Hotcards, Full Color Printing In The Nation

And yes, even we will admit that it’s there.

Did you know that one of the Founding Fathers of this country was a printer? Even though he eventually became a major political figure, Benjamin Franklin always signed his name, ‘B. Franklin, Printer.’

Throughout his career, Franklin printed everything from newspapers, to political tracts, and even, at one point, currency! He developed and printed money in New Jersey that was supposed to be un-counterfeit-able.

Franklin eventually went on to become a prominent political figure in the state of Pennsylvania, where today, a whole new set of White House hopefuls are busy campaigning.

Of course, in Franklin’s day, printing was just about the only way to share information amongst a large group of people. Now, printing has to compete for attention with TV, the radio, and the internet. Compared to those mediums, printing can seem less than competitive, especially in a marketing segment that is generally classified as ‘annoying.’

Ben Franklin, along with an excellent series of posts over at Advertising for Peanuts, got me thinking about this problem in election campaign printing and advertising. According to Jim Morris over at AFP, it’s not that political advertising is, by nature, ‘annoying,’ but that, by and large, it’s just not very well done.

So, what can be done about this problem? When Ben Franklin printed something political, it became the talk of the town. He might not have been using it specifically for election campaigning, but it the end, this printing helped propel him into the position of one of our country’s greatest political figures.

Franklin was successful because he wasn’t trying to sell an image, he was trying to share an idea, and I think that this type of print ‘advertising’ still has the potential to compel after all these years, regardless of the competition from other types of media.

And that’s the idea for the day: when designing election campaign printing, don’t focus on the sell, focus on the idea, create something that will get people talking, and this will, in turn, sell itself. That’s what Franklin did, and it worked out pretty good for him.