Driving Political Opinion

According to Anne Lardner, Senior Manager of Communications for the Promotional Products Association International stickers and decals are a small but significant piece of the promotional products market, with 2006 sales estimated at 2.58% (up from 2.02% in 2005) of total annual domestic sales of $18.8 billion in the industry.

That's a lot of stickers and decals, but they are not all campaign related products. Truth be told, no one really knows how many political campaign bumper stickers are produced annually, and how many wind up on cars. The industry doesn't break down the types of stickers and decals into smaller subgroups, such as commercial stickers (such as a radio station bumper sticker) compared to political stickers (from local to national elections), or stickers intended for cars versus stickers intended for labels on products or paper. 

Bumper stickers are an inexpensive form of advertisement if you factor the per unit price. At major offset and screen printing companies, a 3 by 11.5 inch two-color bumper sticker printed on white removable-vinyl costs about 32 cents each when 1,500 are ordered. That's $480. Bump the order size to 5,000 and the cost is about 18 cents each, or $900. An order of 15,000 breaks the cost down to less than 12 cents each, or $1,800. There are some additional design, set up and shipping costs, but overall, the affordability of the bumper sticker is truly within reach of large national as well as many smaller state and local campaigns.

The more elaborate four-color process is more expensive. An order of 1,500 bumper stickers works out to a little under 90 cents each, or $1,350, and 15,000 bumper stickers get the cost down to under 20 cents each, or $3,000. Again, those numbers are usually affordable for large campaigns and many smaller ones. Is it the most effective ad buy?

Author Joe McGinnis wrote in his book, The Selling of the President 1968, that during the presidential campaign, Richard Nixon distributed more than 20 million buttons and 9 million bumper stickers. Nixon was often called Tricky Dick. Maybe he should have had the moniker Sticky Dicky, especially when it came to the theft of private documents from Dr. Lewis Felding's psychiatry office, the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate Scandal.