Dawn of political TV commercials: 1948 – 1952

The Early History of Presidential Campaign TV Commercials goes back to 1948. Let’s look at how these commercials have progressed in the first decade since then, and how their purpose and styles changed.  
 
First, to watch a great archive of the History of Presidential Campaign Commercials, The Living Room Candidate from the Museum of the Moving Image has more than 300 television commercials, starting from the Eisenhower commercials of 1952. Michael Bechloss at the New York Times wrote an excellent 2015 piece about those first TV commercials called “Eisenhower, an Unlikely Pioneer of TV Ads.” Thomas Dewey originally had a few television commercials for his presidential campaign in 1948. When he recruited General Eisenhower to run in 1952, Dewey urged Eisenhower to embrace the medium.  
 
Even before 1948, The Roosevelt campaign produced short films to be shown in theaters. Hell-Bent for Re-Election, directed by animation legend Chuck Jones, is a well-known example. Notably, this short had animated character voice overs. For Eisenhower’s simpler commercials, such as I Like Ike, they featured a vocal song over basic animation with a voiceover tagline at the end. It was bringing the short political songs of the 1930s and 1940s to the new medium of television.

pioneering television campaigns of Adlai Stevenson

However, it wasn’t just Eisenhower running political commercials in the 1950s. We all remember “I Like Ike” because Eisenhower won. His challenger from the Democratic Party in 1952 and again in 1956, Adlai Stevenson, also ran commercials in both races. These ads took on a new dimension as they were issue-focused and not just cheer-leading songs set to animation. Good examples of these more modern commercials are the dramatic Gab Gab Gab in 1952 and Hot Air in 1956. There were even mini TV plays such as Three Strangers.  

While Eisenhower was the “pioneer” for broadcasting the well-established animated song format from the 1930s and 40s on television, Democrat Adlai Stevenson’s campaign was the true pioneer. Stevenson’s campaign used issue-focused commercials for the first time, used animated characters with voice over, and produced dramatic scenes. Like today’s presidential television campaigns, Adlai Stevenson’s commercials from the 1950s were diverse in style, format, and message. These ads f the Democratic Party are the true pioneering works from the Early History of Presidential Campaign TV Commercials.