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Daisy (advertisement)

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"Daisy"
A screenshot of "Daisy" advertisement, depicting a girl holding a daisy flower.
Still from the "Daisy" political advertisement, depicting Monique Luiz—the "Daisy Girl"
Agency
Client
Running time60 seconds
Release date(s)September 7, 1964
CountryUnited States

"Daisy", sometimes referred to as "Daisy Girl" or "Peace, Little Girl", was a controversial political advertisement that aired on television during the 1964 United States presidential election by the presidential campaign of Lyndon B. Johnson. Though officially aired only once, it is considered to be one of the most important factors in Johnson's landslide victory over Barry Goldwater, and an important turning point in political and advertising history. It remains one of the most popular political advertisements.[1]

The Daisy advertisement was created by a partnership between the Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency (DDB) and Tony Schwartz. The main concept of the advertisement was to broadcast Johnson's anti-war and anti-nuclear positions. The commercial begins with three-year-old Monique Corzilius standing in a meadow, picking the petals of a daisy while counting from one to ten incorrectly. After she reaches "nine", she pauses, and a booming male voice is then heard counting the numbers backward from "ten", similar to the start of a missile launch countdown. A zoom of the video still focuses on the girl's right eye until her pupil fills the screen, which is instantly replaced by the flash and thunderous sound of a nuclear explosion. A voice-over from Johnson plays over the footage, stating emphatically, "These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die."[2]

Immediately after its initial broadcast, the ad was pulled from the air. However, it continued to be replayed and analyzed several times by media such the nightly news, talk shows, and news broadcasting agencies. The Johnson campaign was widely criticized for using the prospect of nuclear war, as well as the implication that Goldwater would start one, to frighten the voters. Despite the criticism, the Johnson campaign released several other commercials attacking Goldwater's political stances, without referring to him by name. The "Daisy" commercial has been adopted and used by various other campaigns since then.

Background[]

Further information: Lyndon B. Johnson 1964 presidential campaign
Photographic portrait of Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson's portrait, taken in December 1963.

In the 1964 United States presidential election, incumbent president Lyndon B. Johnson was challenged by the Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.[3][4] Goldwater campaigned on a right-wing message of cutting social programs and pursuing aggressive military action.[5] The Johnson campaign used Goldwater's speeches to imply that he would willingly wage a nuclear war, quoting Goldwater, "by one impulse act you could press a button and wipe out 300 million people before sun down."[6] In turn, Goldwater defended himself by charging Johnson of making the accusation indirectly and contending that the media blew the issue out of proportion.[6]

Contrary to Johnson's policies, Goldwater had suggested the use of nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War, if necessary.[7] The Democrats portrayed Goldwater as a dangerous extremist, notably mocking his campaign slogan "In your heart, you know he's right" with the counterslogan "In Your Guts, You Know He is Nuts".[7] A survey of public opinion in August showed that Johnson's accomplishments in office would likely yield him only limited support in the campaign.[8] Goldwater ran an attack advertisement in which a group of children were reciting the pledge of allegiance until their voices were drowned out by Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader at the time, who proclaimed, "We will bury you! Your children will be Communists!"[9][10]

The principal work of Johnson's campaign was based on emphasizing Goldwater's extremism and the dangers of trusting him with the powers of the presidency.[11] Despite his relatively high polling numbers, Johnson felt safe to use rhetorical techniques to ensure his victory.[12] Before 1964, the campaign ads were almost always positive, where the opposing candidate or his policies were rarely mentioned.[13] In mid-June, John P. Roohe, president of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a progressive advocacy group, wrote a letter to Bill Moyers, Johnson's press secretary, which said that Johnson was in a "wonderful strategic position", suggesting that the President could "play the campaign with lofty statesmanship, ignoring the fact that Goldwater exists" and that "[at] the next level, [they could] really run a savage assault: a billboard, e.g., [could] be devised reading 'Goldwater in 64—Hotwater in 65?' with a mushroom cloud in the background."[14] Nuclear weapons then became one of the central issues of the campaign.[15] Johnson also agreed to devote considerable financial resources to an electronic media campaign—$3 million (equivalent to $25,033,262 in 2020) for local spots, and another $1.7 million (equivalent to $14,185,515 in 2020) for network programs.[16]

