haphazardly, eventually getting to nine. At this point, the announcer starts counting down from ten, and the camera freezes then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4487,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-responses"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7027"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7028,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7027\/revisions\/7028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/criticalthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}