For lack of a proper term, I’m calling it the “Daisy Principle” because I heard it described when Seattle’s ACT theater group mounted a play “Daisy,” which had its run last summer. It was all about the Daisy Ad, famously used by Lynden Johnson to defeat Barry Goldwater in the 1965 presidential elections. Here’s a link to that original TV ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
The play is about the creation of that ad, and focuses quite a bit on the theories of Tony Schwartz, a sound designer who came up with the original concept for the ad. Part of his theory was that there was no need to name the target of its attack. People, he argued, were already afraid Goldwater might be a loose canon, so there was no need for names or facts, the audience would fill in the blanks. An example of this phenomenon, put forth in the play, is counting one, two, three, and your brain auto-fills “four.”
A reviewer, quoting from the play, put it like this: “our brain actively co-constructs our reality.” The idea was to create a “fact” out of thin air, by connecting to audience emotions rather than persuading them with actual details. “The most successful campaigns don’t control our minds—they reflect our feelings back at us. We don’t go with the product or president we understand, we go with the product or president who makes us feel most understood.” I’ll leave it to you to ponder how that 1965 concept fits modern times.
Here, I’m focusing on a bit of word play: the Daisy Ad is known as the first political attack ad, that is, the first negative ad on TV. Moreover, it employs the use of negative space to accomplish its negative goal. Therein lies the pun and the principle. The ad is spare, like tight poetry. Jazz music is all about negative space when they play everything but the real note, forcing our brains to hear a melody that our ears did not. In typography, negative space fonts also rely on our brains to fill in the blanks. They look like this:
There is no S here, we create it in our mind.
It’s that poetic use of negative space, coupled with a reliance on emotion to conjure fact, that I’m calling the “Daisy Principle.” I think the all time best Daisy ad would have to be the original Apple Macintosh 1984 ad, directed by Ridley Scott. It was intensely Daisy, a heavy attack ad with great use of negative space and emotional appeal. To watch that ad, click here:
Unlike the original Mac ad, the current iPhone 7 spot is not an attack ad at all. Nonetheless, it effectively relies on our brains to fill in what isn’t being said. And for that, and reasons I’ll describe below, I’m nominating the current Apple iPhone 7 ad for a Daisy Award. I’m not lauding the iPhone 7 here, but the advertising or movie-making technique used to promote it. The iPhone ad has great editing, pure poetry, and is definitely in the spirit of Daisy. If you want to watch the ad, click here:
The music is “La Virgen de la Macarena.” She is patron of bullfighters and this is their classic song. It sets a heroic tone of courage, confidence and style. The man’s iPhone sits in a puddle, next to his drink. We, the audience, without claim or warranty, assume the phone can take it. He turns up the volume and the bass notes make waves in the standing water, while sound fills the diving pool amphitheater. The glint of sun, reflected off the face of his iPhone, visually reinforces the man’s sonic connection to the tiny device far below. Through his perfect dive the music track soars, even as he plunges below the surface, where in real life, even loudspeakers would be obscured. It’s an editing convention we’ve all been trained to accept. We were listening to a sound track but our brain heard an iPhone playing by the pool. The underwater sequence is the finger snap that releases us from hypnotic bondage, while the orchestra and the final splash on the phone quickly and gloriously returns us safely to where we started, happy but changed. The ad relies on no statistics or facts. It’s pure greater-than-life movie magic. As our minds filled in the convincing details, we sold the product to ourselves.
I love how sparely this ad was edited. The rousing music is truncated perfectly. Each visual cut moves the action just enough and sells the story. Tension mounts and releases with a perfect landing. “Stereo Speakers on iPhone 7, Practically Magic” reads the end titles, but the magic was in the movie making.
I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have appreciated the iPhone ad’s technique nearly so much if I hadn’t seen the play, “Daisy.” Proof, I suppose, of the value to be found in live theater.
