---
title: Your Advice Can Spell Victory or Defeat poster (English, Elements of Victory series, Saigon)
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/your-advice-can-spell-victory-or-defeat-poster-393-1964/
description: An English-language illustrated poster headed 'Elements of Victory' with a shoulder patch at upper right. Tagged by technique, with source and rights.
section: Collection
---

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3. Your Advice Can Spell Victory or Defeat poster

[![Your Advice Can Spell Victory or Defeat poster, 1964 US poster: An English-language illustrated poster headed 'Elements](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/your-advice-can-spell-victory-or-defeat-poster-393-1964.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/your-advice-can-spell-victory-or-defeat-poster-393-1964.jpg)

# Your Advice Can Spell Victory or Defeat poster (English, Elements of Victory series, Saigon)

An English-language illustrated poster headed 'Elements of Victory' with a shoulder patch at upper right. A U.S. adviser points the way for a Vietnamese soldier; below, two panels contrast 'Victory or' (trailing off) (enemy troops surrendering with hands raised) with 'Defeat!' (a burning house and a fallen soldier), and ask 'Have you given your best?' The tell is fear-appeal on a binary choice: two outcomes only, tied to the individual adviser's effort.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
Elements of Victory

YOUR ADVICE CAN SPELL

VICTORY or...

DEFEAT!

HAVE YOU GIVEN YOUR BEST?
```

The shoulder-patch emblem at upper right carries no legible text.

[← ORIT-ICFTU Free Labor congress call poster (English-language poster distributed in Mexico City)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/orit-icftu-congress-call-poster-english-mexico-1964/) [Women's Volunteer Corps (Grey Ladies) poster, No. 354 (Saigon) →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/vietnamese-grey-ladies-women-volunteers-1964/)

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- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
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