A few days ago I was thinking about some of the 20th century’s greatest advertising campaigns, trying to imagine what they would look like if launched in 2007. What would the Marlboro Man’s MySpace page look like? And how many friends would he have? How many “Where’s the beef?” video spoofs would be on YouTube? And how many hair care blogs would weigh the merits of “Does she–or doesn’t she…?”
If only these great campaigns had social media at their hands. Then again, perhaps they did.
Sometime during the 1920s, Alan Odell of Burma-Shave decided to put up a series of four signs along a highway to promote his father’s product. They read something like this: Dinah doesn’t / treat him right / but if he’d / shave / dyna-mite! / Burma-Shave/
Always with a bent of humor, and ultimately in rhyme, this creative use of a billboard became the ultimate social media campaign. The sequential nature of the signs involved the consumer, sparked conversation, and increased sales.
The social nature of the medium didn’t stop there. User-generated content was encouraged in an annual jingle contest, and overseas GIs went posted Burma-Shave signs wherever they went. In later years, a Tom Waits song would make reference to the campaign, as would the final episode of M*A*S*H.
The mere fact that we are still talking about these signs today suggests that perhaps Odell deserves a spot in the Museum of Social Media. It also suggests that media has always been social, that all great advertising campaigns will always be talked about, and that your customers have always been your best brand stewards.
Sara – Very interesting post, and the bit on GI’s in WWII posting Burma Shave signs overseas raises an interesting point about social media “in the good old days.” “Kilroy was here” and the word SNAFU are other examples of usages that became universal fast. The key, of course, was the unprecedented mobility of millions of soldiers and sailors leaving home for the first time for other parts of the country and the world. For the first time, a large number of people were really mixing things up. The “technology” that assisted all this was slow and primitive by our standards – trains, the radio – but obviously the way people made social contacts with more and more “new” people worked pretty much the same way the new-fangled stuff does.(Another example of ‘there’s nothing new under the sun’, I guess.)
This post makes me feel much better about this “social media” catchphrase-slash-phenomena that’s tearing through the blogs. Anytime a marketer let’s the consumer writes the ad and anytime the targets are pushing the ad messages forward by their own volition is a great thing. I remember when I was a kid in the seventies walking through the grocery store telling anyone who would listen to “Don’t Squeeze the Charmin”. Good stuff.
Maureen – Very good point.
Consider the Internet an upgrade from trains and radio as we travel through space and time.
For some reason we seem to think that we have suddenly reinvented media (“new media” vs. “old media” and now “social media”), when what we have really done is evolved the technological underpinnings of distribution.