How a small-time manufacturer of shaving cream became a national sensation with outdoor advertising.
In 1925, a youthful Allan Odell proposed to his dad, Clinton, a unique concept for promoting their brush-less shaving cream. Clinton was not convinced the idea was a good one, but decided to give Allan $200 to get him off his back.
So began one of the most successful billboard campaigns in U.S. history – Burma-Shave.
At the height of the campaign, there were over 7,000 Burma-Shave signs on roadways throughout the nation. And Burma Shave became the #2 selling brush-less shaving cream on just the strength of the signage program alone.
Initially, all of the signs were nailed up by Allan and his brother Leonard. This was before the Highway Beautification Act, so you could really erect a sign anywhere you wanted to, without any problems. This opportunity was never more aggressively seized than by Burma Shave. However, changing consumer tastes, and new billboard ordinances, ultimately put an end to the Burma-Shave billboard campaign by the 1960s.
But the signs can still be found along the right-of-way, if only lying on the ground – forgotten souvenirs of the largest billboard campaign in history.
So what made Burma-Shave’s campaign so unique? One memorable feature was that they were not just one sign – they were several signs in a row, with each one showing a phrase of the overall slogan. Typical Burma-Shave slogans included:
These Signs
We Proundly
Dedicate
To Men Who’ve Had
No Date of Late
Burma-Shave
My Job Is
Keeping Faces Clean
And Nobody Knows
De Stubble
I’ve Seen
Burma-Shave
The signs came in two colors originally: 1) white copy on a red background and 2) black copy on an orange background. After a couple of years, the black and orange combo was discontinued. Also, the signs were white copy on blue background in South Dakota, since it was illegal to use the color red in signs there, since it replicated official safety warning signs.
The idea was to nail them up in sequence, about 100 feet apart, so that they kept the driver guessing as to the next installment of the rhyme. Over time, drivers began to look forward to seeing the signs, as they broke the monotony of long drives. Eventually, there were 600 slogans in all.
So what killed off the Burma-Shave sign outdoor campaign? More than anything else, it was the new federal highway system. The new, larger highways made it nearly impossible to see the relatively small Burma-Shave signs. Of course, they could have made the signs larger, but at the same time the Odells sold Burma-Shave to Phillip Morris, and the new owners changed the direction of the marketing for the company. Of course, brush-less shaving cream also changed over time as a product. But the Burma-Shave brand was recently re-introduced using the original logo, hoping to capitalize on nostalgia for the brand.
The important lesson is that a brand was built from scratch – from zero to second largest in the U.S. – using only outdoor advertising. And although it was considered a corporate giant, based on the size of its outdoor campaign, it never exceeded 35 total employees. And that original $200 investment by the Clinton Odell yielded millions of dollars when the company sold in 1963 – all thanks to outdoor advertising. Who says signs don’t work? Not the Odell family, that’s for sure. Never seen a Burma-Shave sign? Visit Washington, D.C. – there’s one in the Smithsonian.
Tags: Burma Shave signs