A Brief History of Political Campaign Buttons

One of the most prevalent items in every campaign manager’s toolbox is the campaign button.

For building awareness, establishing brand, staying top of mind, and encouraging word-of-mouth promotion, among many other uses, the campaign button is a widely used tool by anyone running for any office.

Campaign buttons are inexpensive to make, as all you need is a circle cutter plus a button machine and some button making supplies. They are also easy to distribute and require very little effort from supporters to use. It is no wonder then that since Abe Lincoln first used them in 1860, the stature and ubiquity of campaign buttons has only grown.

In this post, we provide a brief history of political campaign buttons, along with some examples.

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Use 4,571 for Buttons: Encapsulating Someone’s Life Story

Do not be fooled by the specificity of the number in the title.  There is no finite number of uses for buttons, nor are we sure that what we are about to describe would fall in the exact 4,571th slot even if such a list existed.

The main idea is that there are tons of uses for buttons, and I just came across another one today.

On NPR.org, they have chosen to use political campaign buttons of recently deceased U.S. Senator Edward M. Kennedy to encapsulate his life. The good (his Senator elections), the bad (references to Chappaquidick), and the failed (his runs for President) are all represented in the ten-button cross section chosen by NPR.

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