Burma-Shave Roadside Verses
Burma-Shave1925
Burma-Shave Roadside Verses is a 1925 serial roadside signs for Burma-Shave, created in-house (Allan Odell).
Why it works
America's first great media invention: sequential storytelling at driving speed. From 1925, Burma-Shave planted sets of small signs along highways, each carrying one line of a comic verse, paced to the speed of a passing car, always ending with the brand name. The format made a modest brushless shaving cream a national institution for four decades — families recited the jingles, newspapers reported new ones — and it anticipated by 80 years the logic of serialized, feed-based advertising: short beats, enforced rhythm, a payoff that rewards attention. Ad Age ranked it No. 23 among the campaigns of the 20th century. It is studied as proof that media innovation — inventing where a message lives — can matter more than any single execution.
Techniques
- Guerrilla and ambient Small signs planted along highways, each carrying one line paced to a passing car, invent a medium out of the roadside.
- Humour Comic verses build to a punchline that always ends with the brand name, rewarding drivers for reading on.
- Jingles and music Rhyming jingles become so familiar that families recite them and newspapers report each new one.
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