The Daisy advertisement was created by a partnership between the Doyle Dane Bernbach advertising agency (DDB) and Tony Schwartz, a sound designer and media consultant who was hired for the project.[17][18] The DDB team consisted of art director Sid Myers, producer Aaron Ehrlich, senior copywriter Stan Lee, and junior copywriter Gene Case.[19] The main concept of the advertisement was to broadcast Johnson's anti-war and anti-nuclear positions. Schwartz based this concept on a previous public service announcement he created for the United Nations.[20] Casting and filming were done by DDB, while Schwartz managed the audio integration.[21][22] Both Schwartz and the DDB team claim the credit for the visual elements of the ad, though the true authorship is unclear.[18]

Synopsis[]

The "Daisy" advertisement, runtime – 60 seconds

The advertisement begins with a little girl (three-year-old Monique Corzilius), who is standing in a meadow (in New York City's Highbridge Park), picking petals of a daisy and counting from one to nine, while birds chirp in the background.[23][24][25] While counting, she skips a number and repeats "six" twice. It was decided that a miscount might be more appealing to the voters.[26] After she reaches "nine", she pauses, as if trying to remember the next number. A booming male voice is then heard counting the numbers backward from "ten", similar to the start of a missile launch countdown.[27][28] Seemingly in response to the countdown, the girl turns her head toward a point off-screen, and the scene freezes.[29] As the countdown continues, a zoom of the video still focuses on the girl's right eye until her pupil fills the screen, eventually blacking it out as the countdown simultaneously reaches zero.[26] The blackness is instantly replaced by the bright flash and thunderous sound of a nuclear explosion, featuring footage of a detonation.[26] The scene then cuts to footage of a mushroom cloud, and then to a final cut of a slowed close-up section of the incandescence in the nuclear explosion.[2] A voice-over from Johnson plays over all three pieces of nuclear detonation footage, stating emphatically, "These are the stakes! To make a world in which all of God's children can live, or to go into the dark. We must either love each other, or we must die."[2][30] At the end of the voice-over, the explosion footage is replaced by white letters on a black screen, with another voice-over reading the words on the screen, "Vote for President Johnson on November 3[rd]" (written in all caps), then adding, "The stakes are too high for you to stay home."[31]

Broadcast and impact[]

"Daisy" was aired only once,[32] during a September 7, 1964 telecast of David and Bathsheba on The NBC Monday Movie.[33] As the David and Bathsheba film was based on a biblical story, it was considered as a family film, and thus was believed to be appropriate for the advertisement as its audience would be one the Johnson campaign wanted to target.[34] It was aired at 9:50 p.m. EST, with the idea that most of the young children would be asleep, leaving their parents watching the film, and eventually be manipulated to visualize their child in the role of Corzilius.[34] Unlike previous popular political advertisements and various Goldwater ads, "Daisy" is entirely based upon striking imagery and sudden changes in visuals, with the lack of music enhancing the sense of realism.[35][36] Johnson's line "We must either love each other, or we must die" echoes line 88 of W.H. Auden's poem "September 1, 1939", which reads "We must love one another or die." The words "children" and "the dark" also occur in Auden's poem.[37]

Barry Goldwater's portrait, taken in September 1962.

