Life, 1925-02-19 · page 32 of 37
Life — February 19, 1925 — page 32: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a consumer's defense of advertising—seemingly the first consumer-written ad to advertisers themselves. The cartoon shows a salesman with a megaphone addressing a crowd, illustrating the concept of persuasion through numbers. "Andy Consumer" argues that persistent advertising paradoxically *proves* product quality: if goods were poor, companies couldn't afford years of ads. Repeated advertising signals that many others value the product, so he trusts their collective judgment. Advertising, he claims, outsources his decision-making to a crowd-tested consensus. The satire appears gentle but contains irony: a consumer celebrating how advertising manipulates him into trusting products based on *how much money was spent promoting them*—rather than on the product's actual merit. The caption frames this as advertisers "betting" their money proves their product right, inverting the logic of what advertising actually demonstrates.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
GET OTHER FOLKS TO BACK MY JUDGMENT ‘This is my first ad—the first ad a ] consumer ever wrote to advertisers ROM my standpoint, one good thing about advertising is that it costs you advertisers real money. I suppose advertising has put a lot of you out of business. Well, that suits me. If your goods aren’t good enough to stand big advertising, you don’t last long. I love that! When I see an advertiser sticking to advertising for years and years, I know that I am not the only guy who thinks his stuff is good. It’sa sign thousands or millions of other consumer folks like me have found value in the thing that advertiser has to sell. Of course I can’t devote all my time to choosing things I eat and wear and use. When I see something advertised over and over, it shows me other people think well of it too—or the ads wouldn’t be there long. Advertising saves me time by get- ting lots of other people to help me choose. cH CY mer THE NATIONAL ADVERTISER BETS HIS ADVERTISING MONEY THAT HIS PRODUCT IS RIGHT comicbooks.com