Posters and Election Propaganda

Presidential campaign billboards have been placed in video games for the first time by Barack Obama's team. The inserted ads appear in the game Burnout Paradise, and "racers" speed by billboards that say "Early Voting Has Begun" and "Vote for Change.com."

The billboard also can be seen in a number of other video games, including Need for Speed, Skate, NASCAR 09, and NBA Live 08, as well as online versions.

Graphic designer Seymour Chwast has just displayed a pro-Obama poster design on the interesting Website known as 30 Reasons, which is putting up a different poster for each of the thirty days leading up to the election.

Chwast is a commercial artist, who has designed everything from food packages to posters. He was active during the Vietnam War creating protest posters, including one that showed Uncle Sam with warplanes dropping bombs inside his mouth.

Chwast has written many books, including Graphic Style: From Victorian to Digital (which he co-authored with Steven Heller).

Before "Country First" (one of John McCain's slogans in this year's campaign), there was "America First."

Interestingly, this slogan was used in two different years, by two different political parties, in the early twentieth century, and again in 1992 (in a primary campaign).

In 1916, Democrat Woodrow Wilson's campaign employed it in the U.S. presidential campaign. In that election, the slogan was a reference to the Wilson administration having kept the country out of the war in Europe; and the slogan “Wilson, That’s All!” had been employed previously in advertisements for a brand of whiskey (according to Michael Beschloss in his American Heritage Illustrated History of The Presidents). Wilson's opponent, Republican Charles Evans Hughes, blamed the concerted “He Kept Us Out of War”/“America First” propaganda effort that so heavily used vivid pictorial posters and billboards for his defeat.

In 1920, it was the Republican campaign for Warren G. Harding that used this slogan, exploiting the public's disillusionment with World War I and its aftermath. One can see the "America First" slogan in Howard Chandler Christy’s idealized rendition of Harding with the candidate dramatically making the "V" sign with one hand and holding an American flag with the other.

Patrick Buchanan, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 1992, also used the theme "America First." According to Ron Faucheux, "Buchanan's enemies drew unflattering comparisons between his slogan and the same one that had been used a half-century earlier by the 'America First' committee, an isolationist group that opposed U.S. entry into World War II." The "America First" committee's goal had been to prevent the U.S. from entering World War II. 

McCain's "Country First" slogan does not imply any isolationism. In the present campaign, McCain is trying to say that the Republican candidate puts the "country" before any political considerations. For example, McCain called for the "surge" in Iraq when this was an unpopular strategy, even among members of his own party.

I've already discussed the guerrilla artists for Obama (Ron English and Shepard Fairey), but what about other artists' work? We've seen Ray Noland's "The Dream," but he has produced many other posters supporting Obama, such as "Coast to Coast" (Obama with a basketball) and "Next" (similar to "The Dream). I've created a gallery of Obama posters. Here are several pro-Obama ones:

• "Obama Bomaye" by Emek
• "Yes We Can" by Antar Dayal
• "We Want Change" by Mear One
• "Hope" by Mac
• "Barack Obama" by Burlesque Design
• "Nuestra Voz" by Rafael Lopez
• "McSame" by Andrew Lewis
• "The Republicans Present McSame" by Zoltron 

Click Here for the Gallery.

There are not many artists supporting McCain. The only one to be found is Baxter Orr, who created the "Dope" poster (seen bottom right).

According to The Spot (a blog about political ads by the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a division of TNS Media Intelligence), special interest groups are girding up to release TV spots in targeted states. These 527 and PAC groups may "prove to be a significant force, largely because they are more willing than candidates to include incendiary information and images in their ads," states the blog.

In the last week, these groups distributed ads that focused on abortion, rape, Obama's association with Tony Rezko, Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers, McCain's bouts with cancer, and more.

Planned Parenthood, the Committee for Truth in Politics, the California Nurses Association, and the Judicial Confirmation Network sponsored ads that ran over 1,000 times during the week—costing almost $375,000.

Here are two of the ads:

Along with Apple, Coors, Nike, and Zappos, the Obama and McCain campaigns have been nominated as finalists for Advertising Age's "Marketer of the Year" Award, 2008.

Obama's campaign used innovative marketing techniques to brand the Democratic candidate as the agent of "hope" and "change," and mobilized young people to support him.

McCain's campaign reinforced the Republican's brand as a "maverick" and a "hero," and partially grabbed "the mantle of change" from his opponent, according to Advertising Age.