Eisenhower's Secret strategy: Television Planning in the 1952 Campaign

Steve M Barkin

This paper describes Eisenhower's use of TV advertising in the Presidential Elections of 1952. The campaign, the first to utilise all forms of mass media, involved a TV Plan Board who devised and implmented a TV strategy for Eisenhower.

Eisenhower's Secret Strategy: Television Planning in the 1952 Campaign *

Steve M. Barkin University of Maryland

Hail to BBD&O It told the nation how to go;

It managed by advertisement To sell us a new president.

Eisenhower hits the spot One full general, that's a lot.

Feeling sluggish, feeling sick? Take a dose of Ike and Dick,

Phillip Morris, Lucky Strike, Alka Seltzer, I Like Ike.

Marya Mannes, 'Sales Campaign', l952[1]

The 1952 presidential campaign represented the first merger of television, advertising and politics on a national scale. Batten, Barton, Durstine &...

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