Continuing on my post inauguration high, I want to share the brilliant copy from a print ad by Marriott Hotel that ran in USA Today, and other national papers January 20. The ad is quite simple. 14 lines starting with “You can’t …” 14 lines that are crossed out. Here is the complete list of “You can’t …”

You can’t abolish slavery.
You can’t build a railroad from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
You can’t give women the right to vote.
You can’t fly a plane from New York to Paris.
You can’t defeat Nazi Germany.
You can’t devise a plan to rebuild war-ravaged Europe.
You can’t cure polio.
You can’t allow black children and white children to go to school together.
You can’t put a man on the moon.
You can’t pass a Civil Rights act.
You can’t beat the Russians in hockey.
You can’t help bring down the Berlin Wall.
You can’t map the human genome.
You can’t elect a black man President of the United States.

The last line of text reads: “What’s next, America? Because whatever it is, the answer is yes, we can.”

This entry was posted by Will Burke on Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 3:37 pm and is filed under Change the Conversation, Culture, In the Wild. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.