Life, 1910-10-06 · page 56 of 60
Life — October 6, 1910 — page 56: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes automobile manufacturers' advertising competition in *Life* magazine. Between October 1, 1910 and April 1, 1911, car companies competed to win a solid gold cup by purchasing the most advertising lines in the magazine. The satire lies in treating this commercial contest as a grand "race"—using martial language ("marvelous," "bewildering," "reckless")—while the actual competition is purely about ad spending, not automotive merit. The participating brands (Hudson, Oldsmobile, Rambler, etc.) are ranked by advertising volume rather than vehicle quality or performance. The ornate golden trophy reinforces the mock-heroic tone: companies are literally racing to spend the most money on ads. This gently mocks both the automobile industry's aggressive marketing tactics and the magazine's willingness to profit from intensifying that competition among advertisers.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Open to all Automobile Advertisers THE START HE position of the various con- testants in the most marvelous, inspiring, uplifting and down throwing, reckless, and altogether be- wildering contest of modern times, is as follows : Hudson, - Locomobile - Oldsmobile - Rambler - Stearns - Thomas Flyer Haynes - - Marmon -~ - Rauch & Lang Electric, ClubCar - - Correja - - 420 lines 420 lines 420 lines 420 lines 420 lines 420 lines 224 lines 224 lines 224 lines 210 lines 112 lines The position of the contestants will be presented to the readers of LIFE every week until the contest closes, on April first. As several of the contestants are neck and neck, we present them in alphabetical order. This is a reproduction, in full size, of the solid gold cup which will be presented to the Automobile advertiser using the greatest number of advertising lines in LIFE between October 1, 1910 and April 1, 1911. — * Doct centred | opinions sion,“ food as “ Hope promptly Not a § respectin intended the race and the minutes’ some" f breakfast 10 satisfy hen sipped a the docte between her pleas because | A well comicbooks.com