And Oh Louise!

Finished The Verse by the Side of the Road , a short history of the Burma Shave signs that dotted highways across the country for 37 years. It was not an unbiased history; its sources were exclusively the Odell family executives of the Burma-Vita Company. And the entire tone was skewed towards a nostalgic fondness for the cross-country icons. There were also unexplored tangential issues, like trends in state legislation restricting roadsigns, which I found fascinating.

But overall, it was a good general summary of an ad campaign that lasted from 1926 to 1963.

Though the budget for Burma Shave ads remained in the millions even throughout the Depression, the advertising tactics, as well as the tracking and maintenance of the signs, seemed remarkably small-scale. The company leased all of the posts for the Burma Shave signs from farmers or local landowners. There were crews that travelled the country to repair or replace the signs almost annually. Burma-Vita offered contests for folks from around the country to write their own ad slogans.

The analysis of the ads' popularity was a bit cursory; again, the author was more concerned with nostalgia. Like ads for many products, the Burma Shave ads subtly hinted at the sex appeal of their customers, based solely on product use. Many Burma Shave signs also cautioned drivers to slow down or not drive under the influence --doubling as quasi-PSAs.

But the book wasn't meant to be an examination of marketing techniques and psychology. Nor was it intended to scrutinize the role of advertising to consumers on an expanding highway system.

My favorite, I think, is this one from 1935:

His face was smooth
And cool as ice
And oh Louise
He smelled
So nice
Burma Shave

And by "favorite," I don't mean I think it's the wittiest. As a marketing ploy, it's just purely brilliant. It places a product for men in an imaginary intimate dialogue between girlfriends, and the ultimate consumer could be male or female (though statistically it was more likely to be female...) Also, with a '30s audience the "smooth" reference conjured memories of the still-surviving bristly shaving brushes, and presented Burma Shave as the convenient, modern, sexy option. The more you analyze it, the more fucked up it is, but the sheer intricacy of it is still brilliant.

I should shut up now before I blather on too long. I spent my entire senior year of college writing a 120-page paper on advertisements from the early part of the last century. (Well, okay, not the entire year....)