Insert Slogan Here

In Words That Sell Brands, Grip Fans, & Sometimes Change History, author Steve Cone ranks presidential campaign slogans going back almost 200 years. They are grouped into 4 categories in order of descending relevance and success.

Among the top presidential slogans of all time:

Reagan’s “It’s Morning Again in America”

William Harrison’s “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”

FDR’s “Happy Days are Here Again.”

Some of the more mediocre campaign slogans in American history include:

Abe Lincoln’s “Vote Yourself a Farm”

John Fremont’s “Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, and Fremont”

Adlai Stevenson’s “The Experienced Candidate

And finally, the bad, the worse, and the ugly:

Henry Clay’s mind-numbing “Who is James Polk?”

Jimmy Carter’s “Not Just Peanuts”

and Walter Mondale’s “America Needs a Change.”

The premise of the book is to show how powerful one-liner marketing campaigns have the potential to put a company on the map, change the way we see the world, or even put somebody into the White House. I’d like to take this opportunity to look at 2008’s slogans and explore their impact and effectiveness.

The following folks are now out of the race, and part of it may have been slogans that fell flatter than a pancake run over by a semi.

John Edwards: “Join the Campaign to Change America”

Rudy Giuliani: “Your Money – Your Vote”

Mike Huckabee: “Enough is Enough”

Hillary Clinton: “Ready for Change”

None of these slogans provokes any emotional response, and all of them are vague. So that leaves us with Barack Obama and John Mccain.

Obama: “Change We Can Believe in,” or “Yes We Can”

While there’s nothing breathtakingly original about his slogans, they tap into the larger message of his campaign; the chants of Yes We Can play into his populist image very well, and Change has been the strongest pull in this election cycle. It may not be a home-run, but at least Obama’s marketing team has connected with his supporters and the larger trends in the race effectively. What about Mccain?

The other night I realized that although I’ve been following the race closely, I had no idea what John Mccain’s campaign slogan even was. Today I looked it up and discovered that only very recently, team Mccain settled on “Reform, Prosperity, and Peace.”

That sound you’re hearing is the cartoon sound affect that is played when a character has an anvil dropped on their head. While it’s not the worst campaign slogan that has ever been thought up, it falls dreadfully short on a number of levels. It doesn’t rhyme, it’s not particularly clever, but most of all, it does not tap into the core principles of the Mccain personality. A more effective slogan might be “Strength, Courage, Character,” which would at least emphasize the positive traits that Americans identify with Mccain, and play to his perceived advantage on national security. If “Reform, Prosperity, and Peace” is the best that they can come up with, then John Mccain needs to fire his PR people and find someone who either is a brilliant marketing mind, or at least knows how to package something with a clever title.

How about we come up with one for him? One that will at least reinforce Mccain’s image in America’s mind. I came up with a number of ideas in the last few days, but my favorite so far is this:

John Mccain for America:

“These Eggs are Too Runny. Send them Back.”