Life, 1925-03-19 · page 3 of 36
Life — March 19, 1925 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satire by the cartoonist (signed "REBO") mocks competitive advertising practices. The central figure labeled "Andy Consumer" sits at a desk reviewing product bids, surrounded by floating advertisements for items like "AUTOS," "TOBACCO," "SARDINE," and "PIANO." The joke: advertisers submit "competitive bids" by constantly repeating their ads, assuming repetition proves product quality. Andy Consumer sardonically thanks them, noting that continuous advertising actually signals a good product—though he recognizes this logic is circular. The satire targets early 20th-century advertising's aggressive use of repetition as a marketing strategy, mocking both advertisers' faith in frequency and consumers' tendency to equate visibility with reliability. The cartoon suggests advertising has become a competitive bidding war where sheer volume replaces substantive product claims.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THANK YOU FOR SUBMITTING YOUR COMPETITIVE BIDS GET competitive bids on prac- seally everything I buy for my family for from 5 cents up. I want to thank you national advertisers for this. (Maybe you don’t know you're doing me this kindness, but thanks.) You boys talk to me in the open. You tell me what you have and how much. Other advertisers listen to your message tome. You all strain to make your sardines and neckties bigger and better and to clip your prices close—to please me. Every ad is a bid. I sit hard-nosed and decide. Of course I know your first ads don’t mean so much. But when you repeat—ah! Continuous ad- vertising is the proof of the pud- ding it advertises. It is sure evidence of contented consumers. (Is somebody paging me?) Adver- tising never rings a false alarm twice. So, how good and how much is what you've got? Bids received on anything. All bids unsealed. Quality considered as well as price. Make your bid attractive, because over a hundred million people will follow my example if | take your proposition cH THE NATIONAL ADVERTISER BETS HIS ADVERTISING MONEY THAT HIS PRODUCT IS RIGHT Coy mor comicbooks.com