Immediately after its broadcast, the ad was pulled off. According to Press Secretary Moyers, the White House switchboard "lit up with calls protesting it [the advertisement]"; President Johnson called him and asked, "Jesus Christ, what in the world happened?"[31] Even though Goldwater's name was not mentioned, the commercial was objected to by various Republican politicians and supporters.[27][38] The ad appeared on the nightly news and conversation programs various times and was frequently replayed and analyzed by network news broadcasting agencies.[36] Jack Valenti, a special assistant to Johnson, suggested that pulling the ad was a calculated move.[31] The "Daisy Girl" was depicted on the cover page of the September 25 issue of Time magazine.[15][39] The Johnson campaign was widely criticized for trying to frighten the voters by implying that Goldwater would start a nuclear war. Thruston B. Morton, a Republican senator from Kentucky, told the Senate on September 16 that the Democratic National Committee was putting "panic-inspired falsehoods" on the television;[40] and that President Johnson must take responsibility for them, adding that the ad was aimed at "scaring the wits out of children in order to pressure their parents".[41] Within days of its broadcast, it was referred to as one of the most popular and controversial television commercials.[1] Nearly three weeks after its broadcast, Goldwater said "The homes of America are horrified and the intelligence of Americans is insulted by weird television advertising by which this Administration threatens the end of the world unless all‐wise Lyndon is given the nation for his very own."[1] Whilst the exact viewership of the commercial is unknown, the author of the book Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds Robert Mann estimates that about a hundred million people saw it.[42] Mann said "What one of the brilliant aspects of the daisy girl spot was they never mentioned Barry Goldwater, never showed his image, because they didn’t need to. The audience already had a lot of information on Goldwater's reckless positions and statements on nuclear war and nuclear weapons … they were trying to use what the voters already knew"[42]

A few days later, the Johnson campaign released another advertisement, famously named the "Ice-cream ad". Fears of nuclear radiation were related to the audience by a young girl eating ice cream.[43] Other notable commercials included "Confessions of a Republican" and "Eastern Seaboard".[44] A few days before election day, polls showed Johnson leading with 61% to Goldwater's 39%.[45] Johnson won the election in a landslide victory, receiving 486 electoral votes to Goldwater's 52.[46] He received one of the largest margins of the popular vote, defeating Goldwater by almost 15 million votes.[47] As of the 2020 presidential election, Johnson retains the highest percentage of a popular vote victory since the popular vote first became widespread in the 1824 presidential election. The Daisy ad is considered to be one of the most important factors in Johnson's landslide victory over Goldwater.[17][48]

Political usage and aftermath[]

The "Daisy" ad has been used or referenced in multiple political campaigns since being shown and was an important turning point in political and advertising history. In his unsuccessful 1984 presidential campaign, Democratic nominee Walter Mondale created commercials on secret communist nuclear weapons in space, with a similar theme to "Daisy".[49] Mondale's advertisements show footage of children and nuclear explosions, over the song "Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.[49] In his unsuccessful 1996 presidential campaign, Republican nominee Bob Dole used a short clip of "Daisy" in his "The Threat" commercial; and a voice-over emphatically states "Thirty years ago, the biggest threat to her [the daisy girl] was nuclear war. Today, the threat is drugs."[50][51] Other notable uses of the ad include the 2007 Australian federal election, where the Australian Greens re-made the Daisy ad as one of their campaign advertisements on climate change.[52] "Daisy" was also re-made in 2010 by the American Values Network, which aimed at getting voters to ask their senators to ratify the New START program.[53]

"I did what my parents told me to do, and actually my parents didn't even know what it was about. They didn't even know it was a political commercial. I already knew how to count, I think to 50, and my mom was told to teach me to count backwards. And I struggled with that."[39]

— Monique Luiz (the "Daisy girl")

While campaigning for the 2016 presidential election, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton enlisted the original "Daisy Girl" to appear in a "sequel" to the ad for her unsuccessful presidential campaign against Donald Trump.[54] Corzilius said "The fear of nuclear war that we had as children, I never thought our children would ever have to deal with that again. And to see that coming forward in this election is really scary."[55][56] Corzilius did not realize that she was the girl in the "Daisy" commercial until the 2000s when she searched for the "Daisy" ad on the Internet.[26][39] Another child actor, Birgitte Olsen, falsely claimed that she was the child actor in the commercial, and has maintained that position for years.[57]

Almost 25 years after the commercial was first broadcast, when asked whether he approved the Daisy commercial, Bill Moyers said:

"Yes I did, and I regret that we were in on the first wave of the future. The ad was intended to remind voters of Johnson's prudence; it wasn't meant to make you think Barry Goldwater was a war monger – but that's how a lot of people interpreted it. If my memory serves me correctly, we never touched on Vietnam in any of the political spots. It haunts me all this time that Johnson was portrayed as the peacemaker in that campaign, but he committed the country to a long, bloody war in Vietnam."[58]

See also[]

References[]

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  3. ^ Lerner 1995, p. 751.
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  13. ^ Donaldson 2003, p. 247.
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