We’ve set up a new set of roadside signs on Route 138. We’ve been looking for a way to communicate the values of our members and candidates. But we figured we’d also invoke some classic Americana in the process!
The arrangement of the signs was inspired by the Burma-Shave ads from the 1920s and 1930s. The 1920s saw the first big mainstream spike in automobile use, about the time when Burma-Shave was getting into serious competition for their product. They took advantage of the emergence of new cars and new roads to launch an advertising campaign of roadside signs. As road trips and long drives became more popular into the 1930s, the Burma-Shave signs became icons along the new roads and routes in the United States. They were landmarks and entertainment for thousands of road trips.
The Burma-Shave signs were most famous for their jingles. They would have a series of signs along the side of the road, with a few words per sign, set apart from one another so a car driving down would have a few seconds to read each sign. It was a nationwide meme in the early American automobile era, and still persists as a meme format in the internet age.
We admittedly took a few artistic licenses with our take on the signs. We have a number of values that we needed to cover, so instead of a jingle, we focused on a series of a few short phrases. And while red signs with white letters are classic, blue is a color that’s more closely associated with Democrats.
So we’re excited to share what’s important to us and our candidates moving into the election campaign this year. We’ll be following up more on how our candidates have been acting to support these values in the coming months!
Burma-Shave Sign image: https:/www.wisdomenough.com/remember-burma-shave-signs/
-- Chris Kona