The advertising campaign for Burma-Shave, a brushless shaving cream, is the most unique advertising (see entry under 1920s—Commerce in volume 2) campaign in history. There was nothing like it before and has been nothing like it since. The campaign began in the mid-1920s and lasted until the early 1960s, although its heyday was the 1930s and 1940s. Burma-Shave's rhyming signs popularized the use of a jingle to sell a product. Its roadside signs were a favorite feature of travel for a generation of Americans.

The Burma-Vita Company came up with the idea of road-sign advertising, but the signs were not like the billboards seen today. Before freeways came into being, driving from one place to another meant using rural roads and driving slower. The Burma-Vita Company paid farmers to place signs on their property. The unique thing about this was how they did it. A rhyming jingle...