I remember when politicians started to use ad agencies for their campaigns. Is it really that long ago – in other words, am I really that old already?

Anyway, that’s way back in Germany – but the commercialization of political advertisement had probably happened here in the US way before that – when I was a student. I was driving my very first car, and without any access to the internet and billboards, that car had to serve as my very own billboard and soapbox. In order to protest this commercialization of the political campaigns, the hood of my car bore the slogan

CDU Washes Whiter ¹

CDU being one of the political parties wooing for voters.

I just ran into something a lot better than my own little political speech. Protest is good, but mine was too serious to be effective. When you get the people to laugh – that will stick.

So, see this one here…

Edit 2026: Interesting side story is that while the CDU was the Christian Conservative party, I was a young and stupid progressive and had to root for the other, the SPD (yes, the S stood for what you would suspect.) Rooting was the only thing I could do because I was not quite 21, so voting was not for me yet. Nevertheless, I had laid my eyes on the sister of a classmate and took her out for dinner. She turned out to be a member of the ‘Junge-CDU’ (jung = young), so you can imagine what the result of that date was, to which I picked her up in my anti-CDU car.

1. In German, obviously ↩︎