Theodore Roosevelt was a Harvard man, a voracious reader and a loquacious speaker.
In 1910, Roosevelt travelled to Paris to speak on “citizenship in a republic” at The Sorbonne. Now, this 105-year old speech has resurfaced in a Cadillac commercial.
Looks like someone at Cadillac’s new agency, Publicis Worldwide, majored in American history. But the ad fails to credit Roosevelt, notes Detroit Free Press. However, it does quote liberally from his “Man in the Arena” speech.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming … who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
The best copywriter in the world isn’t going to top Teddy’s prose. The same can be said for Walt Whitman’s poetry, which has been used to promote Levi’s bluejeans.
If you’re going to borrow equity, borrow from the best. By using Whitman’s or Roosevelt’s words in a commercial, you endow it with unnatural gravitas. But I’m not sure it make sense to remix these historic elements in a commercial with no nod to the source.
You can’t seek an endorsement from a dead celebrity, and you can’t say Teddy would have driven a Caddy. But this commercial definitely hints at the idea that he would have, if he could have.
By the way, TR was the first president to own a car and the first president to appear in a car in public. Nevertheless, he made known his preference for horses, and he always used horse and carriage for state purposes.
Roosevelt was also the first president to be submerged in a submarine; the first to have a telephone in his home; and the first to entertain an African-American, Booker T. Washington, in the White House.
