ABSTRACT
The first political television commercials were used in the 1952 Presidential race pitting Adlai Stevenson against Dwight Eisenhower. One of the most famous executions of that campaign was an animated musical cartoon showing circus animals parading with a banner for Eisenhower, and singing “We like Ike.” After the election, journalist Harlan Cleveland reported a conversation with the famous advertising copywriter, Rosser Reeves, who had directed Eisenhower’s television commercials. Mass media historian Martin Mayer (1958) quoted Cleveland as saying to Reeves that his objection to the TV spots was that their real role “was selling the President like toothpaste” (p. 302).
