run it up the flagpole

The phrase run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes is credited to Madison Avenue admen of the 1950s. The phrase, and many others like it, is used in the context of brainstorming or “spitballing ideas” and refers to making a suggestion to see if people like it.

Examples of similar ad-speak from the era abound. For instance, this appeared in the New York Herald Tribune on 2 April 1954. It doesn’t contain the flagpole phrase, but it does have several others:

Out in Chicago they have an expression: “Keep your pores open on this one,” which means don’t do anything hasty. (And that, of course, is the general direction of almost all ad agency talk. The idea is for heaven’s sake, be careful. Don’t go rushing into anything.) And when you have finally decided the idea is definitely lousy, you “pull the chain on that one.”

There is generally, in some of the later Madison Ave. patter, a note of pessimism, if not downright cynicism in their gropings with the spoken word. Take this one, for example, which is a very real example of Madison Ave.: “Let’s roll some rocks and see what crawls out.” Obviously the boys are not expecting much. In the old days, they used to “mother hen” an idea, or they’d say “let’s incubate this and see what hatches,” and this, with its intimations of maternity, was kind of sweet and touching. Now, they’re rolling rocks and you know what crawls out from under those.

The earliest use of the flagpole phrase itself, or rather a variant wording of it, that I’m aware of appears in a column on Madison Avenue ad-speak in the Washington Post and Times Herald of 24 December 1954:

Of course, there are the usual endless variations on “let’s kick it around,” which means “Let’s for heavens [sic] sake, somebody come with an idea.” “Let’s blow feathers around the room.” “Let’s run it up the rack and look underneath.” “Let’s run the flag up the pole and see who starts saluting.”

The following year, we get the phrase in what would become its canonical word order in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg News of 11 November 1955:

MADISONIANA—From time to time John Crosby, vigorous chronicler of the radio and television world, has reported on the unique ionospheric imaginery [sic] that has become a familiar Madison Avenue by-product of creative minds in conference. Quite independently, Guyon Madison picked up on this one: “Let’s run it up the flagpole and see how many people salute it.”

And there is this found in a pair of columns on the advertising industry in the New York Herald Tribune in November 1956. On 12 November, Joseph Kaselow’s column read:

The [newspaper feature] writer said he would get back to the p. r. man and in a short while he did. And here, so help me, is what he said: “I took it in to one of the editors and ran it up the flagpole, but nobody saluted; so I guess it’s dead.”

As we said, this thing is serious. It must be nipped in the bud. Or next thing you know somebody will be writing a book about “The Man in the Green Flannel Eyeshade.”

Three days later, Kaselow wrote:

The other day we had an item about a newspaper feature writer who turned down a story by saying he’s taken to the editors and run it up the flagpole, but nobody saluted. We played it up as a case of the creeping influence of Madison Ave. on the native—and what’s worse, the editorial tongu[e].

The Herald Tribune was not the only outlet reporting on ad-speak. William Morris wrote this for the Milwaukee Journal on 13 September 1956:

The advertising fraternity, incidentally and not surprisingy [sic] is noted for the inventive and colorful metaphor used in its own shop talk. Each year Holiday magazine collects the cream of the crop. Here are three from the current batch:

Of a new campaign: “Let’s anchor it in deep water overnight and see if it develops any leaks.[“] (Translation: “I want to catch the 5:02.”) “Let’s get together and cross-pollinate.” (Translation: “I give up—you got any ideas?”) Then there’s my favorite, used about a new and untested idea for a campaign, “Let’s run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.”

Perhaps the most well-known use of the phrase is in the April 1957 film 12 Angry Men, directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Reginald Rose, where it is uttered by Juror #12, a feckless advertising executive played by Robert Webber:

#12: Y’know in advertising . . . I told you I worked at an ad agency, didn’t I? (#11 nods) Well there are some pretty strange people . . . not strange really . . . they just have peculiar ways of expressing themselves, y’know what I mean? (#11 nods again) Well, it’s probably the same in your business, right? What do you do?

#11: I’m a watchmaker.

#12: Really? The finest watchmakers come from Europe I imagine. (#11 bows slightly) Anyway, I was telling you, in the agency, when they reach a point like this in a meeting, there’s always some character ready with an idea. And it kills me, I mean it’s the weirdest thing in the whole world sometimes precede the idea with some kind of phrase. Like . . . some account exec’ll say, “Here’s an idea. Let’s run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes it.” (#12 laughs) I mean, it’s idiotic, but it’s funny. . .”

The OED Online has this as the earliest example of the phrase, erroneously dating it to 1955. 12 Angry Men, written by Rose, had been originally produced in 1954 as an episode of CBS-TV’s Studio One. It was then adapted into a stage play by Sherman L. Sergel the following year. The flagpole phrase does not appear in either of these earlier versions. Evidently the OED conflated the 1955 stage play with the script for the 1957 movie.

Of all these ad-speak phrases, the one that survives is run it up the flagpole. It would appear that all them did indeed arise among Madison Avenue admen, but the use of run it up the flagpole in the movie catapulted that particular one to stardom and immortality.

Sources:

Thanks to Garson O’Toole, Fred Shapiro, and Stephen Goranson for pointing out some of the early citations.

Crosby, John. “Radio and Television: The Ad Agency Language.” New York Herald Tribune, 2 April 1954, 21/1–2. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

———. “A Refresher Course in that Madison Avenue Language.” Washington Post and Times Herald, 24 December 1954, 31/1. ProQuest Newspapers.

Green’s Dictionary of Slang, accessed 1 August 2025, s.v. run. v.

Kaselow, Joseph. “Advertising Field: Guards Up, Men.” New York Herald Tribune, 12 November 1956, A5/1. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

———. “Advertising Field: Sound and Fury.” New York Herald Tribune, 15 November 1956, A7/5. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.

Madison, Guyon. “Manhattan Days and Nights.” Williamsburg News (Brooklyn), 11 November 1955, 6/3. Newspapers.com.

Morris, William. “Words, Wit and Wisdom.” Milwaukee Journal (Wisconsin), 13 September 1956, Green Sheet 2/5. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, March 2011, s.v. run, v.

Rose, Reginald. “Twelve Angry Men.” Studio One, CBS-TV, 1954. YouTube.

———. Twelve Angry Men (film script), 1957, 220–221. ScriptSlug.

Rose, Reginald and Sherman L. Sergel. Twelve Angry Men. A Play in Three Acts. Woodstock, Illinois: Dramatic Publishing Company, 1955.

Photo credit: Neil A. Armstrong/NASA, 1969. Wikimedia Commons. NASA, AS11-40-5874. Public domain photo.