It is known as the “Daisy spot” and is perhaps the most remembered television commercial in history.
The spot was part of the US presidential campaign and was broadcast on the night of November 3, 1964. They wanted it to be impressive and they succeeded.
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.
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.
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.
Barry Goldwater was the Trump of those times. 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 advertising firm Doyle, Dane
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.
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.”
Those sixty seconds of advertising were seen at that moment by 50 million viewers.
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.
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…
